YouTube has been trying to lean into how its users already use the platform by optimizing itself like a music streaming service and trying to compete with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, and other major streamers.
In a move to expand their music offerings, YouTube recently partnered with ticket selling platform Eventbrite to offer tickets to upcoming live events right under an artists’ music videos.
Although the initiative between YouTube and Eventbrite officially launched on October 18th, the program has been around for a bit already (you may have even noticed it yourself). Previously the tickets offered were from a similar partnership between YouTube and Ticketmaster. That partnership was mostly limited to larger artists at arena-level venues.
The new partnership between YouTube and Eventbrite hopes to expand YouTube’s offering to the many more smaller venues and artists that make up the bulk of ticket inventory in the live music industry. According to the announcement by YouTube, between this move and the previous partnership with Ticketmaster, about 70% of the U.S. ticket market will now be covered in the platform.
The partnership could prove fruitful for Eventbrite as well, bringing new exposure to its offerings. According to a study done by Google, 60% of Americans between the ages of 35 and 54 report visiting YouTube at least once a week for music-related content. Anecdotally, that seems to check out as well, considering the popularity of music videos relatively to other types of videos in YouTube’s record books. Whether that translates to an expansion of the ticket selling market though remains to be seen.
