Photo Credit: Jordon Conner
Spotify has officially retooled its “Concert Hub” into a seemingly more integrated and accessible “Live Events Feed,” which higher-ups say will allow users to “discover all the live events” taking place locally.
The Stockholm-based streaming service, which embraced paid livestreams last year, detailed the new-and-improved live offering today. After highlighting the ongoing return of crowd-based entertainment and indicating that “Spotify is here to help you find the perfect show,” the company’s announcement message claims that the feature “will help make you even more aware of events you might be interested in.”
Users can search for and tap or click “Live Events” to access said feature, the landing page for which includes one’s location at its top. Fans are able to change this location as necessary, and the hub displays shows that are “recommended for you” followed by gigs that are “popular near you.”
Tapping or clicking an image of an upcoming concert – complete with a date, day, time, venue, artist name, and artist photo – then brings one to a tab for the happening at hand.
From there, another tap or click will take any interested party to an external platform (currently including “Ticketmaster, AXS, DICE, Eventbrite, See Tickets, and more,” with “more” encompassing Warner Music’s Songkick and its links to various ticketing options), through which passes can be purchased.
“Spotify earns affiliate commissions and/or fees from the sale of tickets through this Live Events Hub,” the resource discloses, and the attempt to bolster revenue represents a single component of the company’s plan to generate $100 billion annually during the next decade.
Also in the long term, it’ll be interesting to see how the “Live Events Feed” fares against established players like Bandsintown, and separately, emerging alternatives to ticketing giants. Of course, Spotify has many millions of music-loving monthly active users – with a substantial portion of these individuals presumably in the market for tickets on a regular basis.
Additionally, Spotify’s product manager for live events discovery, Sam Sheridan, elaborated that the service plans to “work to even further integrate event discovery directly into the app, whether through more advanced search tools, new playlist formats, or new integrations into key surfaces.” Plus, an image included in the formal release suggests that Spotify will email users about upcoming tour dates.
Worth noting in conclusion is the discoverability potential (in terms of streaming and live alike) associated with the “Live Events Feed” for multi-artist shows.
Los Angeles’ Flogging Molly, for instance, is currently on the road with acts including The Interrupters, who released a single entitled “Jailbird” today. Interacting with a concert date on the Spotify profile of either Flogging Molly or The Interrupters takes users to the above-described ticket page, including a breakdown of “the lineup,” which identifies the headliner(s) and plugs their music along with that of the supporting groups.