Imagine that you run a business which was repeatedly cited as having saved an entire industry, yet your own company had never made a single penny of profit in its entire 17 years of existence. Sounds absurd, right? And yet for Daniel Ek, it’s a burden which Spotify has to carry each and every day.

When you’re squeezing musicians by paying utterly insulting royalty rates for the use of their music and you still can’t make any money, what do you do? It appears the answer is to try and pinch business from someone else instead – and Spotify has decided it wants to go after the likes of Ticketmaster by getting into the ticketing trade.

Whilst giants like Ticketmaster and Eventbrite probably aren’t worried by the news, Resident Advisor gives the distinct impression of being concerned. Their article on this latest development points out that “In 2020, Resident Advisor announced a partnership with Spotify to help fans discover ticketed RA events directly through the Spotify app”.

Now, let’s be blunt here. Resident Advisor is not a dance music news wire service – as far as Ears To The House is aware, no such thing exists – but rather a ticketing company which writes up news stories. And they’re often more likely to write those news stories if those same people are selling tickets through their site.

So when Resident Advisor start complaining about Spotify getting into the ticketing business themselves, they’re sounding more than a little reminiscent of a jilted lover. However, given that Spotify needs to find a way of making some proper money, we suspect flogging tickets to underground raves and such is unlikely to be on Daniel Ek’s mind…