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Spotify announces Ticketmaster deal as it ramps up gig plugging efforts

By | Published on Thursday 17 November 2016

Spotify

Spotify has announced an alliance with Live Nation’s Ticketmaster as it ramps up its gig plugging efforts with a new concert recommendations email for subscribers in most markets, listing upcoming shows that it thinks each Spotify user will be interested in based on their listening choices.

There has been lots of chatter for some time now about streaming services pushing out targeted gig listings to their subscribers, and a number of platforms have already done that to an extent. Pandora in the US has probably been most proactive in this domain, it seeing getting involved in ticket sales as an extra revenue stream, rather than just an added value service to win over the support of artists (especially those unhappy with the royalties streaming services pay).

Spotify also already pushes gig listings to users through its app, to date via a partnership with Songkick, though the new initiative sending concert plugs to user’s email addresses expands that activity somewhat.

Confirming the Ticketmaster tie-up, Spotify said in a blog post: “Ticketmaster’s global scale provides Spotify users with the most diverse options for live events and will help drive more fans to concerts. Working directly with the Ticketmaster team and their data feeds will simplify the purchase experience and deepen our understanding of how recommendations drive sales. By combining listening data with purchase behaviour, we’ll be able to refine our recommendations – and ultimately provide you with a sharper understanding of your fans”.

The Songkick partnership will continue, with it providing listings for shows where Ticketmaster is not a seller. Though that’s still a sizable step down for Songkick which – despite diversifying into direct-to-fan ticketing and pre-sale campaign management of late – is still best known for its gig recommendations platform, something it was bigging up itself just last week as its Shazam partnership was announced.

Also, of course, Ticketmaster and Songkick are hardly on good terms at the moment, the latter suing the former’s parent company in the US over allegations of anti-competitive behaviour. That legal battle continues to rumble on.

Most recently a judge ruled on arguments over whether or not Live Nation had failed to preserve documents relevant to the case and whether it had a duty to do so, and also denied a request by Songkick for a forensic search of the defendant’s files. Live Nation saw the most recent ruling as a success for its side, though Songkick disputed that interpretation in a statement to IQ.



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