[UPDATED] When Pandora acquired Ticketfly, the two pledged to use the power of the music streamer’s giant platform to drive ticket sales. Today’s announcement of concert notifications is a good first step, but it is also is reminder of the severe limitations of using a single data source to drive recommendations.
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Pandora today announced that it would send users personalized concert notifications for Ticketfly events based on artists they had “liked.” With the new features, users receive:
Personalized Concert Recommendations: The Music Genome Project will recommend live events based on the users listening profile.
- Automated show reminders: When a show is announced, users can set a reminder to buy tickets when they go on sale.
- Easy access to tickets: One click sends users to the ticket purchase page.
But there’s a big problem.
Pandora is only recommending shows ticketed through Ticketfly, a company that, while growing, only does ticketing for a tiny fraction of the concerts produced annually. Live Nation owned Ticketmaster tickets about 80% of all major shows and smaller firms like Eventbrite, Brown Paper Ticketing and others. By contrast, event listings and recommendations from Songkick, BandsInTown and ReverbNation are drawn from thousands of sources including Ticketmaster and Ticketfly.
So, when Pandora tell you that this the best in town for you, remember that it’s really just the best Ticketfly show.
UPDATE: A Pandora spokesperson tells Hypebot: “We are also working with a range of data partners to ensure full coverage of the universe of events: such as Songkick. However, events only for TicketFly venues will be receiving push notifications and email digests whereas the others receive feed notifications.”