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Spotify knows which bands you’re listening to. Now it aims to tell you when they’ll be in town.
The music-streaming service has a new feature for iPhone and Android users that will generate listings for users based on location and listening preferences. Starting Thursday, you can open the Browse tab on Spotify and select “Concerts” to see a personalized list of what’s playing nearby. If you’re traveling and want to find out who might be playing wherever you’re heading, you hit “Change Location” to see concert listings from around the world.
The Stockholm-based service is trying to appeal to artists too, making it easier for them to get the word out to fans about upcoming concerts.
With 20 million paid subscribers and 75 million active users overall, Spotify has staked out the top position among music-streaming services, but it can’t rest easy. It’s a field rife with competition, including tech powerhouses. Apple Music, which launched four months ago, now counts 6.5 million paying users and 15 million total, and Google on Thursday launched a free YouTube Music app that can be teamed with the new Red subscription service for YouTube’s video offerings.
Spotify’s Concert feature echoes news from last month by online radio service Pandora. In announcing it would buy online ticketing company Ticketfly, Pandora trumpeted the $450 million deal as a first in giving a large-scale music personalization service the ability to connect users with musical acts on tour.
With its new offering, Spotify is teaming up again with live-music discovery startup Songkick.
“We’ve had a long and awesome relationship with Spotify,” Songkick announced on its blog. “From our desktop app way back in 2011, to our artist imports to neat integrations inside the [Spotify] Discover feed and artist pages — we’re so hyped that Concerts now have a place to call home inside the app.”
Spotify’s Discover Weekly, announced in July, builds a two-hour playlist of suggestions based on your listening habits and those of others with similar preferences. It curates a new playlist based on your listening habits every seven days.
