After a technical glitch on Ticketmaster released hundreds of high-demand tickets more than a week before public on-sales, jam band Phish has released a statement calling the competency of the nation's primary ticketing companies into question.

"The high demand for the tickets on Phish's return has overwhelmed the prevailing ticketing systems and revealed their flaws. We are putting pressure on the ticketing providers to improve their systems," the band explained in the March 19 statement, adding, "We are focused on the ticket broker activity in our tickets and the inability of the existing ticket systems to stop this. We are actively seeking options to limit this."

On March 18, four-day passes for the band's late summer performances at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, were suddenly released to the public on Ticketmaster. Reportedly hundreds of fans purchased the highly demanded passes before the system error was corrected.

Ticketmaster immediately cancelled and refunded the errant orders in keeping with its purchase policy, in which the company retains the right to cancel tickets if they are accidentally released before the intended on-sale date. Public sales for Phish's late summer tour dates do not begin until March 26.

Fans with cancelled orders voiced frustrations on message boards across the Internet, demanding that the seemingly legitimate purchases be honored. However, in their statement, the members of Phish explained that cancelling the orders ensured that "all of our fans have the same, fair opportunity to purchase tickets to this event."

During on-sales for Phish's initial summer tour dates, which are now sold out, high fan demand caused Live Nation's new ticketing system to crash.

The full statement from Phish, posted on the band Web site, read:

Last night we learned Ticketmaster mistakenly put on sale a substantial number of four-day passes to Phish's concerts this summer at Red Rocks Amphitheater, giving some fans an unfair advantage to purchase tickets ahead of the March 26th publicly announced on sale date. Ticketmaster has fully acknowledged this significant error, and to make sure that all of our fans have the same, fair opportunity to purchase tickets to this event, they have cancelled all of these orders with all charges being refunded.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause our fans. We are in active dialogue with Ticketmaster to push them to address the inconvenience their error has caused.

Phish takes this and all ticketing matters extremely seriously. We will seek assurances this type of error will not happen again in the future. The high demand for the tickets on Phish's return has overwhelmed the prevailing ticketing systems and revealed their flaws. We are putting pressure on the ticketing providers to improve their systems. We are focused on the ticket broker activity in our tickets and the inability of the existing ticket systems to stop this. We are actively seeking options to limit this.

As a reminder, the public on sale date for Red Rocks is Thursday, March 26th at 12:00 Noon Mountain time and additionally Phish's ticket request period will remain open until 11:59PM eastern time this Sunday the 22nd. Please visit http://phish.portals.musictoday.com/ to request tickets.

Thank you for your continued support.