Spotify and AXS are teaming up to move tickets.
In a new partnership between music-streamer Spotify and ticket company AXS, Spotify users will have access to AXS’ more than 25,000 annual music events and receive personalized recommendations based on their listening habits. A direct ticket feed embedded within both the desktop and mobile apps will provide users with faster access to purchase concert tickets.
As part of this agreement, Spotify’s 100 million active users can now access AXS tickets through the Spotify desktop or mobile app. Personalized event recommendations of AXS events will be based on listening behavior, artist preferences and user location and will be delivered to the listener in multiple ways.
Further details on the agreement have not been disclosed.
“Overall, Spotify is an amazing company, a truly pure music platform built around the fan, and this is a natural partnership for us that extends concert ticket inventory to help clients in a thoughtful and personal way,” said Dean DeWulf, AXS’ senior vice president of music. “It’s exciting when companies from parallel disciplines work together in a unified ecosystem with fans. Technology is allowing us to do these things, but it’s also about the willingness for companies in this space to work together.”
Integrated through the AXS API in real time, Spotify’s ‘Concerts Section’ will now surface personalized events. Events will also appear on the ‘Artist Pages’ under the ‘Concert’ tabs on ‘Desktop,’ ‘Artist Pages’ on ‘Mobile’ under ‘On Tour,’ and in the ‘Concert Recommendation’ emails Spotify sends out on a biweekly basis.
“One of the most frustrating statistics concert marketers experience is the percentage of people who say they don’t go to a show because they don’t know about it,” said Jamie Loeb, vice president of marketing for New York City-based Nederlander Concerts, one of the largest operators of theaters and music venues in the U.S. “The Spotify partnership with AXS is a great step toward chipping away at this universal problem.”
To move the partnership forward, AXS had to first decentralize its inventory.
“This is more efficient than traditional marketing efforts,” said DeWulf. “Spotify has entered into similar agreements with Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, and we’re happy to be a part of what they’re trying to accomplish.”
To date, Spotify has featured over 150,000 artists with concert dates in more than 100,000 venues.
Staples Center, Los Angeles; Santa Barbara (Calif.) Bowl; Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colo.; Sprint Center, Kansas City, Mo.; Target Center, Minneapolis; Verizon Theatre, Grand Prairie, Texas; Forest Hills Stadium, N.Y.; and Infinite Energy Center, Duluth, Ga. are some of the participating venues in the US.
This partnership also expands AXS’ ticketing offers to hundreds of venues internationally. The O2, London; SSE Arena Wembley, London; Hyde Park in the UK and the Stockholm (Sweden) Live event district in Northern Europe containing the four arenas Ericsson Globe, Tele2 Arena, Hovet and Annexet, are all included in the partnership, as well as others.
“Spotify’s personalized recommendation e-mails and the integrated AXS purchase flow give fans the information they need to purchase tickets to see artists they love," said Loeb.