You may have heard that Ticketfly is joining Eventbrite to make the platform for live events even better than before. As Ticketfly becomes part of the Eventbrite team, this is a fitting time for us to reflect on our most successful accomplishments as a design team as well as the valuable lessons we learned. During our time since Ticketfly’s rebrand in early 2016, our product design team has developed some tips and tricks to keep in mind while creating products.

At the core of all those experiences are these UX principles:

Human
Genuine & friendly.

Innovative
Disruptive & game-changing.

Legit
Authentic & intelligent.

Driven
Curious & responsible.

We like to consider these principles every time we design our products (inside and outside of the interface). These principles are derived from our main brand pillars. This is our way of bringing the Ticketfly brand into our products and, at the same time, this acts as a checklist to make sure we are delivering consistent and inclusive solutions.

Tips for Designing Systems

Written by Jake

I’ve been really close to the design and communication efforts at Ticketfly to build and enforce a design system. The opening product video is a testament to the type of power a pattern library can provide for an organization. With the Ticketfly rebrand in early 2016, it was a great opportunity to reflect on the consistencies, or inconsistencies rather, of our previous products because we were going to need to work hard to update them for the rebrand launch. I’ll talk a little bit about the tips, tricks, and tools I used to make our lives easier in this effort.

1. Start messy & refine

Be scrappy.

While the rebrand was in progress, we used elements from basic bootstrap libraries as a foundation to start. We styled these elements after the rebrand and company pillars were finalized. Rather than making all the rules beforehand for product interfaces and interactions we didn’t know, we incorporated the new styling into current products we were working on at a product by product level.

We used Wake to collaborate as a design team. Rather than meeting in a traditional art critique setting (at a certain time in a single conference room), designers can give feedback on their own time. We were able to share how each designer used different elements (i.e. modals) and we can find common patterns and standardize the most important ones.

2. Build your library

Have one source of truth. Create documentation as soon as you have the bare bones elements styled. Keep it in one location so every designer can have ONE standard that they design against. First, we kept documentation in Sketch.

We dumped every instance of elements we were designing into individual artboards to organize & consolidate at a later time. This helped us find commonalities faster. It was the best we could do, at the time, to ensure we were all using the same design elements across products.

Secondly, we used Craft by Invision. Craft streamlined our workflow so well! We could share a curated library of elements with collaborators. From there, anyone could drag and drop pre-built elements from that library onto a screen without switching files. It was documentation inside the very product we use to design our applications. You have a consistency test right next to the artboards where you create your designs.

At this point, it’s more about assembling the parts in a correct way rather than debating how you design the items.

Trust me, you don’t want to get stuck debating rounded corners.

3. Document & implement

Even if our designs were 100% consistent, we wanted to be better. We aren’t just settling for consistency in Sketch because the real goal is consistency across our products. We wanted to document and standardize resources as close to the real product as we could…in code. We wanted a pattern library in development for engineers to pick and pull elements that lived up to our consistency standards. Thread this into an entire department’s workflow is a huge effort. We’ve been continuing to grow this development library one element at a time, but it’s something we have less control over.

Instead of trying to influence engineering processes, we focused more on things in our control as a design organization: illustrations, icons, personas, and UX principles (mentioned at the beginning) just to name a few. We could share illustration guidelines with our designers and we could share personas with departments working with those same individuals.

For documentation, we chose Google Sites. It was very easy to create content and safe to share within an organization. We could document and share product design decisions with engineers and product managers as we came to conclusions on decision making. This makes things smoother, and this means less time for releasing new products and features. Process gets in the way sometimes, so the more you make that easier, the better it is for your organization.

Tips on Design Habits

Written by Yrving Doveralba

There are three main things I want to share with you about our process to complete and ship products:

1. Prototype

As designers we mainly work with assumptions. We tend to think about pixel perfect ideas instead of fully functional software. With prototypes, you can quickly validate the user experience and iterate. Only low fidelity designs will allow you to iterate quickly. Design at the lowest fidelity, but not any lower. Then, use a prototype, not only to validate your own flows and ideas, but also to collect feedback very early in the process.

It’s cheaper to update a prototype than than to ship it and realize it’s confusing and hard to use.

