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HITS Daily Double

ADELE SELLOUT FUELS FAN FURY

Damn, folks are flipping out online over how quickly tickets for Adele's forthcoming tour have sold out. The mega-selling chanteuse's first U.S. trek in five years, set to kick off in July, sold out at East Coast venues within minutes. Stubhub and other secondary vendors were soon reselling tix at a staggering premium. This follows a similar lighting-fast sellout of the U.K. and European tour, which kicks off in Feb.

Despairing tweets, bereft memes and fruitless queries clog the socials as fans cope with the fact that demand for tix has thus far radically outpaced supply.

Team Adele has reportedly enlisted Songkick overseas to ensure that as many tickets as possible are kept from the hands of scalpers. A New York Times story has the firm, which sells tickets via artist sites like Adele.com, saying not only sold 235k tickets but blocked 53k sales to people known or suspected to be scalpers. The company is just now announcing a $10 million cash infusion from Len Blavatnik's Access Industries; the company has already ginned up $32m in VC from Access, Sequoia and other sugar daddies.

A release from manager Jonathan Dickins proclaims, "By selling the highest number of tickets we were able to through our own channels, and working with Songkick and their technology, we have done everything within our power to get as many tickets as possible in the hands of the fans who have waited for years to see her live."

Adele's recent NBC concert special, following on the heels of astronomical album sales, gave an inkling of what the new tour would look like—triumphant, powerfully emotional, filled with vulnerability and humor—and fans deemed it unmissable. Unfortunately, unless they can score tix from resellers, a lot of them are going to miss out this time.

However if you're willing to pay a premium, it seems Stubhub is ready to sell you Adele, with an interesting caveat—a portion of their hefty proceeds are going to support music education through a donation to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation.