Glastonbury registration: success or disaster?

Michael Eavis has given a delighted report to BBC 6Music about the pre-registration process for this year's Glastonbury and how well it's all going:

Festival chief Michael Eavis told BBC 6 Music: "175,000 have gone through as of today (February 21) - and it's going through at about 600 an hour.

"It's a pretty high number, really. People have been very good about it. Not too many complaints and it means we can forget about touting forever."

Yes... well done for that.

Only we're three-quarters of the way through the pre-registration window now, and you've not had enough people sign up to fill the proposed the new capacity of 177,500. Of course, there has to be some room left for kids and liggers who won't need to have tickets with their gurning faces on, but the somewhat low figure of registrations suggests one of two things:

Either people have decided that this is a hurdle too far, even to see Amy Winehouse in a tent, and chosen to not bother with Glasto this year,

Or the message about the need to register in advance hasn't got out.

If the first option is right, Eavis is presumably to be congratulated for inventing a way of turning a festival from being something like five-times oversubscribed into one barely able to sell out.

If the second option is correct, there's going to be an awful lot of angry people barking "why weren't we told?" when the tickets go on sale April 1st.

For now, the organisers better be hoping that everyone who's pre-registered decides to buy tickets - it only needs fifteen percent or so to decide not to bother and it might even be possible to get a spot in front of the headline acts this year.