Today Spotify is launching a new feature called Reserved in the US. This basically means Spotify is holding two concert tickets for an artist’s most dedicated fans, and will offer them the chance to grab said tickets before the general sale goes live.
The company isn’t saying exactly how it determines who to offer these tickets to, as it doesn’t want to encourage strategic engagement. But it did say that eligibility is based “on a wide range of signals like streams, saves, and shares, as well as location”. The location factor matters because it wants these tickets to only reach fans who are actually likely to attend.
If you’re eligible for a particular artist, your Reserved offer will be shown on your Spotify home screen, and you’ll also get a notification and an email about it. To make sure you aren’t passed up, make sure you have notifications for live concerts and events on, your app is updated, and you set your location in your Live Events feed.
The offer can also be found in Search, on the artist’s page, in your Live Events feed, and in the Now Playing view, so missing it once it’s available is highly unlikely. When your Reserved window opens, you can just tap Buy now to choose up to two tickets for a Reserved-eligible date on the tour.
Your window is “typically” around a day, and you can purchase the two tickets at any point throughout that day. However, in order to ensure that you can get the specific date, location, and seats you prefer, the sooner you purchase, the better. Once you’ve selected your tickets you will be directed to Ticketmaster to complete checkout.
For this step, you might need to connect your Spotify account to Ticketmaster. For some “high-demand shows”, you may enter a queue before reaching the ticket selection page. Regardless, two tickets on the tour will be held for you throughout your window, but if you’re at the end of the queue you may not get the specific seats for the specific show you want. You’ll get some seats, but perhaps not those seats.
Reserved lets you buy tickets for any eligible date on the tour, not just the show that’s closest to you. Reserved allocations include “a range of seating and prices”, and availability varies by show. Unclaimed Reserved tickets will be made available to “the next most dedicated eligible fans”. Reserved is available “for select artists and tours”, only for Spotify Premium subscribers who are 18 or older.