Comment by makeitdouble
3 days ago
This sounds like what fan clubs and artists run communities are built for.
Does Spotify putting itself as a middle-man help much, considering the artist has become a big enough operation to have to care about the issue in the first place ?
In an ideal world, the artist's own mailing list or fan community would be the canonical place for this, because it's closer to a direct relationship
Subscribing to a mailing list is not a relationship at all.
I know areosmith, phish and the Dave Mathews band gave fan club members dibs on good tickets, though this was year ago. My friend was a huge phish fan and he’d always get a bunch of new years tickets in the 90s.
This already happens. Most artists I listen to have a mailing list presale, then a spotify / promoter / venue presale, and finally the open sale in that order.
Yeah but fan clubs and artist communities are trivial to join with just an email address. Scalpers can just have their accounts join them all.
The point of a listening history is that it's so, so, so much more work to generate one that has been active for years and looks genuine and each one can only focus on a few artists at a time.
Do you really want (would you even be able) to be engaged in a distinct fan club / community for every artist you listen to? I'm pretty average in how much music I listen to, and that'd probably be several dozens just for the "big" bands
So you aren't a "biggest fan" of _everything_ you listen to, that seems pretty much in line with the expected meaning.
If an artist is just someone you listen to, you're not the demographic for a feature like this. You can't have several dozens of favorite bands. The idea is to get tickets to the hardcore fans, not the casual listeners.
[dead]
> Does Spotify putting itself as a middle-man help much
Yes, with discovery and lowering the barrier to entry. There's quite a few bands I'd have considered joining their fan-club for if it was easy as clicking a button and not having to trust yet another third-party site.