Spotify Premium Users Get Early Access to Concert Tickets via Live Nation Partnership

Spotify to reserve concert tickets for superfans on Premium tier; Live Nation confirmed as launch partner as companies strike multi-year deal

May 21, 2026 By Murray Stassen

Spotify  is launching a new feature called  Reserved  that will hold two concert tickets per tour for an artist’s most dedicated fans among eligible  Premium  subscribers.

Eligible fans will have access to what Spotify  describes as “a reserved window to purchase before tickets are on sale to the general public.”

Ticketmaster parent Live Nation has been confirmed as the launch partner, with additional ticketing and promoter partnerships to be rolled out for the feature over time.

“This summer, when we start rolling out, we’ll be launching with  Live Nation  in a multi-year agreement, so that  Spotify  will be the exclusive music service that offers this kind of a benefit to its members,”  Spotify ‘s Head of Music,  Charlie Hellman , told  MBW .

“Obviously, the more tours, the more shows that this touches, the better it is as a benefit for our subscribers, so that’ll be rolling to more and more ticketers, promoters over time. Since Live Nation  covers so many of the most sought-after tours, it’s a great jumpstart.”

Reserved  will launch this summer in the  US , with more markets to follow.

Early concert ticket access had long been expected to sit behind a rumored higher-priced tier, reported by  Bloomberg  in early 2025 as ‘ Music Pro ‘ , potentially costing up to  $5.99  more per month.

That tier has yet to arrive in Western markets.

Spotify   launched a higher-priced  Premium Platinum  subscription in five markets including India in November 2025 , though a ticketing element is not part of that offering, and has since  partially reversed the experiment  by scrapping its lower-priced  Premium Lite  tier and cutting standard  Premium  prices in those markets.

The company also  rolled lossless audio into standard  Premium  in September  2025 , rather than gating it behind a higher-priced tier.

Reserved addresses one of the same consumer demands, priority access to concert tickets, but within the standard Premium  subscription, at no additional cost.

“This felt to us like such a core thing that all music fans would really value, that it’s something that it’s best in our premium subscription,”  Charlie Hellman  told  MBW .

Hellman  added, however, that  Spotify  continues to explore paid add-on subscriptions for other features.

“We also, in parallel, think about ways that we can offer niche audiences additional things that they can pay add-on subscriptions for,” he said.

Spotify   reported  293 million   Premium  subscribers  globally at the end of  Q1 2026  – up  3 million  on the prior quarter and  9% YoY – alongside 761 million  total monthly active users.

“This is one of the most exciting additions that we’ve made to the Premium offering,” added Hellman.

“On  Spotify now, your fandom will actually be rewarded in such a distinct way, without added fees. There’s no strings attached.

“It’s just that if you’re showing up for the artists and you’re being a great fan, that this is the way it should work, and you should be able to be early to get tickets to the show.”

How Reserved works

Spotify  said it will identify an artist’s most dedicated fans based on what  Hellman  described as “a  360 -degree view of fan activity”.

That includes sharing, saving, active listening, the frequency and cadence of listening, and whether the behavior is organic and human – rather than bot-driven.

“It’s not as simple as total stream volume,” said  Hellman .

“We’ve been around long enough that we can see your tenure as a fan and how much you stuck with an artist.”

Eligible fans will receive an email and an in-app notification, and will have a dedicated window, typically around a day, to purchase up to two concert tickets on the tour via a ticketing partner’s platform.

Fans who receive an offer will be able to buy tickets for any show on the tour, choosing their date, location, and seats at checkout.

According to the blog post, “Reserved offers are based on the tour’s locations, so if a tour isn’t coming to your area, you may not receive an offer”.

The blog post notes that “ticket types, seating options, and availability will vary by show”.

Spotify  acknowledged that “there will be significantly more superfans than there are seats available on a tour, so not every fan will receive an offer”.

> “We’ve been around long enough that we can see your tenure as a fan and how much you stuck with an artist.” Charlie Hellman

Crucially,  Reserved  tickets are not a subset of an existing presale allocation.

“This will be not a subset of a different presale system, but its own dedicated inventory that is set aside for the artist’s biggest fans on  Spotify ,” said  Hellman .

The feature will initially be available for newly announced tours for select artists this summer, before expanding to more tours across all stages – “from the biggest in the world to developing artists”,  Hellman  said.

“We think it’s equally important that for developing artists who are going on tour, they want to see their biggest diehards in the front row.”

On the question of whether  Reserved  tickets could end up on the secondary market,  Hellman  said that putting tickets in the hands of verified fans rather than professional scalpers “has the potential to change the landscape of who gets that first shot at tickets”.

“The day after a tour goes on sale and it’s sold out, and you see it on the secondary market, it’s really professional scalpers that you’re seeing post those tickets, it’s not superfans that have had a change of heart,” he said.

Hellman  added that  Spotify  is building safeguards into its partnerships to address potential abuse.

“If someone games the system, we can actually claw things back,” he said.

“We want to make sure that it’s validated for superfans, and if we see abuse in the system, that that can actually be corrected.”

Reserved  represents the latest step in  Spotify ‘s evolving approach to live music.

The streaming platform currently works with more than  40  ticketing partners and says its live music efforts have to date driven more than  $1.5 billion  in ticket sales for artists.

That figure is up from the  $1 billion  the company  cited in January , when  Hellman  revealed that  Spotify  had paid out over  $11 billion  to the music industry in  2025 .

Last year,  Spotify  said that what it calls “super listeners” – the top  2%  of an artist’s monthly streaming audience –  account for 50% of all artist ticket sales through the platform .

Spotify ‘s  Fans First  presale program, launched in  2018 , has offered top listeners early access to concert tickets via presale codes, but that program is open to all account holders, including those on the free tier.

Reserved goes further, holding dedicated inventory exclusively for Premium  subscribers.

Spotify  also tested selling concert tickets directly to fans in  2022  via a dedicated  Spotify Tickets  site, but  scaled back those efforts in 2024 , pivoting towards partnerships with established ticketing companies.

Live Nation  President and CEO  Michael Rapino   confirmed in February 2025  that  Live Nation  had held talks with  Spotify ,  Apple , and  Amazon  around presale ticket access for super-premium tier subscribers.

Most recently, Spotify’s Charlie Hellman told us that the platform has “incredibly high fidelity fan data of who is an active diehard, and we have enough scale where it can actually fill rooms [and] not just have a superfan presale with a few tickets, but actually be meaningful to the artist.”

Spotify ‘s decision to include concert ticket access within its standard  Premium  subscription contrasts with the approach taken by  Tencent Music Entertainment  in China.

TME , which operates  QQ Music ,  Kugou Music , and  Kuwo Music , uses priority concert ticket access as a key perk of its higher-priced  Super VIP tier, which costs approximately RMB 40  ( $5.72 ) per month, roughly five times the standard subscription price.

The  SVIP  tier  surpassed  20 million  subscribers by the end of  2025 , and TME has attributed much of its growth to the “continuous expansion of SVIP membership privileges,” including early access to concerts and artist-related merchandise.

TME  has also been  building its own live music operation , promoting concerts and selling tickets directly, a more vertically integrated model than Spotify ‘s partnership-driven approach with  Reserved . Music Business Worldwide

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_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-to-reserve-concert-tickets-for-superfans-on-premium-tier-live-nation-confirmed-as-launch-partner-as-companies-strike-multi-year-deal/)._