Now you can buy your favorite live music tickets with Spotify Tickets
Spotify’s entry into the ticket-selling with Spotify Tickets is a new way of its expansion. Already hit and stepped into various arenas.
Ticketmaster, a monopoly in the ticket-selling business could be trembling after recent backlash from fans and Spotify’s arrival at the right time.
Spotify has recently been on finding all sorts of plausible ways to expand its business. Already shelling out big on podcasts, the company has also acquired audiobook platform Findaway and gave signs of trying new ways in the space.
Expanding to New Markets
Spotify, the audio streaming company has officially stepped into another arena to spread its newest expansion and launched a website where users can buy tickets for live music events, according to Music Ally currently this is a test mode for Spotify Tickets.
Spotify Tickets page currently displays upcoming shows, from Limbeck, Annie DiRusso, Dirty Honey, Crows, Tokimonsta, Four Year Strong, and Osees. Spotify told Billboard, "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,".
Spotify, founded in 2006, according to similarweb.com the company is currently ranking 73rd globally, clocking over $5 billion in annual revenue over the last three years and generating traffic of 400 M+ monthly visitors. Its audience demographics comprise 58.34% male and 41.66% female, with 28.61% of the audience from the United States driving a major chunk of the crowd. Spotify’s recent diversification includes the company has embraced NFTs, adding an artist-support resource, expanding its advertising offerings, stepping into the metaverse, hosting live DJ sets, and adding a karaoke mode. With this new strive, Spotify has jolted its head-to-head competitors in ticket-selling business Ticketmaster and Seatgeek.
Ticketmaster’s monopoly trembles
Currently, Ticketmaster is enjoying the monopoly of being the major ticketing platform for almost all concerts held in the United States and Greater Europe, it stands together with live music and Live Nation. Ticketmaster was founded in 1976, making more than $1 Billion dollars annually currently ranked 456 globally, and attracting 95M+ visitors monthly, with 83.55% users from the United States dominating the demographics, users comprise 50.96% male and 49.04 female.
Recently, Ticketmaster faced huge flak from Adele and Bruce Springsteen fans over the Dynamic Pricing scheme which pushed ticket prices soaring as high as $1000. The company has been irked with various issues concerning scalping, auto-purchasing bots, and poor customer experiences. For instance, there was a time more than 60% of tickets were purchased through bots and fake accounts (Sisario, 2013) which prevented fans from getting to their desired concerts due to unavailability of space.
Former CEO of Ticketmaster, Nathan Hubbard clearly stated the picture of how ticket brokers are taking advantage of the system, fan clubs, and email lists by "[using] fake names, fake addresses, and multiple credit cards to steal tickets out from under an even smaller subset of real fans.”
With the current stint of Spotify, Ticketmaster’s reputation has become vulnerable and put danger to its monopolistic position. Spotify's timing of the launch is interesting as it comes a week after Ticketmaster joined hands with TikTok to sell concert tickets directly on the social media service. Ticketmaster has an opportunity to resolve the problem by selling tickets to authentic people through a verification process that uses Spotify’s extensive data of their users, with this alliance Ticketmaster would be able to promote concerts to real fans.
Rise of Seatgeek
Seatgeek is also climbing up to the heated competition with Ticketmaster is another ticket-selling company that Spotify would have added to its list and planned a warm hug for them. Seatgeek was founded in 2009 and backed up by multiple investors that include Technology Crossover Ventures, Accel Partners, Causeway Media Partners, Founder Collective, NYC Seed, DreamIt Ventures, Stage One Capital, Trisiras Group, Eli and Peyton Manning, Nas and Melo7 Tech partners. Currently ranking at 4306 globally, generates annual revenue of $100M - $200M, more than 10 million users monthly (46.44% female, 53.56% male) are using the services of the company makes a popular choice and no less in the longer run.
Seatgeek is also famous for its partnership with Logan Paul, Jeff Wittek, and David Dobrik. The company regularly sponsors YouTubers and several smaller podcasters based in the US. This reflects the company's ambition to boost its offering throughout the country.
Recently, according to Wall Street Journal, the company has raised $ 238 Million in new funding and this was done after nixing a deal with SPAC. Its valuation rose to $1 billion, Spotify has sparked a sense of trying out new ways and Seatgeek needs to feel it and prepare accordingly.
