RAYE has taken aim at AI bots after receiving a staggering 1.8 million sign-ups for her This Symphony May Contain Hope show.
The 28-year-old star is taking action after “hundreds of thousands of fake registrations” for her upcoming one-off gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall on October 23, which will see the singer reimagine her sophomore album, March’s This Music May Contain Hope, with the Heritage Orchestra and Flames Collective.
She wrote on X: “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.”
Raye and her team have decided to take extra steps to “manually review” the list to try and make sure only real fans are part of the presale.
She explained: “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.”
She explained that “those selected will received their presale link and code by email” on Tuesday (13.10.26) at 11:45am BST, with the sale opening at midday.
Anyone who doesn’t receive a presale code will be have to try when the remaining tickets go on general sale.
Raye concluded: “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.”
The Where Is My Husband! singer had huge ambitions for This Music May Contain Hope following the success of 2023’s My 21st Century Blues, and back in May she revealed how the pressure she put on herself took a real toll.
She told Billboard: “There just comes a time in your life where, like, you have to, or you choose to, prioritise something over another, so I think in my case, like, work has really been my life for the last year, two years, three years.
“But I think this last year with this album, and the amount of touring, and just the vibe in general, I’ve really definitely pushed myself to, like, my limit.”
Reflecting on the intense schedule, she added that she was “really happy” to have worked as hard as she did, but she wanted “a little bit more balance” after the LP dropped, focusing on “shows and rest time”.
RAYE said the pressure was entirely self-driven, explaining that the scale of the project was something she chose to take on.
She said: “By the way, like, I was the one who chose to make an album like this, and I was the one who had all these ambitious goals and ideas for it, and things I wanted to do and achieve.”
