Adele's Website Crashes As Artist Storms Brits

Fans of the artist Adele were left disappointed last night when they were unable to access the singer's website after it crashed under huge user traffic load.

The outage followed a stunning solo performance at the Brit Awards, as thousands swarmed to the website and swelled hype on news and social media sites.

Adele's website, www.Adele.tv, was down throughout the night and was still not back online this morning. The website of Adele's record label, XL Recordings, also experienced lengthy load times as excited fans scrambled to buy concert tickets.

Tickets for Adele's UK tour in September were launched yesterday morning, and contributed to the high user volume.

Bob Dowson, director at website monitoring and load testing specialists NCC Group Performance Testing, said: "Adele's website was clearly underprepared for the high amounts of traffic that it experienced following her performance on the Brit Awards and the launch of tour tickets. As a result, one of the biggest events in the calendar of her record label and marketing and website management teams has ended in catastrophe.

"It is the responsibility of all these parties to ensure an artist's website is prepared to handle high user volume on important dates such as this. If this preparation is not sufficient, it is impossible to capitalise on high-profile marketing opportunities and the artist risks disappointing fans.

"Rigorous load testing should have been carried out to ensure Adele's website had the necessary capacity to cope with such high traffic. The marketing and sales teams should have anticipated the huge impact of such an event."