The Sample: From Streams to Dwell — Identical Financial Logic
For years, critics have pointed to the financial asymmetry within the dominant streaming mannequin: artists generate worth, whereas platforms seize scale, knowledge, share worth, and leverage. Many musicians obtain minuscule compensation relative to the engagement they generate, a byproduct of pro-rata distribution and concentrated gatekeeper energy.
Dwell efficiency traditionally functioned as a counterweight — a site the place artists retained extra direct management over pricing, fan relationships, and income timing. Now we discover out from Music Enterprise Worldwide that Spotify is horning in on that area:’
Final month, Spotify‘s Head of Music [algorithms], Charlie Hellman, revealed in a weblog publish that the streaming large paid out over $11 billion to the music business in 2025.
Buried within the similar publish was one other eye-catching stat: In accordance with Hellman, Spotify has, up to now, “helped artists generate greater than $1 billion in ticket gross sales.”
The streaming large aggregates live performance listings by way of integrations with a number of companions, together with Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, AXS, Bandsintown, Japan’s ZAIKO, in addition to UK-headquartered ticketing platform Skiddle and Dutch occasion administration platform Stager. The corporate at the moment lists over 40 ticketing companions inside its live performance discovery-dedicated FAQs.
Now it’s struck up one more partnership, this time with New York-headquartered ticketing platform SeatGeek.
“Helped”? “Helped”? Humping a lure case is “assist.” Sicking an algorithm on followers that artists drove to Spotify is us serving to them. The combination of ticket routing right into a dominant discovery platform modifications the standard steadiness. When a platform that shapes demand begins steering that demand right into a monetized ticket ecosystem, the financial heart of gravity shifts.
Platform Dominance Freeriding Vertically and Horizontally
Spotify doesn’t put money into the artists or the reside venue infrastructure. So it makes use of platform dominance to freeride sideways — each vertically and horizontally — into adjoining income streams constructed by the sweat fairness of others.
The development is seen:
1. Streaming → diluted recording payouts to make room for Daniel Ek’s billions.
2. Discovery → algorithmic leverage over publicity
3. Knowledge → monetization of listener conduct from followers that artists and labels drove to the platform
4. AI/content material enlargement → provide stress with out proportional compensation
5. Ticket routing → gatekeeper entry into reside income move
Every step strikes nearer to controlling the artist lifecycle with out investing in these artists or in artist growth, sustaining venues, or protecting the reside ecosystem alive.
Management of the Funnel: Discovery → Demand → Ticket → Knowledge
Spotify’s SeatGeek “integration” creates a vertically linked funnel with one other free rider:
– Spotify influences who’s found
– Discovery shapes who generates touring demand
– Demand is routed right into a ticketing ecosystem
– Ticket transactions generate pricing and behavioral knowledge
– Knowledge reinforces Spotify’s leverage over future demand
This construction could not inherently illegal (though we’ll see about that). However when one entity influences a number of levels of a worth chain, dangers of steering, foreclosures, and self-preferencing enhance — notably the place unbiased artists depend upon the platform to succeed in audiences. (That’s additionally referred to as Google.)
Antitrust Leveraging, Tying, Foreclosures
When a dominant discovery platform akin to Spotify expands into ticketing, the authorized evaluation doesn’t start and finish with contract construction or referral mechanics. It implicates a number of well-established competition-law doctrines that concentrate on how market energy in a single layer of the ecosystem can reshape adjoining markets.
Monopoly Leveraging.
Monopoly leveraging issues come up when a agency with substantial energy in a single market makes use of that place to affect outcomes in one other. Spotify’s core power lies in music discovery and listener consideration—the upstream funnel that determines which artists are surfaced, adopted, and promoted. If that discovery energy meaningfully impacts the place followers are routed for ticket purchases, regulators could ask whether or not market energy in streaming is getting used to benefit a most popular ticketing companion. The difficulty will not be merely whether or not Spotify enters ticketing, however whether or not its management over demand indicators—algorithmic suggestions, in-app notifications, artist pages, and tour prompts—permits it to form downstream ticket distribution in methods rivals can’t replicate.
Tying and Bundling Considerations.
Competitors legislation additionally examines whether or not entry to 1 services or products is conditioned—explicitly or implicitly—on participation in one other. If artist visibility, promotional instruments, or enhanced discovery options develop into functionally linked to participation in a platform-preferred ticket ecosystem, questions of tying or de facto bundling could emerge. Even absent a proper contractual requirement, financial stress can create comparable results. Expertise patrons and business individuals have lengthy noticed that platform alignment can affect promotional publicity. The place discovery visibility and ticket routing intersect, regulators could consider whether or not aggressive neutrality is being compromised.
Vertical Foreclosures.
Vertical foreclosures focuses on whether or not a vertically built-in platform disadvantages rival channels by controlling a crucial gateway. If in-app ticket routing turns into the dominant pathway by which followers uncover and buy reside occasions, unbiased ticketing companies, direct-to-fan gross sales fashions, or artist-controlled distribution mechanisms could possibly be marginalized. Foreclosures needn’t get rid of rivals totally; it’s sufficient if the platform’s management over demand materially raises rivals’ prices or reduces their efficient entry to shoppers. In markets characterised by community results and knowledge benefits, even delicate routing preferences can compound over time.
Taken collectively, these doctrines underscore that the competitors evaluation activates construction and incentives. When a discovery platform turns into a industrial middleman in adjoining markets, regulators could look at whether or not integration enhances effectivity and shopper welfare—or whether or not it entrenches platform energy throughout a number of layers of the live-music economic system.
