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Taylor Swift has criticised Ticketmaster after her fans said they waited hours and were repeatedly kicked off the firm’s website while trying to get tickets for her upcoming US tour.

The popstar said she and her team had been assured by ticket sellers that they could handle a surge in demand for her Eras tour – her first in five years.

Ticketmaster handled ticket sales for most of the shows on the 20-city, 52-date tour, although SeatGeek sold tickets for a few performances in Texas and Arizona.

In a statement on Instagram, 32-year-old Swift said: “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.

“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward.

“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”

She added: “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets but it really p***** me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.

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“And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs.

“Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”

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Earlier on Friday, Ticketmaster had cancelled ticket sales for the US tour due to “insufficient ticket inventory” to meet “extraordinarily high demands”.

That move came days after the presale for the tour caused the site to crash, leaving many fans frustrated and unable to get tickets.

Fans said they had waited in online queues for up to eight hours, with many finding they were too late for the tickets, which cost between $49 (£41) and $449 (£377) each.

Ticketmaster said on Thursday that it had anticipated heavy demand for tickets, adding that a record 3.5 million people had registered as verified fans.

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The company said it had planned to invite 1.5 million of those to participate in the sale for all 52 show dates, including the 47 sold by Ticketmaster, with the other two million placed on a waiting list.

But it said the plan had been undermined by attacks from “bots” – automated software requests – and demand from those who had not previously registered.

Ticketmaster said this had resulting in 3.5 billion system requests – four times the company’s previous peak.

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Dances With Wolves and The Green Mile actor Graham Greene dies aged 73

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Dances With Wolves and The Green Mile actor Graham Greene dies aged 73

Graham Greene, the Canadian First Nations actor best known for his performance in Dancing With Wolves, has died aged 73.

The star died peacefully after a long illness.

His agent Michael Greene (not a relation) said he loved everything the actor “did for his people and for all the world” in a statement sent to Sky News.

“He was a great man of morals, ethics and character and will be eternally missed…God bless his beautiful soul.”

Greene was a “trailblazer” who opened doors for indigenous actors in Hollywood, US entertainment outlet Deadline reported.

He made his screen debut in an episode of the Canadian drama series The Great Detective in 1979, and his first film, Running Brave, followed in 1983.

But his breakthrough came when he was cast as Kicking Bird (Zintka Nagwaka) in Kevin Costner‘s Dances With Wolves, released in 1990.

Greene was nominated for best supporting actor, one of 12 nods for the film, which took home seven, including best picture.

He went on to appear in Maverick alongside Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster in 1994, Die Hard With A Vengeance with Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson in 1995, The Green Mile with Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan in 1999, The Twilight Saga: New Moon with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in 2009, and Wind River alongside Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen in 2017.

His TV credits included Wolf Lake, Defiance and Marvel’s Echo, as well as Tulsa King and The Last Of Us more recently.

Greene also had several projects in the works, according to movie database IMDB.

He is survived by his wife, Hilary Blackmore, his daughter Lilly Lazard-Greene and her son, Talo.

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Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan ‘arrested at Heathrow over posts on X’

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Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan 'arrested at Heathrow over posts on X'

Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan has said he was arrested at Heathrow Airport, over social media posts sharing his views on trans rights.

Writing on Substack, the 57-year-old said that after flying into the UK from Arizona, he was detained by five armed officers and put in a cell before being questioned over posts published on X in April.

During questioning, he said a nurse checked on him and found his blood pressure had reached “stroke territory”, so he was taken to A&E.

A Met Police spokeswoman confirmed an arrest was made at Heathrow on Monday but did not identify Linehan.

In a statement, the force said: “On Monday 1 September at 1pm officers arrested a man at Heathrow Airport after he arrived on an inbound American Airlines flight.

“The man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence. This is in relation to posts on X.

“After being taken to police custody, officers became concerned for his health and he was taken to hospital. His condition is neither life-threatening nor life-changing.

“He has now been bailed pending further investigation.”

The arrest was made by officers from the force’s Aviation Unit, the Met spokeswoman said, adding that it is routine for officers policing airports to carry firearms.

“These were not drawn or used at any point during the arrest,” she said.

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The BTO Kid: ‘I spent months in a coma – AI has given me a musical voice’

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The BTO Kid: 'I spent months in a coma - AI has given me a musical voice'

“AI has changed my life, absolutely,” Lucas Horne tells Sky News. “When I play my music, I’m happy because the words I know mean a lot to me can now be heard by everyone else.”

Lucas was 17 when, in December 2016, with no warning, he suffered a large, traumatic bleed across his brain.

He didn’t wake up until almost four months later.

Unknowingly, he had been living with a defect in the blood vessels known as an AVM (arteriovenous malformation), a ticking time bomb which had ruptured, and the next three years of his life were spent in recovery in a care home.

Lucas spent almost four months in a coma after suffering a brain bleed in 2016. Pic: Fanvue World AI Creator Awards
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Lucas spent almost four months in a coma after suffering a brain bleed in 2016. Pic: Fanvue World AI Creator Awards

He couldn’t walk and struggled to talk. Writing down his thoughts, almost like a diary, was something he says he wanted to do from very early on.

“During my care home days when I couldn’t really express myself very well – I still can’t – but I could write about it, it was an outlet for me,” he says. “Since I woke up, I’ve been writing… but for a long time I couldn’t record anything.”

