Spotify is introducing a feature that will allow users to follow venues so they can better keep track of the concerts that are happening in-app. As soon as you follow a club, theater, or arena, it’s saved to your library and integrated with an updated live event feed that refreshes daily. You can view each venue’s calendar, see lineups and major details when possible, filter by genre, and tap through to purchase from the listed ticketing partner.
The move extends Spotify’s push into live event discovery, alongside tools like Concerts Near You, a personalized playlist that features 30 tracks from artists playing in the vicinity and lists their next date. And when the audience is in the hundreds of millions across the globe, even small increments in discovery can significantly move fans from streaming to the box office.
How Following Venues Works Inside the Spotify App
Once inside the app, venue pages now contain a Follow button. Tap it, and the venue lands in your library in a special spot where you can easily scan through the list of rooms that you care about — be that a neighborhood club or a major arena. Calendars bubble up announced shows, openers, and other event details, with genre filters to narrow the focus to jazz nights at The Blue Note or indie rock at The Fillmore.
When you’re ready to purchase, choosing a show sends you right to the official ticketing partner for checkout. (Not that Spotify will be selling you tickets directly here, mind you; instead, it relies on integrations with partners including Ticketmaster, AXS, DICE, and the relevant provider in your region.)
One significant change begins with venue follows: live event feeds are now updated daily, rather than weekly. And that cadence is crucial for high-demand rooms like Madison Square Garden or Red Rocks Amphitheatre, where second nights or late adds can sell out before you can say “John Mayer on ‘Drone Shot of My Yacht’” — provided you aren’t tongue-tied in the face of a particularly florid title.
Why This Matters for Fans and Artists Alike
Live music is still growing in popularity. Big promoters have been boasting record attendance and ticket sales in the double digits, and Live Nation’s investor materials suggested that the total number of fans it had reached in a given year was well into nine figures. Busier calendars can also make discovery more difficult, not less — especially when information is scattered between artist socials, venue newsletters, and the many ticketing platforms in play.
By making it possible for listeners to follow venues inside the same app they already use every day, Spotify minimizes that friction. Our research at MIDiA has consistently shown that superfans over-index on spend on live over casual fans, but are missing out on multiple on-sales simply because of fragmented information. Connecting venue calendars with your listening history helps convert intent into attendance.
For artists and promoters, venue follows complement artist follows. We’ve seen better click-throughs with personalized recommendations, as it allows for fans to have more inroads into events — loyalists of London’s Roundhouse or LA’s Roxy tend to trust those rooms will book great nights despite flux and drift in who exactly is playing.
Data Coverage and Caveats for Concert Listings
Event listings on Spotify are dependent on data feeds from ticketing and promoter partners, and local coverage can vary. Independent venues also selling through local platforms or their in-house box office will have partial metadata (for example, set times, age restrictions, or the support lineup) similarly impacted.
The accuracy of genre filters is, of course, only as accurate as the tags that partners provide. Look out for occasional mismatches, particularly in the case of multi-genre bills or festivals with dynamic lineups. Still, the one-feed-to-rule-them-all aspect of centralizing venue calendars limits how much hopping between various apps and mailing lists you’ll need to do.
How It Compares to Competitors in Live Event Apps
YouTube surfaces ticket links on artist channels through deals it has with major ticketing companies, including Ticketmaster and AXS, while Apple’s ecosystem gently nudges discovery via Shazam and Maps. SoundCloud has partnered with major concert companies, like Ticketmaster and Live Nation, to allow musicians to promote upcoming shows on their profile pages.
The spin Spotify takes is the venue follow itself. Fans often become as loyal to rooms as they do to artists — the acoustics and production values, the neighborhood vibe. By allowing users to track beloved venues directly, the app taps into a real-world behavior that other apps mainly channel through artist pages.
What to Watch Next as Spotify Expands Venue Tools
Venue follows also open the door to richer personalization: smarter on-sale alerts, low-inventory warnings, as well as recommendations based on a listener’s love for particular rooms or neighborhoods. Social context — like noticing friends taking an interest in a show — might boost conversion further if it were done in tandem with clear privacy controls.
Spotify already mixes location signals with listening data for Concerts Near You. Elaborating that model with venue affinity can assist fans in planning nights out, promoters trying to predict demand, and artists wanting a clearer understanding of the communities that are likely to come see their art. The pitch is simple: follow the places you love, and have the shows find you.