Taylor Swift fans are up in arms over a stalled fan video contest promoted at LiveDaily.
Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans are upset after participating in her “Fearless” fan video contest. It seems that while the promotions for the contest cited that winners would be chosen weekly, and a grand prize winner would receive gift certificates, signed albums and exclusive meet & greets with Taylor, there is no sign of any winners. The Taylor Swift Fearless contest even states in detail on her LiveDaily page that Taylor herself will choose which talented fan will win the exciting grand prize. However comments on her YouTube channel point out that the number of video views on Taylor’s page has not changed in over 3 months, meaning that she has not even looked at any of the entries. To quote a letter I received on the matter:
“461 video responses were sent with some contestants saying that they put two weeks of work into their entries… The contest held in association with LiveDaily.com was supposed to be run for four weeks starting from November 10th which means it finished Sunday December 7th although the site was still accepting entries after that date? More controversy, what if the chosen winner, if it ever happens that there is one, is one of the videos entered after the close off date?”
It is understandable that an artist’s schedule can get hectic, however the takeaway impression left by this contest is that it was a cheap publicity stunt to get devoted fans to buy and promote the new album. Now those same fans have agreed to file a fraud complaint against Taylor Swift and her management team unless the terms of this contest are met. Hopefully there is a reasonable explanation for this that will help to reconcile any hard feelings created between Taylor and her fans. In the meantime, my hat’s off to the mass number of fans who are willing to hold mainstream artists accountable for the promises they make!
UPDATE: It appears that in the 24 hours after this article was published, the contest page at livedaily was updated to reflect 4 finalist up for fan voting. Since there are no contest terms posted, and the contest video from Taylor has been removed, then there is no way of proving that this method of selecting a winner is different than what her statements in the video had implied (in the video it stated that weekly winners would be chosen, then SHE would choose the grand prize winner). Either way, with the wording chosen on the contest page, I can only hope that the fans’ voices were heard. “But this is a contest and someone has to win, so Team Taylor has selected their Top 4 videos for you to vote on“. Country Music Photo Gallery