Lucas, now 26, has spent years working on his physical recovery and speech. But when he was eventually physically able to record the songs he had been writing himself, he became frustrated by the way his voice had changed.

“It never sounded how I had [it in] my head,” he says. “I’m very monotone in how I speak, I struggle to really display emotion.”

And so he turned to AI (artificial intelligence). Now, Lucas is also known as The BTO Kid, and is one of 15 creators from around the world, shortlisted from more than 500 entries, for the inaugural Future Sound Awards – celebrating artificial intelligence in music.

DJ David Guetta is among the big-name artists who have embraced AI. Pic: Christoph Reichwein/picture-alliance/dpa/AP July 2025
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DJ David Guetta is among the big-name artists who have embraced AI. Pic: Christoph Reichwein/picture-alliance/dpa/AP July 2025

While some artists such as will.i.am, David Guetta, Grimes, Timbaland and even Sir Paul McCartney have embraced certain aspects of AI, it can be a controversial subject in the creative industries – with concerns raised by many in the about issues including copyright, human replacement, fakes, and regulation.

It was one of the issues behind the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes in 2023 – and the more recent video game actor strike, which ended in June after nearly a year of industrial action.

Despite the criticism, AI isn’t going away. Last year was a “breakout” year for the technology in music, according to the International Music Summit’s latest annual business report, with 60m users using AI software.

Lucas says he is a perfect example of how the technology can be used for good.

“I’ve been able to use AI to express how I’m feeling,” he says. “It’s been big for me to create [music] that I’m proud of. I can see the arguments [against it], but from my view I know AI helped me create something I couldn’t before. I’m not Adele, but I have been able to make something that I’m proud of and that expresses my view point of what’s happened to me.”

Read more on AI in the music industry:
Will.i.am on embracing AI

AI used to help create ‘the last Beatles record

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Will.i.am starts Sky News interview with AI app

‘AI is lowering the barriers’

BTO stands for Beat The Odds and his shortlisted track is titled AI Gave Me A Voice. “I pinch myself every day because this just can’t be true,” is the opening line – which he says reflects how far he has come from the moment he woke up and discovered what had happened.

“That comes from reality. I do have moments where I think so much has happened that it must not be true… every line means something to me.”

Lucas, who lives in Nottingham, used the AI-powered music production platform TwoShot to create the track, using prompts on what he wanted for the sound alongside his lyrics, inspired by melodic rap.

“I think we’re gonna get quite a lot more people like me that can’t record music and have been given a voice through AI,” he says. “AI is lowering the barriers to entry for a lot of things.” Which can be a negative as well as a positive, he acknowledges. “We’ll have to see where it goes.”

Gallis is among 15 music creators shortlisted for the Future Sound Awards. Pic: Fanvue World AI Creator Awards
Image:
Gallis is among 15 music creators shortlisted for the Future Sound Awards. Pic: Fanvue World AI Creator Awards

Launched by the Fanvue World AI Creator Awards, The Future Sound Awards aim to highlight the ethical use of AI in music, organisers say. Fanvue is a subscription creator platform with more than 180,000 users.

Some 15 artists from the US, Europe, Australia and Asia, as well as the UK, have been shortlisted for prizes, and the winners will be announced later in September.

Lucas is one of two British creators on the list, alongside Gallis, from Essex. The 31-year-old first dipped his toe into the waters of the music industry about 10 years ago, after joining the urban-pop boy band Mr Meanor, but says the industry was hard and “it all got a bit too much”.

He is now a tattoo artist and fine painter, but continued his songwriting and started to try out AI music production tools about 18 months ago.

Read more on AI in the music industry:
‘Regulate it before we’re all finished’
‘It’s like saying you can burgle my house unless I ask you not to’
Silent album released in AI protest

UK Music organised a protest against AI copyright plans at Westminster earlier in the summer
Image:
UK Music organised a protest against AI copyright plans at Westminster earlier in the summer

AI has ‘made me more creative’

As an artist, he says he had his own concerns about AI before he started using it himself, particularly after image generators started becoming prominent online.

“It was stealing the work that I was doing,” is how he describes his initial feelings. “But I ended up jumping on board with it and for me personally, it’s inspired me so much. It’s made me quicker at what I’m doing, it’s made me more creative. And I think it’s the same with music. I think it’s gonna, if anything, grow the industry.”

However, he says he agrees with criticism about the ethics of how some AI models are trained – following controversy about work by human music artists and authors being used without consent. “And trying to impersonate exactly someone else and using someone else’s voice, I don’t agree with that at all,” he adds.

Gallis’s shortlisted song, Chiropractor emerged from “friendly competition” with a community of creators he came across when he moved into AI, trading feedback and ratings. The genre is Trinibad, which he says there isn’t enough of “in the AI world”, and the track is designed to get people dancing.

“I mainly stick to urban music, but I like writing in a lot of different styles,” he says. “I’ve done house songs, I’ve done UK drill songs, Afrobeats, amapiano. I’m a bit of a vibes man so if it makes me dance and move and smile that’s when I really enjoy it.”

Narcis Marincat, head of AI at Fanvue, says the stories behind the selected songs show a “richness and human emotion” that appealed to him and other judges.

“The impact of AI in music continues to divide opinion,” he says. “But for the first time, via the Future Sound Awards, we’re able to show a different perspective on the positive impact of AI in music – uncovering the real people behind the technology and sharing their stories and music.”

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