Spotify Tests Selling Concert Tickets Directly To Fans

As first reported by Music Ally, Spotify is testing a new website to sell tickets directly to fans, "rather than just linking to external ticketing firms." From the report: For now, this is strictly a test rather than a full commercial launch. It kicks off [August 10] with a small number of artists, with pre-sale tickets available to fans through Spotify's app and a newly-launched tickets.spotify.com website. The test is happening in the US, with Annie DiRusso, Tokimonsta, Osees, Dirty Honey, Limbeck, Crows and Four Years Strong the first artists confirmed for the initiative. The tickets will come from those artists' pre-sale allocations for upcoming concerts. Don't get carried away with any 'Spotify takes on Ticketmaster' hyperbole just yet. The company is making it very clear that this is just a test for now, and that it's focused on pre-sales rather than primary ticketing. [...] The theory behind the test kicking off this week is to find out whether Spotify can both widen its involvement in pre-sales while selling the tickets directly. We would expect that to include a share of the revenues, although Spotify declined to give any details of the business model. There's another obvious motivation behind the test. Pre-sales of their own allocations can be an important income stream for artists, so if Spotify can help them do it, that could be a reputation-booster at a time of renewed debate (alright: big arguments) about musicians' streaming royalties. If Spotify can also become one of the ways artists ensure their tickets go to genuine fans rather than touts -- resales are not allowed in the test -- that could also be positive. And in this case, Spotify has the data to prove whether ticket buyers are genuine fans: their listening history. Important caveat: there's no suggestion at this point that Spotify will use this data as a barrier to purchase, in a 'you can't buy this artist's pre-sale ticket because you haven't streamed them enough' way. We're imagining something else: options for artists to promote their native-Spotify pre-sales to their biggest listeners in the cities / regions where the concerts are happening.

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