Spotify has completely revamped its Concerts Hub, turning it into a powerful concert-finding tool called Live Events. This feed, which you can find by searching “Live Events” on Spotify, uses your listening habits to find concert tickets and information on upcoming shows.
The old Concerts Hub did surprisingly well throughout 2020 and 2021, mainly because of a pivot to virtual concerts and events. But Spotify was mainly interested in user data—how do people use the Concerts Hub? What they learned informed the development of Live Events, which addresses some problems observed by Spotify researchers.
A fractured app experience was one of the larger problems observed by Spotify. As explained by Sam Sheridan, Product Manager for Live Events Discovery, users would often see an event in Concerts Hub and immediately investigate through their browser. Live Events reduces this friction by offering concert information directly in the Spotify app.
To be clear, Spotify isn’t selling tickets directly to customers. It’s just acting as a middleman for TicketMaster, AXS, DICE, Eventbrite, See Tickets, and others. But given how awful these services are at advertising concerts, Spotify is clearly doing something useful here.
Along with the new Live Events tab, Spotify says it will now send alerts for touring artists. If you play a song by an artist who’s coming to your neck of the woods, you may see a pop-up advertising the concert.
Source: Spotify
