I love live music. I love the feeling in my chest when the long-haired drummer smacks his snare, the electricity when a vocalist riles up the crowd and the sound of a distorted guitar as it shakes the rafters. Listening to music at home is wonderful, but it's nothing compared to getting into the thick of it at your local musical haunt.
Tracking live music and working out where, when, and who to go and see, however, is a completely different story. With so many disparate websites to use to try and see who's going to be playing nearby, planning out gigs can be something of a mission. Spotify has just made it a whole lot easier; you can now track your local venues so that you can see when your favorite artists are coming to play.
Discover new artists
For all its (many) foibles, one of the highlights of Spotify is its discovery engine. It's one of the best music streaming services for finding new artists, with its algorithms that seem a lot better at "getting" listeners than alternative platforms. In the spirit of this sense of discovery, it seems like this new venue tracking system is looking to do something similar — albeit with your local venues and the artists that play them.
We've already been able to track artists to see when they're playing live nearby — this isn't about that. Instead, you'll be able to track your local venues and discover artists playing near you that you might not have considered before. Get a notification, read the new band's bio, give them a quick sample in the app, and go directly to the ticketing system from there.
Big for live music
Streaming has not been kind to live music, so the fact that Spotify seems to be doing more so you can actually experience the music you listen to on the train feels like a big step forward. It feels, in some way, that Spotify has listened — rather than filling playlists with AI-generated, gap-filling music that blends into the background, users want to support small artists and get further involved with their music.
I don't really use Spotify, but I'm tempted to test out how the venue tracking service works for me. After all, my current system is checking the board at the venue when I go, noting down bands in BIC on the back of my hand, and then checking them out when I get home.
If a sweaty moshpit hasn't washed it off.
Live music is one of life's greatest joys — a hot room filled with excited fans throwing themselves around. If Spotify is going to make it easier to find new ways to enjoy artists, that can only be a good thing.
Spotify betting on music
If nothing else, it's finally evidence that Spotify remembers that it is, first and foremost, a music streaming service. It doesn't need 1 million different AI modes or a tidal wave of useless creation features. Centering the service back on music can only be a good thing.
Now it just needs to start paying its artists more, and it might finally be the democratisation of music consumption and creation that it always wanted to be, rather than the commodification of art that it has become. Baby steps.
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