Spotify lets fans get concert tickets before they go on sale

A loosely regulated live entertainment market has made getting tickets to almost any major show a nightmare, with a significant portion of face value tickets snapped up instantly by scalpers who sell them at wildly inflated prices. It’s an institutional problem that will require institutional change to solve, but in the meantime, Spotify has a new feature that could help you get tickets you would have otherwise missed.

Spotify announced this morning that it is launching a new feature called Reserved, which offers tickets to “an artist’s most dedicated fans,” giving users chosen by Spotify the opportunity to purchase seats at concerts before general availability begins.

If you are chosen for early access to ticket sales, you will be notified that you are eligible both by email and through the Spotify interface. You’ll have “about a day” to purchase up to two tickets for “any eligible date” on a given artist’s tour.

Spotify says eligibility is determined in part by how often you listen to and share an artist’s music, as well as your location. The streamer is keeping some of the details about its selection process under wraps “to avoid encouraging anyone to participate strategically rather than genuinely.”

Reserved is available through a partnership between Spotify, Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It is not a solution to the general resale practices of the latter, which are so odious that even resellers complain. Still, it should help at least some fans avoid paying outrageous resale prices for their tickets, even if it decreases the supply of face value tickets available to the general public. The feature is rolling out today; It is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers and only for some artists and tours.