At Ticketfly we use multiple prototyping tools. This is an area we are always open to experiment with. We use Principle and Proto.io to easily prototype for web and mobile. Dragging and dropping prebuilt components with Proto.io saves time and allows for making interactions easily.

2. Write things down

If I can tell anything to myself from 10 years ago, I’d probably say “Write things down,” especially goals, hypotheses, and priorities. It’ll help you remember important points during discovery and implementation. I usually use my notes as actionable items or follow up questions. If you are in a meeting with a big group or a presentation, write down your questions. This will allow you to properly articulate and ask them at the right time.

I use Evernote to keep track of my notes. It helps me remember things, record product decisions, and keep track of feedback. Write down feedback!

3. Seek perspective

There’s more value in learning the truth than being right.

One of the things I learned very quickly in Design School is to detach myself from my designs. Teachers would be so critical of your work and I’d hate showing my work in class but they do it for a reason. They do it to teach you perspective through criticism and to speak about solutions instead of a pretty color I picked. I’m using design to solve problems but that doesn’t mean the design belongs to me.

There’s more value in learning the truth than being right.

I’ve seen many designers isolate themselves and avoid feedback at all costs. They didn’t get the best results because they only saw the solution from their perspective. I’m not saying that we should desperately look for feedback from just anyone, but it’s important to carefully frame the feedback you are looking for when you need it.

Here at Ticketfly, we use Wake for feedback.

It could be just a rough wireframe, a work-in-progress video of a prototype, or a final design. The intention for sharing is to keep the rest of the designers in the loop and get feedback — if you request it. We use their Slack integration so our teams get notified every time a designer uploads their work. You can comment or annotate in a single or a set of images or videos.

Tips from Entry Management

Written by Mai Oseto

Whether you enter a show using a digital ticket, or print your tickets on paper, you have experienced entry management of some kind. Our goal is to get fans inside venues and festivals as fast and efficiently as possible. A focus has been a ticket scanning iOS app.

We’re using patent pending technology to make it easier for clients and fans to scan tickets and get people to the show. It’s currently in beta. You might’ve seen it at a local Ticketfly show.

I’ll share with you a few tips I’ve learned in design along the way.

1. Design for your environment

It’s easy to forget about the outside world when you’re designing on a computer in an office or cafe.

When designing for this product we had to consider people using it at small, dark venues or at festivals in the bright sunlight. So I worked on day-time and night-time modes.

Be mindful of where people will be using your product when you’re designing.

2. Test

Testing is necessary because it’s another technique to improving your design. It’s a way of knowing that what you’ve designed does what it’s supposed to do. Seeing how one person uses your product is good but we’re all different! What’s better? Seeing how 10 other people might use your product in a way that you’ve never thought about.

For this product, testing it in the real world was necessary because someone might be scanning thousands of tickets during a shift. So we wanted to see how it worked while someone was doing the same action over and over. In this case, it was good to get feedback from real people who have been using this product for 8 hours straight. We’ve done 7 real world tests and gotten a lot of good feedback early on.

Sound and visual feedback are important when making a great product experience.

Recap:

• Start messy and refine, build your library, and document & implement.
• Prototype, write things down, and seek perspective.
• Design for your environment and test.

From starting messy to testing your product in the real world, these tools and tricks will help you be a quick and productive designer. We hope you gained some insight from our product design team at Ticketfly. We are looking forward to taking our learnings to Eventbrite and combining these platforms into the best live events experience on the market!

— Jake, Yrving Doveralba, and Mai Oseto

Tips from Ticketfly’s Product Designers was originally published in Ticketfly Tech: More Than Code on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Earlier this summer, we announced that Eventbrite and Ticketfly would be coming together to form one company with the best technology, team, and services in the live events business. Now we’re pleased to share that the deal is done. Together, the two platforms will deliver the market-defining solution for independent venues, promoters and festivals around the world to connect fans with live events.

What do you need to do differently? Not a thing! The Ticketfly website, app, and all of our ‘fly-powered sites are up and running as usual, and there are no plans to change where or how you buy tickets. In the future, you can look forward to improvements and features designed to make discovering great events and buying tickets even easier.

