Songkick To Sell UK Tickets

Concert discovery app Songkick has begun selling tickets in the UK, a move that’s said to earn the company 20 times as much as it currently gets from referring its users to other ticket sellers.

After only a few months Songkick, which began in 2007 as a concert database, is now shifting tickets for 25 percent of the shows in London and is beginning the push to secure inventory in other major city markets.

Previously Songkick – which grew by striking deals to show its concert listings on YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud and others – had taken a 10 percent to 15 percent fee for hosting the transaction, a sort of introductory or referral fee for putting the would-be purchaser in touch with the ticket seller together.

It appears to have started ticket selling in the UK because in the U.S. the exclusivity deals between venues and major ticket sellers would make it more difficult to get hold of the inventory.

In London venues aren’t locked in to exclusivity deals, enabling them to allocate tickets to whatever outlets they chose. “The bigger we got, the more we got people asking if they could sell tickets with us, and we started to think we should reconsider,” said Songkick founder Ian Hogarth, explaining that he didn’t originally plan to be a ticket seller.

Daily Pulse