Spotify, Apple, and Amazon have held ticketing talks with Ticketmaster owner Live Nation around presale access for super-premium tier subscribers.
Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino confirmed that news on the company’s earnings call on Thursday (February 20), in response to a question about “labels and DSPs [who] have recently come to agreements that may allow for super-premium tiers” and how live music will fit into those offerings.
“We’ve been working with all three of them [Spotify, Apple, and Amazon], trying to find a model that may work for us and them, and [we] assume they’re talking to others also,” said Rapino.
The confirmation arrives a few days after Bloomberg reported that Spotify’s long-touted ‘Super Pro’ tier could arrive this year and that early access to concert tickets could be one of the perks (plus AI-powered remix features, and higher-fidelity audio).
The report suggested that SPOT is considering charging up to $5.99 more per month on top of a Premium subscription for access to the tier.
An individual Premium subscription is currently priced at $11.99 in the US, following the most recent price rise in June 2024. This would bring the combined cost of a Premium subscription plus the Super Pro ad-on to around $18 per month.
The question Rapino was responding to came from J.P. Morgan’s David Karnovsky, who asked if Rapino had “thought about the role of live music within some of these [super premium tier] offerings, maybe with something like ticket access; [and if there] is inventory that could be made available; and could this be a potential sponsor opportunity?”
“As far as the latest round with Spotify and Apple and Amazon, we – they’ve approached us all, we’ve talked to them all about ideas on if they wanted inventory. There’s a cost to that.”
Michael Rapino
According to Rapino, Live Nation’s “job is to use that inventory that we’ve acquired from the artist and maximize it through sponsorship currently”.
Commenting on the potential for streaming services to get access to ticketing inventory for presale perks as part of pricier subscription tiers, Rapino explained: “We have a lot of presale programs in place with; you’ve seen them all, [the] Verizons and Citibanks, etc. So our job is always to look at that show, work with the artist, and figure out [if there are ways] to maximize that inventory, business to business as well as to consumers.
“As far as the latest round with Spotify and Apple and Amazon, they’ve approached us all. We’ve talked to them all about ideas on if they wanted inventory. There’s a cost to that, and we would entertain and look at that option if it made sense for us in comparison to other options we have for that presale, which is a very valuable asset.”
Added Rapino: “The artist themselves tend to do their own deals. We do deals for the artist. But ultimately, [the] artist has control of it. And that artist’s job is to maximize the revenue from it. They’re not giving that away to anyone for free. So whether we partnered with them and found sponsors or we paid for it, it’s valuable.”
“And [it] wouldn’t surprise me, of course, the labels or the distributors, if they’re trying to add a $5 premium to a monthly subscription, and they don’t have enough of their own inventory in terms of music or free songs, it’s always the easy go-to [to say], ‘Let’s give them presale access’. The hard part about presale is just scaling it. Everybody wants Beyoncé presale, and that’s hard to scale.”
Live Nation reported its Q4 and FY 2024 results on Thursday, with Michael Rapino hailing 2024 as “live music’s biggest year yet”.
The company generated $23.1 billion in 2024, up 3% YoY at constant currency.
The company’s concert attendance was up 4%, with 151 million fans attending over 50,000 Live Nation events last year.
Commenting on the company’s results in an investor presentation on Thursday, Rapino said: “2024 was live music’s biggest year yet, as artists toured the world and fans turned out in record numbers. 2025 is shaping up to be even bigger thanks to a deep global concert pipeline, with more stadium shows on the books than ever before.”
He added: “To help artists perform to fans everywhere, we remain focused on building new music-centric venues, which make more live music memories possible and help drive our double-digit operating income and AOI growth in 2025, and compound at this level for years to come.
“At the same time, we’re investing back into the industry for those who create the music, as our investments in artists have more than doubled in the last five years, and we will continue to find new ways to support them while enhancing the fan experience.”
As we noted earlier this week, early access to concert tickets could be one of, if not the biggest selling points, for Spotify’s superfan tier – as evidenced by recent demand for concerts by superstar artists ranging from Taylor Swift to Oasis, Beyoncé, and Black Sabbath.
Spotify previously tested selling concert tickets directly to fans via the now-offline ‘Spotify Tickets’ site in the summer of 2022.
In a statement issued at the time, a Spotify spokesperson suggested that the ticket-selling trial may or may not be expanded beyond this initial test.
“At Spotify, we routinely test new products and ideas to improve our user experience,” they said. “Some of those end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as important learnings.”
Spotify scaled back its ticketing ambitions in early 2024.
Bloomberg reported a few days ago that Spotify has “secured the rights from many of its partners” to roll out the features included in ‘Music Pro’.
Bloomberg suggested over the weekend, however, that Spotify “doesn’t yet have rights from Sony“. Spotify has, in recent weeks, renewed its licensing deals with Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group.
News of UMG and Spotify’s licensing renewal, which includes ‘Streaming 2.0′ elements, arrived a few days before UMG Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge confirmed in his annual memo to UMG staff that “the Streaming 2.0 era” had arrived.
The streaming 2.0 phrase was introduced at UMG’s Capital Markets Day in September, when UMG explained that ‘Streaming 2.0’ represented a new era of digital music focused on changes including:
- Streaming subscription offerings becoming ‘segmented’, with pricier options for ‘superfans’; and
- Subscription ARPU (average revenue per user) moving upwards across music platforms, partly as a result of the aforementioned ‘superfan’-targeted offerings, and partly as a result of future streaming price rises.
“Built on a foundation of artist-centric principles, Streaming 2.0 will represent a new age of innovation, consumer segmentation, geographic expansion, greater consumer value, and ARPU growth,” wrote Grainge in his staff memo on February 3.
Universal Music Group also renewed its worldwide licensing agreement with Amazon Music in December with ‘Streaming 2.0 ‘ at its heart. According to a press release, the deal encompasses an “expanded global relationship that will enable further innovation, exclusive content with UMG artists”.
Warner Music Group also recently renewed its deal with Amazon Music.Music Business Worldwide
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