There’s nothing worse than showing up at the doors to see your favorite artist perform live and being turned away for a fraudulent ticket. Though ticketing technology has greatly evolved, so have scammers. Not even Broadway was safe as Hamilton fans saw a surge of fake tickets last June. We know you can’t always purchase directly from Ticketfly and other primary vendors — shows do sell out, after all — but there are multiple ways to ensure that the tickets you’re purchasing are legit.

Is the ticket you’re buying real?

To ensure the tickets you’re purchasing are authentic, give it a thorough examination. If you have a recent ticket from a previous concert at the venue, compare it for blatant errors and inconsistencies — make sure the talent and venue are spelled correctly, the concert date is correct, the formatting matches other tickets, etc. If you’re purchasing a group of tickets, check the barcodes — each one should be unique.

Did everything above check out? Not so fast. Make sure the seats actually exist. One user on the Broadwayworld.com forum double-checked his Hamilton seats with the venue to discover the seat number didn’t exist for his section. He contacted StubHub, where he purchased the ticket, and was given a comparable replacement.

As with all aspects of life, don’t let anyone pressure you. If the seller is pushy or drastically slashing the price of those hard-to-get tickets, consider it a red flag. Ask to see a physical receipt for the ticket(s). If the seller legitimately purchased it firsthand, it should be simple to provide.

Additional safeguards to prevent getting ripped off

If purchasing from a website, double-check the site’s policies. In the unfortunate event that your ticket is invalid, most services will try to find a replacement or give you a refund. Then you can go buy ice cream. Who cares if you didn’t see Adele — hello, you have two scoops of mocha almond fudge!

Similarly, make sure the website you’re purchasing from is legit. Check with the Better Business Bureau for their rating. StubHub and Vivid Seats both have A+ ratings. Your boy Craig and his list? Straight Ralph Wiggum. However, if Craigslist is your only option, be vigilant. If the seller or the offer seems dodgy, pass on the tickets. Better safe than sorry.

If purchasing from someone outside of the concert venue — which is never advisable, but we’ve been left in the cold with a bouquet of roses and an extra Haim ticket, too — ask the seller to go to the box office with you to confirm its authenticity. If he or she refuses, save your money.

Your best bets for scoring verified tickets

Many reputable ticketing companies offer purchasers the ability to transfer tickets to someone else, or host ticket exchanges for sold out events. Using either of these options means you’re guaranteed that the tickets you’re buying are legit.

Does the company you’ve purchased tickets from have an official ticket transfer program? If the tickets were purchased from Ticketfly, Eventbrite, or Ticketmaster, they can easily be sent to or received from friends. This way, they’re coming from a trusted source without the hassle of meeting up to exchange physical tickets.

Don’t have a friend with an extra ticket to transfer to you? Check if there’s a ticket exchange for the event you’re interested in. If one is offered, it will usually be highlighted on the original ticketing page, or you may get an email from the ticketing company letting you know an exchange is available. Ticketfly, for example, integrates with an easy to use, fan-friendly exchange called Lyte, which is available for sold-out shows. Lyte lets fans reserve an event ticket for instant purchase when the original buyer sells one back. Because it’s sanctioned by the primary ticketer you can rest assured that it’s safe and fairly priced. As a bonus, by buying from an exchange you’re helping to make a dent in scalping: when a Lyte exchange is available, ticket prices on the secondary market generally drop by 35%.

Above all, as with any important purchase, caution and common sense are your best friends. If those tickets seem too good to be true, they likely are. Heed the tips above, stay safe, and enjoy the show!

Originally published on the Ticketfly blog.

San Francisco’s The Chapel is one of the premier venues for live entertainment in the city. Their robust calendar sees anywhere from four to seven concerts a week. And when they’re not holding concerts, The Chapel’s sharp team is hosting private events, holding around 200–300 exclusive celebrations a year, be it a wedding or an election night viewing party. How do they stay so successful? We caught up with The Chapel’s director of sales RaeAnne Turner and their marketing manager Paul Chalker to find out.

If you’re not already, start hosting private events.

“Private events keep your business relevant,” Turner says. Regardless of what your rental rates are, “the private events program for venues support business during seasonal lows.” Not only that, but it keeps people employed and supports the local economy. “Being able to have year-round events in your venue keeps the doors open and the lights on when your core business is otherwise quiet.”

