Spotify is letting fans nab concert tickets before they go on sale

An under-regulated live entertainment market has made getting tickets to pretty much any large show a nightmare, with a significant share of face-value tickets instantly snapped up by resellers who go on to flip them at grossly inflated prices. It’s an institutional problem that’ll require institutional change to solve — but in the meantime, Spotify’s got a new feature that might help you nab tickets you otherwise would’ve missed out on.

Spotify announced this morning that it’s rolling out a new feature called Reserved, which holds tickets for “an artist’s most dedicated fans,” giving users picked by Spotify a chance to buy seats at concerts before general availability starts.

If you’re picked to get early access to ticket sales, you’ll be notified that you’re eligible both by email and throughout the Spotify interface. You’ll have “around a day” to buy up to two tickets from “any eligible date” on a given artist’s tour.

Spotify says that eligibility is determined partly by how often you listen to and share an artist’s music, as well as your location. The streamer is keeping some of the details about its selection process secret “to avoid encouraging anyone to engage strategically rather than genuinely.”

Reserved is being made available through a partnership between Spotify, Live Nation, and Ticketmaster. It’s not a solution to the latter’s resale practices overall, which are so odious that even resellers complain. Still, it should help at least some fans avoid paying egregious resale prices for their tickets — even if it does decrease the supply of face-value tickets available to the general public. The feature is rolling out today; it’s only available for Spotify Premium subscribers, and only for some artists and tours.