Spotify is now selling concert tickets. Interesting timing.
Spotify is expanding into yet another facet of music business: concert ticket sales.
The audio streaming company silently launched a new website, tickets.spotify.com, where users can purchase tickets for live music events. The website currently only shows a handful of events for artists including Limbeck, Annie DiRusso, Crows, Osees, and TOKiMONSTA.
Spotify told TechCrunch it's just testing the waters with the new service, and it couldn't provide much information besides the usual quote about routinely trying out new products and ideas.
You May Also Like
According to its Terms of Purchase legal documents, Spotify sells "tickets on behalf of third parties which can include venues, event promoters, fan clubs and artists (...) as their disclosed ticketing agent." The company points out that it doesn't control ticket availability or inventory stock. Update: Spotify told us that these are only pre-sale tickets, which will come from select artists' pre-sale allocations for upcoming concerts.
In June, The Information broke the news that Spotify is considering entering the events business, though the report noted that Spotify isn't expecting a short-term revenue boost from ticket sales; instead, the new service would reportedly be a way to establish better partnerships with artists.
Spotify already has a (recently revamped) Live Events Feed, highlighting popular events in the vicinity, where it points users to find tickets on third-party websites. This feed does not appear to be connected with the new Spotify Tickets site.
While Spotify Tickets in its current state likely cannot make a significant dent in the market, the timing of the launch is notable, as it comes a week after Ticketmaster teamed up with TikTok to sell concert tickets directly on the social media service.
Spotify has recently been looking into all sorts of ways to expand its business. Besides betting big on podcasts, the company has also acquired audiobook platform Findaway and indicated that it has big plans in the space.
UPDATE: Aug. 10, 2022, 6:10 p.m. EDT “At Spotify, we routinely test new products and ideas to improve our user experience. Some of those end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as important learnings. Tickets.spotify.com is our latest test. We have no further news to share on future plans at this time," a Spotify spokesperson told Mashable.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