Use what you have and use it well.

Being a live music venue with a restaurant and bar, The Chapel is already equipped with a stage, staff, contacts, and an in-house food and beverage component. “It’s really created a unique space that’s a one-stop shop with super easy planning and accessibility,” Turner says. “The more you can provide, the easier it is,” Chalker adds. “With a kitchen, [clients] don’t have to run out and get a caterer.”

Make sure you have the right structure and resources.

There are a number of things clients look for when booking private events, according to Turner. A unique vibe and location are key, but so is creating a smooth, simple guest experience. “Resources help us make the process very easy for clients. We have food through The Vestry restaurant, we have the live-music booking team, we have full-service staff. “From a planning perspective, it’s incredibly easy for any type of event to come here and experience something unique to the city and the neighborhood,” Turner says. Structure is also important. The Chapel is a larger property with multiple departments. There’s a head of security, a bar manager, stage managers and production managers. “We bring all of these departments together to execute events,” Turner says. “It’s a collaborative effort.”

Any event space can be used for private events

If you’re reading this, you’re most likely one of our partner venues, which means you’re already providing a high-end audio and lighting experience. “Live event venues are naturally equipped for events, celebrations, banquets, and so forth,” Chalker added. “Most venues already have the tools they need, and a turnkey approach, to ensure that private events will run smoothly and be successful.”

Use historical data to set pricing.

What to charge is up to you, but keep in mind you’re a business. The Chapel has minimums and utilizes historical data to inform their rates. “We know what typical nights generate in revenue,” Turner says. “We put together a cost analysis to figure out how much it is on the production side of things to orchestrate an event and we build our prices around the ‘house nut’ — the cost for us to open the doors. We take labor into consideration, food costs, floor costs, production costs. With all of it, we’re able to create minimums based on time of year, time of day, day of week, and that’s how we start.”

Have checks and balances.

In many cases, you’ll run into minor day-of issues — guests arriving early, timeline delays, etc. Make sure you’re well prepared. Run through timelines and run-of-shows, and have a plan B. The guest experience should always feel seamless, Turner says. This is what makes live entertainment venues some of the best locations for private events: You already deal with similar issues on a nightly basis. “That’s where a lot of venues can utilize the staff they already have. That’s a huge perk — having people who are just familiar with how events run,” Chalker says.

Keep an open mind.

The Chapel hosts everything from corporate parties to tech conferences. One of their big markets is weddings. “The wedding season is a really big time. People like to have weddings in these intimate venues where there’s a unique experience,” Chalker says. Also keep an eye out for holiday parties — Turner often books them a year in advance.

Niche markets can be new opportunities.

“As the laws change, so do the realm of the events,” Turner says. For example, changes in California regulations have resulted in marijuana being a legitimate industry now. Accordingly, The Chapel has found itself hosting events for cannabis organizations, from product launches to networking events.

Think of your venue as a community space.

“Any event people are sitting down to watch, you can think: Is this something we can take and add to the experience and make it easier for people?” Chalker says. The Chapel has hosted everything from sports event to political debate viewing parties. Other venues also host Game of Thrones viewing parties. “Using your real estate to bring people together through parties is always a good option,” Turner says. “You come to us [and] there’s no cleanup. You just come to have a good time and you’re completely taken care of,” Chalker adds.

If you’re not already hosting private events in your venue, isn’t now a good time to get started?

Big news: this morning we announced that Eventbrite will be acquiring Ticketfly from Pandora.

Ticketfly and Eventbrite are the two most progressive live events companies in the world, and together we will create a platform that will be game-changing for independent venues and promoters. Last year our combined companies sold 175 million tickets worth more than $3 billion. We will have the best technology, team, and services in the live events business.

In the short term nothing will change. It will be business as usual at Ticketfly and business as usual for your events. The only thing that may actually change is that sales reps from both companies won’t be harassing you anymore!

Longer term, we’ll be working closely with Eventbrite to bring these businesses together in a smart and thoughtful way. We will keep you informed as our plans unfold.

I don’t know how much you know about Eventbrite, but it’s an impressive business. This year alone they will power over 3 million events in 180 countries, and they’re #1 in the world as measured by number of events and number of event organizers.

