In a major music business development, Internet music streaming titan Pandora has spent a total of $450 million, in cash and stock interests, to purchase Ticketfly, a ticketing website that is popular at venues throughout North America and is a direct competitor for Ticketmaster.
The deal is aimed at expanding Pandora’s relationships with artists, as the site recently released an “Artist Marketing Platform” designed to show popular music or songs of interest to the listener. The goal is to further this relationship by selling tickets through the Pandora website.
Pandora currently has 80 million subscribers, while Ticketfly sold 16 million tickets (worth upwards of $500 million) in 2014 alone. The partnership is a direct competitor to Live Nation, who owns the Ticketmaster service. Ticketfly is a popular choice for clubs who want to avoid Ticketmaster’s imposing limitations.
As Ticketmaster is trying to thwart artists from selling their own “Fan Club” tickets, this Pandora-Ticketfly pairing seems to use the artist’s own music to promote ticket sales. Pandora chief executive Bryan McAndrews said, “With Ticketfly, we will thrill music lovers and lift ticket sales for artists as the most effective marketplace for connecting music makers and fans.”
Ticketfly co-founder and chief executive Andrew Dreskin said, “The combination of Ticketfly and Pandora will be a marketing and event discovery powerhouse, giving venues and promoters unprecedented access to a massive and targeted audience of nearly 80 million music fans.”
Only time will tell how this merger plays out for musicians.
[Via New York Times]