21st-Century Computer Failures and Why They Should NEVER HAPPEN

The Decemberists make me happy. Facebook allowing me to be a fan of The Decemberists also makes me happy.

Receiving a notice through the Facebook fan page that Decemberists tickets are going on-sale early for fan members makes me very happy. Learning that one of those shows is in Montclair, NJ (mere miles from my humble abode) makes me extremely happy.

You know what doesn't make me happy?

When the pre-sale ticketing is done through a shitty, cut-rate website that can't handle the server traffic for a group of people trying to buy tickets to an indie concert.

I understand that The Decemberists are becoming so popular a group that the "indie" moniker just isn't gonna cut it for very long anymore, and that's fine. However, for right now, I think it's fair to say that The Decemberists cater to a rather specific musical niche -- namely, the folksy, classically-influenced, sea shanty-tinged narrative pop-rock crowd. They have just over 11,500 Facebook fans (as of this writing), as compared to, for instance, Dave Matthews Band, who have well over 200,000.

When DMB wants to do a pre-sale, their fans have an easy time navigating this. And all the pages on their websites load properly. I know this because I've done it before. Me, and easily millions of other people.

The Decemberists don't have numbers nearly into the millions of fans looking to order pre-sale tickets. As such, it is completely inexcusable that MusicToday's servers should repeatedly drop connections on the day of the pre-sale.

It's the 21st Fucking Century (with a capital F, even). How can you host a major website (which apparently caters to lots of fans of lots of lesser-known but still rather reputable bands) and still have your servers go kaboom when a bunch of people try to buy tickets? How can not handle what is, in the long haul, a less-than-substantial spike in your traffic in the middle of the afternoon?

The Decemberists make me happy. Going to see them live for a third time makes me happy. MusicToday, you do not make me happy. To thee I say, go screw.

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EDIT (4:44pm): Although it took over an hour for things to go smoothly, the page finally reloaded and I was able to secure my much-desired tickets. This does not, however, forgive the hour of cybershit I had to muck through to get said tickets.

Conclusion: thank you, MusicToday, but you're still on my shit list.