Talking of Smashing Pumpkins, demand for tickets for their upcoming eight night residency at the Orange Peel venue in Asheville, North Carolina was so high when they went on sale last weekend, it sent the Ticketweb servers into meltdown. So much so, ticket sales were reportedly put on hold so that more powerful servers could be used.
Which is very similar to what happened when tickets for six new Take That concerts went on sale here in the UK yesterday. The group added the six extra dates, three in Manchester and three in London, because of public demand. Such was that demand that Ticketmaster's website crashed, for the first time in over two years.
All of which presumably means bands will now measure their relative popularity by how many servers they can crash when their tickets go on sale.