New Spotify Feature Lets Music Lovers Track Concerts At Their Favorite Venues

Most serious music fans not only have favorite bands and performers, but favorite concert venues as well. While it's relatively easy for most people to keep up with the performers they love, Spotify is now making it just as easy to keep tabs on the venues themselves. This week, Spotify introduced a new feature that allows users to follow specific venues, in the same way that you might follow a specific band online. The feature is available to both free and premium Spotify users. 

Once a user follows a venue, they can quickly access a thorough list of all the shows coming to that venue over the next few weeks. The feature is part of Spotify's new Live Events feed. The feed refreshes daily so that users can stay up to date on all the musical happenings in their area. It's worth noting that Spotify's "Concerts Near You" feature filters by favorite artists and updates weekly. In short, the new Live Events feed has a slightly different focus and is updated more consistently.

Spotify's new feature also surfaces "Suggested venues" that users might be interested in. This is a welcome addition, especially in big cities where some of the cooler music venues often fly below the radar. Spotify says that its concert library currently boasts more than 20,000 venues across the globe. Spotify adds that when users find a concert they want to attend, "they can just tap through to the event's official ticketing partner to complete their purchase," a flow which makes the purchasing process a tad more efficient.

Over the past few weeks, Spotify has steadily rolled out a handful of new and notable features. Last month, for example, an update to Spotify's free tier finally made it possible for users to specifically choose a song to listen to. Previously, Spotify allowed users on its free tier to set up personalized playlists but without the ability to listen to specific songs on demand.

With regard to higher quality audio, Spotify a few weeks ago introduced lossless audio up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC to users in eligible markets. To make sure the setting is on, open up Spotify and then go to Settings > Media quality. Next, select Lossless which should appear towards the bottom. Note, though, that lossless audio consumes much more data which, in turn, requires a stronger signal to ensure smooth playback.

Many users have their streaming quality setting set to Automatic, which adjusts the quality of the audio based on the data connection in real time. This setting, however, excludes lossless audio which must be selected manually. Incidentally, Spotify does allow users to adjust their streaming quality preferences depending on if they're on Wi-Fi or cellular connection.