This is the right next chapter for Ticketfly. It ensures that we can stay independent, and can continue to deliver great software and services to indie venues and promoters like you. Our clients will have the best of the best when it comes to technology, and will of course continue to have access to Pandora’s massive audience to promote shows and sell tickets.

While this acquisition will allow Pandora to focus on its core radio and streaming businesses, it isn’t abandoning its live events strategy, and the Ticketfly — Pandora integrations aren’t going away. In fact, Pandora and Eventbrite plan to enter into a partnership to build on the work we’ve done and take it to an even broader audience of promoters, while offering listeners notifications for even more great live events.

And as for me…well, you’re not getting rid of me just yet. I have agreed to lead the combined Ticketfly and Eventbrite’s music efforts and I am looking forward to the challenge.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to your sales and/or client services rep, or me for that matter, with any questions or concerns.

I am so proud of the work we’ve done together over the past 9 years, and I am very much looking forward to the next chapter. It has been a great honor to be your provider of choice over the years.

Thank you,

Andrew Dreskin, Co-founder & CEO, Ticketfly

Originally published on the Ticketfly blog

Marketing is a critical component of any event life cycle. We’ve tapped our in-house live event marketing pros– some of the best in the business– to share tips and tricks based on the questions they’re asked most often by Ticketfly partners. These best practices and advice for getting the most out of the Ticketfly platform reach partners through our monthly FlyTips newsletter.

In this post, digital marketing manager Liz McTaggart explains how to leverage Custom and Lookalike Audiences to make Facebook advertising more effective.

With millions of daily active users, Facebook advertising is an incredibly powerful way to reach people with your live events.

One of the reasons it works so well, besides the fact that everyone is on Facebook all the time, is the way you’re able to target your campaigns very granularly. If you’re currently advertising on Facebook, you know you can segment who receives your ad by location, age, gender, likes and interests, connections, relationships, language, education, workplace, and more. One of the more advanced features Facebook offers is the ability to create a unique audience segment for your ad campaigns using your customer contacts (email addresses), website traffic, or mobile app. These are known as Custom Audiences.

Creating your own Custom Audience is the first step to supercharging paid ad campaigns and it’s incredibly easy. To begin, you’ll need a .csv file with your customer or subscriber email addresses.

Creating a Custom Audience from your own file:

1. Go to your Audiences in Facebook Ads Manager
2. If you already have audiences, click the Create Audience dropdown and select Custom Audience. If you don’t have any audiences, you’ll see audience creation buttons, rather than dropdowns
3. Click Create a Custom Audience
4. Click Customer File
5. Click Add from your own file

Once you have uploaded the file, Facebook will hash the data and match it to existing users. The result will be your Custom Audience. Once your Custom Audience is ready, you’ll be able to select it for your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns.

Need more a more detailed step-by-step? Try this.

Targeting your existing fans with Custom Audiences ensures that you’re reaching people interested in what you’re offering.

While Custom Audiences allow you to promote to people on Facebook that you’ve already engaged with elsewhere, you can also use them as a way to create new groups of users called Lookalike Audiences.

A Lookalike audience is a segment of Facebook users with a similar set of interests and behaviors as your existing audiences. Targeting your ads to Lookalike audiences is a great way to get in front of folks you’re not already connected to that are highly likely to be receptive to your message.

Sound complicated? Don’t worry, Facebook does all the heavy lifting.

Creating a Lookalike Audience:

1. Click Create Audiences in the top left and then select Create a Lookalike Audience from the dropdown
2. Choose your source (one of your Custom Audiences)
3. Choose your country
4. Adjust your audience size with the slider (a smaller audience will be more similar to your Custom Audience)
5. Click Create Audience

It can take 6 to 24 hours for your Lookalike audience to be generated. The great news is that it’ll refresh every 3 to 7 days as long as you’re still actively targeting ads to that audience.

Now that you’ve earned an “A” for Custom and Lookalike Facebook audiences, put your new skills to the test. Start building your own and find out how much more effective your ad campaigns can be.

Do you promote events or run a venue that doesn’t work with Ticketfly? Maybe it’s time to fix that.

