After years of canceled concerts, music artists and fans are returning to venues in droves, and Spotify, which has been involved in promoting live events, wants to deepen its involvement in the concert business.
According to a report from Music Ally, Spotify is testing a website called Spotify Tickets that would sell concert tickets directly to fans. Right now, the site is selling tickets to seven concerts across the U.S. from artists like Tokimonsta, Annie DiRusso, and Osees. The streaming giant, which was launched in 2008 by Swedish businessmen Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, has grown to 433 million monthly listeners.
Spotify isn’t a stranger to concert promotion. Its Live Events Feed allows you to peruse nearby concerts and then purchase tickets through Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, or See Tickets. But Spotify Tickets would cut the middleman, letting you purchase tickets through Spotify itself. According to Spotify’s legal page, Spotify can charge a booking fee but can’t set the price of the concert. Notably, Spotify prohibits ticket resale.
Spotify isn’t known for treating artists well —
In a 2020 report, The New York Times wrote that only 13,000 out of seven million artists on Spotify generated $50,000 or more in payments in 2020 — that’s only about one in every five hundred artists.
Everyone wants to party —
Spotify isn’t the only tech giant interested in getting more involved in the music industry. As TikTok continues to grow, it’s getting its grubby hands into various industries, from restaurants to concert ticket sales. Earlier in August, TikTok partnered with Ticketmaster, allowing the ticket site to take advantage of the algorithm’s insights on fan preferences to sell tickets. And a July report from Insider shows that TikTok has filed a trademark for “TikTok Music,” a tool that would let users download and purchase music. Concerts are big business, and big tech wants a piece of the pie.