Transparency, Disclosure, and UDAP Danger
Neither Spotify nor SeatGeek publicly discloses what Spotify is paid per ticket conversion—whether or not a referral charge, income share, advertising consideration, or data-rights package deal. The absence of clear disclosure across the financial phrases of routing raises questions on how shoppers are being guided throughout the buy path and whether or not they’re conscious of any industrial incentives influencing that steerage.
Fashionable ticketing and consumer-protection regimes place rising weight on transparency, notably the place customers are directed towards transactions framed as “official main tickets from a licensed supply.” Such language can carry implied assurances about authenticity, pricing integrity, and relationship to the artist or venue. If undisclosed compensation or industrial preparations materially affect which ticketing choices are surfaced, regulators could scrutinize whether or not shoppers are receiving impartial info or are as a substitute being steered inside a monetized distribution channel.
Beneath unfair-and-deceptive-acts-and-practices (UDAP) frameworks, the important thing inquiry will not be merely whether or not a press release is actually false, however whether or not the general presentation might mislead an inexpensive shopper in regards to the nature of the providing or the incentives behind it. When the financial construction of routing stays opaque, enforcement authorities could consider whether or not “official” designations perform as purely informational labels or as elements of a demand-steering industrial structure that needs to be extra clearly disclosed.
Congress and the States: Guardrails Being Examined
Congress and quite a few states have moved in recent times to curb misleading ticketing practices, strengthen charge transparency, regulate speculative ticket gross sales, and shield the integrity of the artist–fan relationship. On the federal stage, measures such because the Higher On-line Ticket Gross sales (BOTS) Act and broader consumer-protection enforcement underneath the FTC Act goal bot-driven buying, fraud, and deceptive resale conduct. Parallel efforts on the state stage have been vital. New York and New Jersey have imposed disclosure and consumer-protection guidelines addressing speculative or “tentative” ticket gross sales; California has enacted transparency and resale laws aimed toward deceptive pricing and unauthorized ticket practices; and Maryland, Minnesota, and Nevada have adopted clearer prohibitions on promoting tickets with out possession or a qualifying contract.
As digital discovery platforms more and more insert themselves into the ticket-routing pathway, policymakers face a extra structural query: whether or not present statutory and consumer-protection frameworks—largely designed for brokers, venues, and resale marketplaces—adequately deal with platform-shaped demand, algorithmic steering, and management over fan knowledge. When a dominant digital middleman can affect the place followers purchase tickets, how occasions are surfaced, and which industrial companions obtain site visitors, regulators could must assess whether or not conventional ticketing guidelines sufficiently seize the aggressive and consumer-protection dangers related to platform-mediated distribution.
The Artist and Fan Impression
Artists face elevated dependency on platforms that management discovery, promotion, and now ticket routing. As extra of the live-event funnel strikes inside giant digital ecosystems, artists danger shedding direct fan relationships that traditionally shaped the spine of touring economics. Knowledge asymmetry compounds the issue: platforms can see viewers conduct, conversion charges, geographic demand indicators, and pricing elasticity in actual time, whereas artists usually obtain solely aggregated or delayed reporting. This imbalance can translate into continued margin compression, as middleman layers seize referral, advertising, or data-driven worth that doesn’t essentially move again to the creator.
Followers, in the meantime, expertise a distinct however associated set of penalties. When ticket routing happens inside multi-layered digital environments, pricing readability can erode. Service charges, referral economics, resale overlays, and dynamic pricing mechanisms could also be bundled right into a seamless interface that obscures how worth is allotted. Customers could not simply distinguish between main stock, resale listings, or algorithmically surfaced affords. As resale economics mix into “official” pathways, transparency into who finally captures the transaction margin turns into much less seen.
At a structural stage, the roles within the reside ecosystem are distinct. Artists construct careers and domesticate audiences. Venues maintain cultural infrastructure and native economies. Platforms route transactions and monetize consideration. These features are complementary however not equal. When the routing layer expands its financial footprint throughout discovery, knowledge, and ticketing, policymakers and market individuals should contemplate whether or not the steadiness amongst these roles stays aligned with long-term artistic and shopper welfare.
Do you assume for those who requested artists whether or not they’d like “assist” within the type of a share of Spotify’s market cap quite than “assist” from Spotify getting its beak moist of their reside exhibits, what reply do you assume you’d get? If you happen to requested many working artists that query, the reply would probably be much less about rhetoric and extra about the place actual worth flows. Artists usually need alignment between the success of the platforms that monetize their work and their very own financial outcomes. A share in platform upside—whether or not framed as fairness participation, income alignment, or improved royalty economics—can be seen by many as a extra sturdy type of “assist” than incremental participation in downstream income streams like ticket referrals.
From the artist perspective, reside efficiency has traditionally been one of many few domains the place creators retain comparatively direct management over pricing, fan relationships, and margins. When further intermediaries insert themselves into that channel, even underneath the banner of assist or promotion, artists could understand it as additional dilution of already skinny economics. The distinction, then, is between participation in platform-level worth creation versus further raiding of artist-controlled income streams.
The Structural Query
Spotify’s trajectory displays a recurring platform sample: Increase → Combine → Seize → Normalize.
When a platform mediates each listening and reside demand whereas obscuring the economics of that mediation, the difficulty turns into structural governance of the artist economic system — and who finally controls it.