We’re excited to announce that we’ve just launched a comprehensive refresh of Ticketfly’s B2B website, start.ticketfly.

Completely redesigned and easy to navigate, our website delivers the scoop on Ticketfly’s fully integrated ticketing, marketing, and analytics platform and the world class venues, festivals, and event promoters we’re serving. If you’re in the events business, this is ground zero for exploring what it means to partner with Ticketfly.

What can you find on start.ticketfly?

What we offer: Learn how you can save time and sell more with our wholly integrated ticketing-marketing-analytics platform, plus best-in-class support and exclusive extras like automatic event promotion on Pandora.

Who we serve: Ticketfly is for everyone. Find out how your peers have streamlined operations, sold more tickets, and increased revenue on our platform.

How we serve: Meet our dedicated, around the clock support teams and learn how they can help plan your events, run them smoothly on the ground, and give fans the best possible live event experience.

Pandora: Get the 411 on how Ticketfly and Pandora are creating a complete music experience and how our partners are successfully getting their events in front of Pandora’s 80M listeners.

Our blog: Posts on the topics you care about, like marketing best practices, live event trends and insights, inside looks at new products and features, partner spotlights, and more.

Ticketfly.com is the place to keep up with the thousands of events across North America powered by Ticketfly. Start.ticketfly is where to quickly and easily learn how our leading solutions can make your business more successful and your life easier.

Ready to get “started”?

By Glenn Peoples, Music Insights and Analytics at Pandora

The recorded music industry is like a boulder on a hill. Pushing the boulder up the hill is difficult even during the best of times. When new formats and technologies spur periods of transition, the boulder gets heavier, the hill gets steeper, and the industry retreats a few steps. That’s what has happened in the U.S. music industry over the last dozen or so years. But in the past couple years, the boulder has reversed course, the ground has become steadier and the CD-to-download-to-streaming transition has become smoother. Revenues are rising in the U.S. and around the world. Business models are evolving and taking shape. New products are being launched. Now the boulder doesn’t seem so heavy.

What did Pandora do to help push the music industry forward in 2016? Plenty. The year was marked by the launch of forward-thinking products, unique content and landmark agreements with rights holders. More information on each item is below, but here’s the list of ten ways Pandora is helping the music industry evolve and improve: direct licensing agreements with record labels, Pandora Premium, Pandora Plus and offline listening, a replay function, Thumbprint Radio, the Ticketfly integration with Pandora, the Questlove Supreme show, the This American Life podcast and the Next Big Sound charts.

DIRECT LICENSING DEALS WITH RECORD LABELS

In September, Pandora announced it signed direct licensing agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Merlin Network. These were landmark deals that have allowed Pandora to build new products that introduce new features and guide the company into a new era. Three items on this list are the direct result of these deals. First is the upcoming launch of Pandora Premium, the new $9.99-per-month, premium service with on-demand features. The arrival of Pandora Premium brings a strong competitor to an on-demand market that had an 83-percent growth in streams last year, according to BuzzAngle.

Two innovative, first-to-market features for Pandora’s core radio products are also the results of the new deals: offline listening for Pandora Plus and a replay function on both Pandora Plus and the free, ad-supported Pandora service (more on those below). These licensing deals — they cover the use of labels’ sound recordings — follow the direct licensing deals Pandora signed in late 2015 with both small and large music publishers as well as performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI.

On a separate but related note, the direct deals give artists and rights holders increased royalty rates across all three tiers.

[A side note: Four years ago Pandora had no direct licenses, no industry relations team, and was boggled down in a public dispute with trade groups representing artists and rights holders. But not long after, the earliest of high-level licensing talks began, an industry relations team began to take shape (see proof in the late January Billboard cover story) and Pandora began work on preparing itself for its next phase.]

How it moves the industry forward: Better, more innovative services will help expand the premium streaming market. New features will raise the bar for what consumers expect from services.

PANDORA PREMIUM

Pandora Premium addresses what for years have been premium services’ biggest problems: the intimidation and complexity of premium music services. Entering an on-demand service — those on-demand, unlimited-listening-for-$9.99-a-month services — can be like walking into a museum the size of ten airplane hangers with a nearly indecipherable map and a half-blind guide. A user requires help to enjoy a large catalog of songs. Curators and editors are often employed by these services. They also get automated recommendations. Some people actually invest the time and energy to endlessly perform the digital equivalent of crate-digging for choice vinyl records.

