BandPage has been helping hundreds of thousands of musicians keep their biographies updated and/or sell merchandise and VIP experiences with partners including Spotify, Vevo and Google. Now it has found a new area for partnership: ticketing.
Its first partner is eBay’s secondary ticketing subsidiary StubHub, with a deal announced this afternoon that will see BandPage profiles integrated into the ticketing service, but also merchandise and experiences – think paid meet’n’greets – promoted to fans buying tickets for their concerts on the site.
Switchfoot, George Clinton and OK Go are among the first musicians to benefit from what’s being described as a “pilot program”, which is US-only for now but with plans to expand globally later in 2015.
“The really impactful thing about this deal with StubHub is that fans are already there with the mentality of purchasing, and the checkout flow is very efficient and streamlined, which is not necessarily always the case on an artist website,” BandPage chief executive J Sider told Music Ally ahead of the partnership’s announcement.
Secondary ticketing sites aren’t exactly flavour of the month in some countries – the UK in particular at the moment – but Sider said he doesn’t think artists risk alienating fans by trying to sell them extra stuff (including meetings) on a site like StubHub.
“StubHub have 15 million monthly customers, and they went there because they like the brand and the experience there. Otherwise they wouldn’t go there, right?” he said. “Fans are already enjoying that experience.”
StubHub joins Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, iHeartRadio, Google, YouTube, Vevo, Shazam, SoundCloud, Live Nation, Xbox Music and LyricFind on BandPage’s partnerships list.
Music Ally’s full interview with J Sider, including the latest news on how BandPage’s Spotify partnership may evolve, is available to read for our subscribers – you can also sign up for a free trial of our premium research service to read it.
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