Spotify launches new site to sell live music tickets directly to fans

Yahoo Finance anchors discuss Spotify expanding into live ticket sales.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRAD SMITH: Welcome back, everyone. It's time for Cut For Time, two stories, one minute each.

We start with this, Spotify out with a new site to sell tickets to live music events directly to consumers instead of redirecting the users to partners such as Ticketmasters-- or Ticketmaster, rather. Now, this is a big deal, obviously, for Spotify because they have such a large music consortium of all the artists that they work with who can sell, perhaps, directly through Spotify instead of having to send them out and perhaps have a bounce rate if somebody was to get to a different website or experience, and decide, you don't want to buy the tickets in there.

BRIAN SOZZI: This could be-- this is a big power play. And I would say, we've been very critical of Spotify, but what could be a good move. They have the content. They have the podcasts. They are working directly with the artists. So if they can control this whole environment, potentially on their one app in their own ecosystem, could be a big win for them.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, it makes sense in terms of discovery, right?

BRAD SMITH: Right.

JULIE HYMAN: If you're listening to someone or if they're serving up something to you, they want to be able to capture that.

I just clicked on over to LYV, Live Nation which owns Ticketmaster. Those shares are up, too, about 2.5%, which is interesting because you would have thought that this would be a competitor. Unless, it's possible-- I don't know enough about this situation yet-- if they're building the back end--

BRIAN SOZZI: Sure.

JULIE HYMAN: --for Spotify. I'm not sure.