Chris Moyles and Fearne Cotton at the huge Radio 1 event in Carlisle last year pic: Ian Lloyd, flickr

Crowds of music fans were left frustrated yesterday as they faced long waits and error messages while trying to book tickets to Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend.

The BBC radio station made 50,000 tickets available online on March 25, with another 50,000 to be given away today. Those hoping to secure tickets were required to pre-register on the Radio 1 website by March 19.

Half of these tickets have been reserved for residents of Hackney and the other five Olympic host boroughs.

However, when thousands tried to use the Radio 1 website at 11am yesterday to claim the tickets, many faced messages saying “access denied,” or found that they were forced to wait for up to an hour.

Many Radio 1 listeners living outside the Olympic boroughs complained that the tickets reserved for them had sold out by 1pm, despite the slow website preventing them from booking any sooner.

Radio 1 used Twitter – where #hackneyweekend was the number one trending topic in the UK yesterday – to explain that the problem was due to the ticket agency See Tickets’ website experiencing “high volumes of traffic after an unprecedented demand for tickets.”

A Radio 1 spokeswoman told the BBC News yesterday: “We apologise for the frustration this may have caused. People have now been successful at getting tickets and we’re hearing from lots of happy listeners.”

Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend will take place on Hackney Marshes on June 23 and 24. Confirmed headline acts are Jay Z and Rihanna, with support from Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Rey, Will.i.Am, Example and Tinie Tempah, among others.

The second lot of 50,000 tickets were made available to book online at 4pm today.

Written by Aimee Cliff