Photo Credit: Adam Bentley (Noiseporn)
Spotify wants to add another feature to its repertoire: live concerts. The company is reportedly in talks with promoters to secure licensing rights.
As part of its strategy to provide more video content, Spotify wants to offer live concert videos to subscribers. The audio streaming giant is reportedly in talks with concert promoters to obtain licensing rights to show live video of music festivals. Already, Spotify is adding some events, including some pre-recorded videos from Dua Lipa’s show in Mexico City.
The expansion into concert events reflects Spotify’s continued plans to become “a hub for live music” and a pipeline between artists and superfans. To that end, the company announced its new in-app tool to reserve concert tickets, Reserved, which aims to give legitimate fans top priority in securing tickets to their favorite artists.
Spotify, of course, began as an audio-only service over 20 years ago. But in order to remain competitive in an expanding digital music landscape, the platform has rolled out numerous video components in recent years. This includes music videos, video podcasts, and short-form content feeds.
Spotify’s expansion into live concert broadcasting has some artists concerned that it’s just another means to reduce streaming revenue. But it also makes sense as a way to offset Spotify’s declining advertising revenue, which reportedly fell 5% year-on-year in the first quarter.
However, this is one area that Spotify might struggle to dominate compared with the likes of YouTube, the longtime champion of video content. Of course, YouTube has offerings like video podcasts and music videos, but it also has a lot of the live concert events secured—like Coachella—and a lot of people are more likely to stick with YouTube than start using Spotify for things Spotify was not previously suited for.
At the end of the day, YouTube remains “the holy grail of visual music content.” It still offers the lion’s share of unique video content, such as NPR Tiny Desk Concerts.
Even compared to other services, such as Apple Music, Spotify’s video offerings leave much to be desired for a lot of music fans. TechRadar describes Spotify’s music video interface as “unorganized and almost forced upon you.” And that’s not a good look when your goal is to become the go-to for audio-visual content.