Spotify begins selling live concert tickets on new site

As demand for live music soars following the COVID-19 pandemic, music streaming platform Spotify looks for an opportunity to expand growth by selling tickets directly on its new Spotify Ticket site, rather than directing users to vendors such as Ticketmaster and Eventbrite. The new ticketing site, which launched on August 10, follows a blog post from June in which the company described how users were leaving the native Spotify application to purchase tickets from other sites. In an effort to solve this, Spotify Ticket lets fans directly purchase tickets to a select variety of shows with a debit or credit card. A Spotify account is required in order to gain access to the ticketing portal.

When entering the home page, users are greeted with a message that reads “Your destination for live events by creators you love, ticketed by Spotify.” The site lists upcoming shows for artists such as Limbeck, Annie DiRusso, Dirty Honey, Crows, Lee Fields, TOKiMONSTA, Four Year Strong, The Rare Occasions and Osees. The Stockholm-based company is currently focusing on pre-sales rather than primary ticket sales. Users can also see their previous and upcoming ticket purchases under the My Events tab.

Although ticket purchases take place on the Spotify ticketing site, the site’s terms and conditions section states that Spotify only acts as a ticketing agent and also takes a booking fee. It also states that the company can be selling tickets on behalf of “third parties which can include venues, event promoters, fan clubs, and artists, as their disclosed ticketing agent.” Notable venues listed on the Spotify Ticket page are part of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a U.S.-based organization representing independent venues. This could signal that venues currently distributing tickets on Live Nation’s Ticketmaster are being avoided. Spotify’s ticketing site launch comes days after Tik-Tok and Ticketmaster partnered together in order to let users discover live events on the popular social media platform.

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