Apple Music announced Tuesday a partnership with Ticketmaster to enhance its concert discovery capabilities. This integration aims to improve how users discover live music events based on their listening habits.
Ticketmaster is the first ticketing service to integrate with Apple Music, allowing listeners to find nearby concerts and events tailored to their individual music preferences. All event listings on the music streaming app now include a direct link to Ticketmaster to make purchasing tickets easy.
The new integration allows Apple Music users to explore ticket options through a variety of features in the app, including a homepage carousel that highlights nearby concerts relevant to their listening habits, a dedicated concert tab for event searches, and an artist page that displays concert listings with a badge indicating the artist is on tour.
Push notifications also let fans know when their favorite artists are performing nearby.
This is an expansion of the partnership, as Ticketmaster already offers other event listings across the Apple ecosystem, including Maps, Spotlight Search, Photos and Shazam.
For example, when a user uses Shazam to identify a song, they can also search for and purchase tickets to an upcoming concert. When you search for an artist on your iOS device, Ticketmaster events will conveniently appear in the results. Through Apple Maps, users can explore upcoming events at any venue that sells Ticketmaster tickets.
Additionally, with the launch of iOS 16, Apple Photos gives fans a way to revisit past concerts through images and videos, and connects them directly to future events for those artists.
This is Apple Music’s latest attempt to catch up with its competitors when it comes to concert discovery. In 2023, we launched a feature that lets you browse and listen to set lists of your favorite artists who are currently on tour. The company also offers curated guides to Apple Music and Apple Maps that highlight the best live music venues in popular cities.
The integration with Ticketmaster follows the footsteps of one of Apple Music’s biggest rivals, Spotify, which is teaming up with SeatGeek to give music fans access to ticket links when searching for artist pages or upcoming tour dates.
In the past, Ticketmaster has partnered with competitors to drive ticket sales, such as SoundCloud and YouTube.
Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a tentative settlement with Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, following an antitrust lawsuit earlier this month. Since their 2010 merger, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have led ticket sales and venue bookings in the United States. But the ticket-buying process has come under scrutiny, with customers complaining about dynamic pricing methods that can significantly inflate costs.
