Spotify's Reserved: How It Aims to Thwart Scalpers and Reward True Fans

Spotify’s global head of music, Charlie Hellman, took the stage at the streaming service’s Investor Day on Thursday (May 21) to announce the launch of Reserved, a ticketing initiative that identifies an artist’s most dedicated fans and holds two tour tickets for them.

This is a service designed to reward Spotify premium subscribers for their dedication to their favorite artists and to combat the rising challenges associated with ticket buying in a time when scalpers, bots and endless queues have become commonplace. While the exact formula of how these selected fans are determined is unknown, Spotify notes in a press release about Reserved that it is based on factors like “streams, share and other Spotify activity” and that the service will monitor “the activity of Premium users to ensure these are real human fans and not bots.”

Not every premium user will get this opportunity because, as the press release states, “there will be significantly more superfans than there are seats available on a tour.” But starting this summer, Spotify will be experimenting with these Reserved offers on a variety of different tours across the U.S.

In an interview with Billboard, Hellman explains why Reserved has become a major initiative for the company — even though its one that takes Spotify users offline.

With the announcement of Reserved, you stress that these tickets will only go to true fans and that Spotify “will also monitor the activity of Premium users to ensure these are real human fans and not bots.” Spotify has talked about spam, bots, and artificial streaming a lot lately. Why has this become such a key talking point lately?

In the era we’re in and everything happening with AI, these kinds of live performance experiences are even more valuable and meaningful — to have the authentic experience of showing up and being with other super fans and being with the artists. It’s always been the most special part of being a fan, and I think even more so now.

How does this fit into Spotify Premium?

We always try to make Spotify Premium the best experience for being a music fan in all the ways that we can, and historically that’s meant a lot about the digital experience. But one of the biggest things that’s broken about the experience of being a music fan is when the tour goes on sale and everyone is trying to figure out how they’re going to be able to get tickets, and then [tickets] end up with scalpers. So because we have validated, authenticated paying premium subscribers, we have a really good visibility into all their fan activities, how much they’re saving and sharing and repeat listening on a daily basis to the artists. They should be the ones that are first in line to get tickets. So unlike the way that all other pre-sales historically have worked, where you get a code and you get in a queue, the real difference for this is that it actually is a guarantee. When we invite the biggest super fans, we [and] the promoters [hold] that amount of tickets, so as long as you go in during that day, there will be tickets there, and that peace of mind is a huge change from the level of stress that is required to get those tickets today.

Are you guys working with any specific companies on this program — like Live Nation or AEG?

This summer we’re launching with Live Nation. Then, we will be scaling this benefit to additional promoters over the course of the rest of the year. We’ve already worked with over 40 ticketing partners to get all the tickets on the service.