Raye reveals the sign-up list for her upcoming show will be manually reviewed so 'fans can buy tickets at face value' after 1.8 million applied for just 5,000 seats

Raye has revealed the sign-up list for her upcoming show will be manually reviewed so 'fans can buy tickets at face value' after 1.8 million applied for just 5,000 seats.

The singer, 28, had huge demand for her intimate This Symphony May Contain Hope show at London's Royal Albert Hall on October 23.

She is now taking action after there were 'hundreds of thousands of fake registrations' for the one-off gig which will see the singer reimagine her sophomore album, March's This Music May Contain Hope, with the Heritage Orchestra and Flames Collective.

She wrote on X: 'We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope.

'Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.

'It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale. It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price.'

Raye and her team have decided to take extra steps to 'manually review' the list to try and make sure only real fans are part of the presale.

She explained: 'Therefore rather than risk opening a presale that scalpers could exploit, we felt the best and safest solution for this specific show was to manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans.'

Raye explained that 'those selected will receive their presale link and code by email' on Tuesday at 11.45am BST, with the sale opening at midday.

Anyone who doesn't receive a presale code will have to try when the remaining tickets go on general sale.

Raye concluded: 'I'm not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes.

'Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future.

'Lots of love, Raye.'

The Where Is My Husband! singer had huge ambitions for This Music May Contain Hope following the success of 2023's My 21st Century Blues, and back in May she revealed how the pressure she put on herself took a real toll.

She told Billboard: 'There just comes a time in your life where, like, you have to, or you choose to, prioritise something over another, so I think in my case, like, work has really been my life for the last year, two years, three years.

'But I think this last year with this album, and the amount of touring, and just the vibe in general, I've really definitely pushed myself to, like, my limit.'

Reflecting on the intense schedule, she added that she was 'really happy' to have worked as hard as she did, but she wanted 'a little bit more balance' after the LP dropped, focusing on 'shows and rest time'.

Raye said the pressure was entirely self‑driven, explaining that the scale of the project was something she chose to take on.

She said: 'By the way, like, I was the one who chose to make an album like this, and I was the one who had all these ambitious goals and ideas for it, and things I wanted to do and achieve.'

Earlier this month Raye spoke out on her drug and alcohol spiral, admitting that 2019 'was a pretty dark year'.

The star, whose real name is Rachel Keen, was signed by record company Polydor in 2014 and rose to fame at 19 years old by featuring on Jax Jones' You Don't Know Me.

But five years into her record deal, Raye explained she was becoming disillusioned with the industry, as record executives pushed her into projects she didn't want to take part in and withheld her debut album.

It was during a stint living and recording in Los Angeles in 2019 that the star hit rock bottom as she blames 'a large collection of traumas, frustrations and substance abuse, misuse, or whatever, that just kind of piled up and that year was just one blurry mess'.

Calling it 'a pretty dark year', the London-born star explained how she wasn't close to most of her family at this time, apart from her sister Lauren – known professionally as Amma – who came to live with her for a while.

In a joint interview for CBS' Sirius radio, Amma explained how 'traumatic' it was to see her sister spiral.

'It would be me that had to double check that she was okay and yeah, she was still alive frankly,' she said. 

Raye was asked during the interview whether she was using 'drugs' at that time, she nodded and replied: 'Yeah other stuff,' whilst explaining that she still drinks.

'Interestingly there was a time when I was just not sober at all. I was really in the deep end,' she explained, adding that it was her grandmother texting her a bible verse about sobriety that helped start her recovery.

'She didn't know anything that was going on,' she explained. 'I was very good at hiding what I was going through and what I was doing from my family. But that Bible verse kicked me in the teeth a bit,' she said. 

'I was at a session in LA, I just remember I went to the bathroom and I shed some tears and I was like, 'I need to start getting it together here'.

In 2021, after years spent apart from her family, Raye hired her parents Paul and Sarah - with Paul serving as her manager and her mother Sarah helping with management tasks. Meanwhile she regularly performs with Amma and her other sister Absolutely.

Raye has spoken openly about her years signed with Polydor, claiming she had 'albums on albums of music sat in folders collecting dust, songs I am now giving away to A list artists because I am still awaiting confirmation that I am good enough to release an album.'

In June 2021, Raye revealed that her record label had been withholding her debut album for several years and she went on a hiatus.