Spotify Adds Buy Button, Experiences Through BrandPage

Spotify has added a buy button to its service making it possible for its 40 million music fans to buy direct from musicians using the feature. BrandPage makes the commerce option possible.

The direct-to-fan service allows musicians to link to an existing online store or build a new one in Spotify. Aside from traditional merchandise, the feature aims to create fan experiences like private online concerts, Skype chat, meet and greets, and song collaborations.

Fans can create a BandPage profile with photos, music, tour dates, videos, and store. Keeping the information up to date -- similar to a directory -- is important because the data powers what serves up on Spotify, Shazam, YouTube and Rhapsody. It powers tour dates in Google search results. More than 500,000 musicians, from Bruce Springsteen to Easton Corbin, use BandPage.

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BrandPage also has similar partnerships with Shazam, LyricFind, and Rhapsody, among others. This means musicians can syndicate merchandise sales to these other platforms by setting up a BandPage offer for each item sold through ArtistLink, explains Mark Williamson, director of artists services at Spotify, in a post.

Retail ecommerce in the U.S. accounted for 5.8% -- about $263 billion -- of total retail sales last year, but eMarketer estimates online sales to rise to 6.4% of total retail sales in 2014. Mobile commerce sales took 0.9% in 2013 and should rise to 1.2% in 2014.

Some $18.5 billion should come from smartphones this year, up 25.4% from the prior year. This year, 100.9 million U.S. consumers will purchase items on mobile devices -- accounting for 61.8% of all digital buyers, according to eMarketer.

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