The world’s largest ticket marketplace, StubHub, has teamed up with the artist hub platform, BandPage, to enable artists to sell experiences, merch and other offers right from within StubHub. George Clinton, Switchfoot and OK Go currently have offers live on StubHub.
Over the past couple years, BandPage has been actively striking deals with companies to make the artist’s job easier (and more profitable). You can get your artist bio, photos, merch and show dates onto platforms like Shazam, Rdio, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google and SoundCloud by updating your BandPage profile. BandPage automatically sends this information everywhere.
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As of this past December, BandPage became the exclusive partner to offer merch on Spotify.
The data shows that fans are five times more likely to make a purchase when visiting a marketplace (like StubHub) than they are when visiting an artist’s website. This makes sense as fans usually visit marketplaces with the direct intention to buy something whereas most fans visit artist’s websites to casually browse.
“It is five times more important for artists to have their offers displayed on StubHub compared to their own website,” said J Sider, Founder and CEO of BandPage. “BandPage’s goal is to generate billions of dollars of new revenue for musicians, so the next time artists are adding offers to their website, they should make sure that they add the offers to their BandPage so that the offers can be distributed to incredibly impactful places like StubHub.”
BandPage/StubHub take a 15% commission for every artist offer purchased through StubHub.
VIP meet and greets sold on StubHub are listed on the main search results page directly below the concert date. This gives clear visibility to these types of high priced experiences that can highly benefit the artist’s bottom line. Unlike tickets (re-sold, ahem, on StubHub) these offers are non-transferable. Meaning, you can’t scalp, er, “resell” them like tickets.
I’ve always seen StubHub as a scalper site as most of the tickets I’ve always looked for have been well above the list price. Granted, many also use StubHub to sell tickets below list price to events they can’t attend anymore – especially if the event hasn’t sold out. So you can find deals on the site as well.
But regardless, the fact is, 15 million people purchase on StubHub every month. That’s 15 million people who could potentially purchase an artist’s offer. 15 million people who who could generate more tour support for the artist.
Nielsen revealed in a 2013 study that music fans could spend up to $2.6 BILLION more annually if they had opportunities to snag behind-the-scenes access along with exclusive content.
This study reveals that there is money to be made in the music industry which is currently being neglected. Just because this money doesn’t come from recordings or tickets, doesn’t make it any less valuable. On the contrary, with artists making less and less on recorded music, it’s crucial for artists to find ways to diversify their income stream. This is one very promising avenue.
“Fans that are purchasing tickets are usually some of the most loyal and engaged fans out there,” said Bruce Flohr, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer at Red Light Management and manager for Switchfoot. “Being able to offer them an upgraded experience like a VIP or merchandise at the moment they are checking out not only helps increase sales for musicians through a brand new channel, it helps improve the overall ticket purchasing and concert-going experience for these valued customers.”
This is a great start. I hope BandPage can continue to strike deals with global ticketing sites like Ticketmaster and the rest. BandsInTown and SongKick should also team up with BandPage to display these kinds of offers when notifying fans about shows in their area. But then again, maybe they should concentrate on making sure they get the correct ticket links included to their notifications first.
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“StubHub’s partnership with BandPage creates the opportunity to give our users even more access to offers and content from the artists they love, and more importantly, for artists to gain real value from our platform,” said Geoff Lester, Head of Partnerships and Business Development for StubHub. “We think the potential for further artist engagement here is huge and look forward to the exciting opportunities that will come from this new relationship.”
Currently only the artists BandPage hand picks can put up offers on StubHub, but it will be opened up to all of BandPage’s 500,000 artists in the coming months.
OMG this is so shit!
Has it truly come to this?
What is your exact argument? This is called supply and demand. There is a demand for meet-and-greets by fans and someone (StubHub via BandPage) is supplying.
of course I’m not talking about market factors.
I’m talking about a crime against all notions of good taste and any kind of artistic value and credibility.
Combining the disgraceful humiliation whoring of the disgusting “paid meet and greet” with the grubby scalpers of Stub Hub!
Simply Horrid! And inflicted on a great and legendary artist like George Clinton..
Saving the music business? – gimme a fu*king break!
Ok, so it’s more of an emotional-based opinion that you are relaying. I see.
So Stub Hub the electronic scalper, is pimping VIP Meet and Greet via BandPage. Hmmmm its cheaper to for fans who want to arrange meet and greet directly with the artist through their respective Web site Tour page VIP button. Just saying….
yes
Which in most cases is powered by Bandsintown Manager for free…
And in other news, farmers our saying this year is going to produce a banner crop!