Live Nation, who started selling tickets for all of their own venues last month had their first big test last weekend. Tickets went on sale for the much awaited Phish reunion tour for shows in Pittsburgh, Camden, New York, Noblesville, and East Troy, but because of the huge server load, Live Nation’s site ground to a hault for hours. Fans trying to buy tickets were met with “waiting rooms” where they would have to wait to be selected to buy tickets, and then when they did make it through, they would get an error while trying to checkout and lose the tickets. The end result was thousands of fans spending many frustrating hours trying to buy tickets and ultimately not getting any. Many angry Phish fans have blogged about their dissatisfaction and written things like “I will never use Live Nation again”. Even Phish themselves have written on their website how disappointed they were about the site being unable to handle the load.

Should Live Nation be worried? I don’t think so. No matter what fans say or whatever bad taste the Phish onsale has left in people’s mouths, they will be back to livenation.com the next time one of their favorite bands comes to their town and that is the only place they can buy tickets. What choice do they have? That said, I hope Live Nation has their credit card out and is ponying up the dough for some more servers.