From VIP Tickets to Premium Streaming Plans, the Music Business Is Entering a New Era of Upselling

With all apologies to Charli XCX, the 2024 concert season should have been dubbed “VIP summer” for the amount of upselling done by U.S. amphitheaters.

At Live Nation amphitheaters, revenue from VIP clubs was up 19% and VIP ticket premium revenue for major festivals was up more than 20% in the third quarter. Earlier this year, VIP/premium offerings represented 9% of Live Nation’s overall amphitheater business but “should be 30% to 35%,” CEO Michael Rapino told investors in February.

Amphitheaters where Live Nation controls the food and beverage experiences have the potential to deliver more fan spending. Converting an area of grass into a VIP club provides 20% to 30% returns on investment, Rapino explained. At Northwell at Jones Beach Theater, for example, Live Nation took the 15,000-seat venue from no premium offerings to three premium tiers. Of the 40 U.S. amphitheaters in its portfolio, the company could “Jonesify” half of them, Rapino said during an investor call on Wednesday (Nov. 13).

Diving headfirst into VIP pricing is sure to help Live Nation’s bottom line. The company believes premium offerings can add $200 million in adjusted operating income per year, according to its investor presentation. This year, VIP net per-fan spending will have grown at 20% annually since 2019, well ahead of overall net fan spending growth of 8% annually.

From exclusive lounges to fan meet-and-greets with artists, the concert business has been better than other music industry segments at filtering customers according to their willingness to pay. VIP status became standard practice at music festivals to separate the people who can afford a $400 ticket to camp in a grass field and those who can afford deluxe accommodations, food and beverage, and transportation. The year-old Sphere in Las Vegas takes customer segmentation to a new level: Tickets are relatively expensive for a single concert without considering travel and accommodation — which Live Nation bundles with Sphere tickets through Vibee, a destination experience company it founded in 2023.

It may be ahead of other music companies, but Live Nation is merely following practices familiar to companies such as airlines, which charge more for early boarding, and theme parks, where paying a premium allows you to spend less time standing in line for rides. Insurance companies offer multiple tiers of services that include add-ons such as “accident forgiveness.” Everywhere you look, there’s an expensive option that’s out of reach for most consumers but well worth the value to others.

The wave of upselling now extends to VIP tiers in music streaming. Last week, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) announced it has 10 million Super VIP subscribers accounting for 8.4% of its 119 million subscribers. Super VIP, launched in the first quarter of 2022, provides such perks as better sound quality, priority access to music content and live event tickets. With a cost five times the normal subscription tier, Super VIP subscriptions helped TME’s average revenue per user increase 5% from the prior-year period. That success with VIP pricing is likely a harbinger of things to come. A single tier may not deliver the kind of profitability investors now demand.

“I think Spotify and the labels, long ago, realized this ‘one price for everybody’ thing gets these companies off the ground, but ultimately it’s not sustainable,” says pricing strategy consultant Rafi Mohammed, who espouses a strategy he calls “good-better-best” and encourages companies to create more valuable tiers of products and services for subsets of customers who are willing to pay extra. “If you’re a company and you’re not doing it, you’re making a mistake,” he says. “There are always going to be higher-end people who are willing to pay more for a more enhanced experience.”

With the current music streaming model relatively unchanged for two decades, music companies are increasingly engaging in the kind of customer segmentation taught in business schools. Companies that want to deliver strong, sustained growth are looking at ways to provide more valuable — and more expensive — experiences to those customers willing to pay for them.

Record labels are itching for a high-priced streaming subscription tier that would produce greater royalties. Spotify’s VIP tier — for lack of a better term — seems all but inevitable at this point. In September, Universal Music Group (UMG) COO (then CFO) Boyd Muir said the company was in “advanced talks” with the streamer for a high-priced tier that offers a better user experience than standard subscription plans. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek lifted the veil on a pending VIP plan in July, saying it would “probably” be priced at $17 or $18 per month and provide subscribers with “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and some other things that I’m not ready to talk about yet.”

UMG has said that internal market research shows 23% of subscribers would be willing to pay more for a VIP experience. But Will Page, Spotify’s former chief economist, isn’t sure Spotify is ready for a VIP tier. “It needs to walk before it can run towards a VIP platform,” he says.

Since the days of pre-Spotify subscription services such as Rhapsody, the basis $9.99 (in the U.S.) price was raised only recently but hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011 and didn’t raise the individual premium price to $10.99 until 2023. Had the price kept pace with inflation, that $9.99 tier would have cost $13.50 by the time the price hike took effect. While video-on-demand streaming platforms such as Netflix have consistently raised prices over the years, music platforms like Spotify refrained, keeping their prices unchanged for fear higher prices would stunt their growth. “I would love to see the industry earn its stripes in showing pricing power before it goes to base two, which is market screening power,” says Page.

In the meantime, the music business has other ways to cater to VIPs, including a new slate of “superfan” platforms and vinyl records. Vinyl mimics a VIP strategy by upselling fans to an expensive physical item over low-value online streaming. And just as film studios use a so-called “windowing” strategy by releasing movies to theaters before streaming platforms, artists and labels are increasingly selling vinyl LPs ahead of their streaming street dates — a strategy that’s been largely absent in music since 2016. To Page, artists and labels are missing a big opportunity by not using vinyl to create a VIP release window.

“In America alone, vinyl is going to be a billion-dollar business,” says Page, “and the people who can sell it are the types of artists who would appeal to a VIP strategy.”