Spotify Concerts is a digital concert experience partnering with Ticketmaster, providing and selling tickets to fans through the Spotify platform. By creating a seamless purchasing experience within one ecosystem, Ticketmaster is able identify and sell tickets to real passionate fans. This collaboration also solidfies Spotify's spot in the music market by continually improving music lovers' experiences.
As the team's lead UX designer, I was in charge of creating high fidelity mockups, designing user flows, implementing features and managing the team. I played a major role in the idea conception, brand research, competitor analysis and prototyping.
Team: Danny Blackstock, Jane Wong, Josh Cheng, Valerie Cheng
Among fans and artists, Ticketmaster’s reputation has become synonymous with bad service and inefficiency. The company has been plagued with various business issues concerning scalping, auto-purchasing bots, and poor customer experiences. At one point, more than 60% of purchased tickets were completed through bots and fake accounts (Sisario, 2013) which prevented fans from going to their desired concerts.
Former CEO of Ticketmaster, Nathan Hubbard clearly paints the picture of how ticket brokers are taking advantage of the system, fan clubs, and email lists by "[using] fake names, fake addresses, and multiple credit cards to steal tickets out from under an even smaller subset of real fans.” This is a major tipping point for the ticket company as it tries to fight them off.
Brand Insights
Ticketmaster strives to put fans first. They listen to their customer’s feedback and work to improve their experience before, during, and after events. As outside designers, we found that Ticketmaster’s brand values have been poorly communicated to their customers which has led to high levels of dissatisfaction. In order to revive the company’s values, it is important to address the real fans - people who have great passion for the artists they follow.
How can Ticketmaster reduce the frictions in ticket purchasing and ensure that fans are able to successfully purchase them? Specifically, how can we improve the ticket buying experience for ‘real’ people, or people from a legitimate fan base?
Proposed Solution
Ticketmaster has an opportunity to tackle the scalping problem by selling tickets to real people by a verification process that leverages Spotify’s extensive data on their users. Through this partnership, Ticketmaster is able to promote concerts to legitimate fans, deflecting both bots and scalpers.
Leverage Valuable Data
Spotify has an extensive amount of data from their users that Ticketmaster can use to identify “real people” who are “real fans” of music.
Leverage a Trusted Brand Image
Spotify has become a reliable brand for customers that Ticketmaster can leverage to enhance their own brand image to create a safe and trusted space for ticket purchases.
Benefiting Spotify
This helps Spotify connect users with more diverse options for live events. This will help drive more fans to concerts, which improves Spotify’s relationship to artists, since concerts continue to be a key revenue stream for most artists. A partnership would also increase brand loyalty towards Spotify, giving users more incentive to use the service by being rewarded and branded as ‘real fans’. Instead of consumers finding concerts (pull) on their own, our proposal would bring concerts to them (push).
Defining the Experience
Once we settled on our proposal, I helped map out the entire Ticketmaster ticket purchase flow from Spotify; tapping on a concert within the Spotify app redirects the user to Ticketmaster's mobile web. We took screenshots of each screen to understand the purchase and payment flow.
Next, we created a user journey framework highlighting a user's interactions with the Spotify and Ticketmaster ecosystems. We identified five main stages of the concert experience: discovery (pre-purchase), assurance (purchase), engagement (pre-concert), concert, and refelection (post-concert). We realized that our proposal could live beyond ticket purchasing and play a bigger role in defining a concert experience. Through this we identified the key painpoints where we can intervene.
APP INTERFACE
Pre-purchase Stage (Discovery)
Loyal music fans are acknowledged as "Certified Fans" and notified to access exclusive pre-sales of their favourite artist within Spotify. Their ticket access is displayed at the top of the Concerts page to remind fans of their reward. Tapping on the get tickets button will push the user to the artist's concert screen.
Frictions: Concert information is currently scattered in multiple places - you would typically have to seek out these sources of information yourself, and decide which reliable source to get your ticket information from.
Positive Touchpoint: We’re bringing recommended concerts to Spotify users based on their listening habits. Spotify would be further targeting the needs of music fans by offering them a one-stop shop for their music needs by offering ticket-purchases within their platform.
Purchase Stage (Assurance)
Once users click into their early access concert, they can directly choose the ticket type and seats within the Spotify interface. They can choose through a filtered list of seats or view the floor map to make a more detailed selection. Once the user has finished selecting, they will pay through the app and receive a digital ticket.
Frictions: Currently, the Ticketmaster purchasing process is confusing and hectic - visual layout is disorganised and makes finding seats that you want difficult.
Positive Touchpoint: We’re providing a clear intuitive step-by-step flow within the Spotify platform to offer ticket-buyers a smooth purchasing experience.
Pre-Concert Stage (Engagement)
A week prior to the concert, Spotify will start creating custom curated playlists to hype up the user. The Spotify user can start listening to these playlists to get excited and amped up for the concert.
Frictions: There is a lack of follow-up after purchasing a ticket where some people purchase tickets months in advance and may forget about the concert.
Positive Touchpoint: We’re utilizing Spotify's smart algorithms and curation ability to create custom playlists for users to get them ready for their concert.
Post-Concert Stage (Reflection)
At the end of the concert, the digital tickets are digitally autographed and saved as memorabilia. Certified fans will also have a badge in their profile that acknowledges their status. Users can relive the concert experience by tapping on ticket which leads them to the concert setlist.
Frictions: Many concert-goers feel the sense of "post-concert" syndrome where they miss the whole experience of the concert.
Positive Touchpoint: By publicly identifying users as loyal fans, we can create an aspirational value and inspire more users to listen to their favorites artists.
Ending Thoughts
Our proposal fits within Ticketmaster's current strategies in aiming to step up efforts to combat bots and burnish the company’s negative reputation with their customers. Concert-goers seek to buy tickets with 100% confidence, and our proposal aims to offer that with a friction-free user flow. On the other hand, Spotify is continuously looking to supplement their experience and brand with partnerships. A collaboration with Ticketmaster would benefit current Spotify users with an even more personalized music experience through concerts.
Purchasing a ticket to an event should be a fun, exciting experience that flows smoothly into the concert itself. By improving the ticket purchasing experience, the customers start off their journey with a positive experience that can be carried over to the purchased event itself.
