Singer Raye has said the sign-up process for her upcoming one-off performance at the Royal Albert Hall was “overwhelmed” by scalpers using artificial intelligence bots.
The Brit Award-winning star, 28, received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5,000 seats at the hall for her concert, This Symphony May Contain Hope on October 23, but most of these were bots.
In a statement shared on Instagram, Raye said she and her team have scrapped their plans for pre-sale tickets and will instead “manually review” the sign-up list to identify people they believe are real fans.
She wrote: “We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope.
“Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.
“It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale.
“It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price.
“Therefore rather than risk opening a presale that scalpers could exploit, we felt the best and safest solution for this specific show was to manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans.
“Those selected will receive their presale link and code by email on Tuesday at 11:45am BST Presale will open at 12pm.
“If you do not receive a presale code, the remaining tickets will be available to all on general sale.”
Raye, whose real name is Rachel Keen, added she and her team will “think really hard” about how they handle ticketing in the future.
Raye said she and her team will ‘manually review’ the sign-up list to identify people they believe are real fans (Ian West/PA)
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She wrote: “I’m not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes.
“Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future. Lots of love, Raye.”
A scalper bot is software designed to purchase tickets faster than human users, which results in artificial scarcity and resale profit.
Raye first gained recognition when she sang vocals on the 2016 Jonas Blue single By Your Side and released several extended plays before her debut album My 21st Century Blues in 2023.
Her most recent album, This Music May Contain Hope, was released in March.