Spotify has launched a new site to sell fans tickets for live concerts from its own platform instead of redirecting users to partners like Ticketmaster and Eventbrite. The company’s new website lists upcoming concerts and allows users to purchase tickets for these shows via debit or credit card; However, users must have a Spotify account to purchase tickets.
The company has not officially announced the launch of its ticketing platform, but Chris Messina first noted that the site was available to the public to reserve tickets earlier today.
The site lists concerts that are available to book on the main page and under the My Events section, users can view their past and future ticket bookings. The Spotify Tickets page currently lists concerts for artists such as Limbeck, Crow, Annie DiRusso, Four Years Strong and TOKiMONSTA performing in the US in the coming months.
“At Spotify, we routinely test new products and ideas to improve our user experience. Some of them end up paving the way for our broader user experience, and others just serve as important lessons. Tickets.spotify.com is our latest test. We have no further news to share on future plans at this time,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch. Currently, the company is focused more on pre-sales than primary ticket sales.
Spotify Tickets Home Page. Image credits: Spotify
The company revamped its in-app live event discovery page in June with better concert discovery for events around the user’s local area. Until now, Spotify used its ticketing partners like Ticketmaster, AXS, DICE, Eventbrite and See Tickets to list these events; for booking tickets, it linked to these partners from the event site. With the launch of its ticketing platform, that may change. While currently the events listed on Spotify’s Tickets page are not available on the live events page, the company’s support page says: “Some tickets listed there [on the Live Events page] are available for purchase directly from Spotify.” Tickets sold directly through Spotify are also not currently listed on the artist’s site. The firm did not share any information about plans to list ticketed events directly on the Live Events page and artist pages.
The legal section of the Spotify ticketing site states that the company acts only as a ticket agent and receives a booking fee. It also mentions that it may sell tickets on behalf of “third parties, which may include venues, event promoters, fan clubs and artists, as their disclosed ticket agents.” We’ve asked the company for details on what cut — if any — it takes from ticket sales and how that differs from the affiliate fees it earns from its third-party ticketing partnerships, but it didn’t share any information about it. .
Notably, some venues listed on the Spotify Tickets page are under the National Independent Venues Association (NIVA), a US-based organization representing independent venues. So the company can currently avoid venues that are under the distribution of Ticketmaster owner Live Nation. Live Nation has been accused of monopolistic ticketing practices, with lawmakers urging President Joe Biden to launch an investigation into the ticketing firm last year.
In a blog published in June, Spotify’s product manager for Live Events Discovery Sam Sheridan said that while people were engaging with artists on the app, they left the platform to find events for their live performances. With the revamped live event feed and ticketing platform, the company is trying to solve the discovery problem and make some money through booking tickets directly or as an affiliate partner. Last year, the company also experimented with selling tickets for pre-recorded virtual concerts due to the pandemic. The company has been under constant scrutiny for not paying artists enough for streaming, so with this new initiative, Spotify can argue that it will bring more ticket sales to artists.
The launch of Spotify’s ticketing platform comes days after TikTok teamed up with Ticketmaster to let users discover concerts and other live events. In February, Snap struck a similar partnership with the ticketing platform to power event discovery through Snap Minis — third-party apps on Snapchat.
Story updated with Spotify’s response.