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Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Music Streamers Betting On Live Music Events

When Taylor Swift takes the stage Wednesday night in New York City, only around 2,000 fans will be on hand to see the concert in person, but millions more are expected to watch live online via Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Day promotion.

According to The Wall Street Journal, music-streaming services including Apple Music and Spotify are counting on live events to set themselves apart from one another, further connect fans with artists and keep their subscription payments flowing. They have been experimenting with concerts based on popular playlists, album-listening parties and Q&A sessions with hard-core fans, identified via their streaming habits.

For artists, these events represent a way to make their music stand out from the tens of millions of songs available on streaming services, and often to connect with fans more directly than they can at a giant concert venue.

Live events hosted by streaming service events typically differ in a few key ways from the promotional concerts that radio stations have been staging for decades. Those are typically large affairs at arenas, with fans buying tickets to see lineups that can include upward of a dozen major acts. Events hosted by Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music typically feature no more than a few artists, often in a more intimate venue, and are free for the audience, which consists of fans invited by the service.

As with radio-station shows, artists typically aren’t paid to appear at streaming shows. Rather, they are often given free marketing and promotion, such as prominent placement of new music on a streaming service, billboards and other advertisements and spots on playlists, which can drum up millions of listens for a given song.

Streaming services also see these events as a way to get fans to get back online and to listen more.

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