Pandora Premium takes a very “Pandora” approach to the premium service with a personalized product that does the heavy lifting for the listener. The service leverages its trove of listener data and uses the Music Genome Project, a taxonomy of the songs in its catalog, to recommend and select songs. People have thumbed songs on Pandora for years — some for a decade or so — and those thumbs help Premium create radio stations, recommend new music, and suggest and create playlists of favorite artist and genres. One particularly helpful feature, “add similar songs,” automatically adds five songs a playlist with the press of a button. Press it again and five more songs are added. Easy. And like the existing Pandora service, Premium has a personalized browse feature for finding new music, playlists and artists. Also easy.

How it moves the industry forward: Pandora Premium is a unique take on giving people music they like and music they don’t yet know they like. In a competitive field, Pandora has a differentiated product that can leverage a listener base of over 78 million monthly listeners.

PANDORA PLUS AND OFFLINE LISTENING

Until September, digital radio was a live-in-the-moment experience. Just like broadcast radio, digital radio services could stream music but couldn’t download it; as required by the standard license, services must limit the number of times a person could skip a song and couldn’t allow replays. Pandora’s direct licensing deals birthed Pandora Plus, the update and rebrand of the long-running Pandora One ad free, subscription radio service.

One new feature is offline listening, a first for a non-interactive digital radio service. Plus automatically downloads the songs of a user’s three favorite channels plus their Thumbprint Radio station. New York City subway riders, drivers through cellular dead zones in Los Angeles, and frequent air travelers will appreciate the automatic downloads. The other feature is unlimited skips. Pandora One limited the number of times a user could skip songs. Because of new licensing deals, Pandora Plus doesn’t limit the number of skips on iOS and Android devices. The ad-supported, free service also gets an improved skip policy. When free listeners hit their skip limit they can unlock additional skips by engaging with an ad.

How it moves the industry forward: Better features lead to better products and a better listening experience. Better products provide more value to consumers. Premium services must always innovate for the music subscription market to reach critical mass.

SONG REPLAYS

Going back over ten years, the main Pandora radio service had been totally non-interactive. A listener could skip a track or thumb a song, but a specific song could neither be played on-demand nor replayed. You listened, you thumbed and you skipped. Skip forward to September 2016 and the direct licensing agreements (see above) enabled Pandora to create a replay feature for both the free, ad-supported service and Pandora Plus. This is a big moment in music streaming. It’s a delightful addition for listeners who can’t bear the wait a traditional digital radio service imposes on hearing a song twice. Pandora Plus subscribers get to replay songs in their listening history (swipe to the right). Free listeners get a reply by watching a video ad.

How it moves the industry forward: Replays is a first-to-market, interactive feature for an otherwise non-interactive radio service. Finally, listeners can repeat a song they love.

THUMBPRINT RADIO

Thumbprint Radio, launched in December 2015, has been called “the most popular radio station in the world.” That’s a bold claim for a new feature of just one digital radio service but the numbers back it up. Through January, the year-old station had 9.2 billion spins by 28 million listeners — at just one station. There’s a good reason so many people are listening. The aptly-named Thumbprint Radio gives each listener a station based on songs they’ve thumbed on Pandora. If a Thumbprint Radio station could be called “Joe’s Greatest Hits,” for example, it would spin songs Joe has thumbed in the past and songs he is sure to like now. The result is a thoughtful — if that word can apply to algorithms — selection of familiar songs that span the user’s listening history.

A listener will notice how the songs easily flow from one genre to the next. A group of metal songs might be followed by downtempo electronic songs, thumping indie rock songs and then a group of West African afro-funk tracks. This is real progress. When the iPod was released in 2001, people could mix their MP3 collection with the iPod’s shuffle feature. [A dozen years ago, people so loved to shuffle songs in their MP3 collections that Apple released in 2005 the iPod shuffle, a small, screen-less music player that could only shuffle songs.] Sure, shuffle gave people songs people liked, but it was a disjointed experience that could jolt the listener when Metallica was followed by Norah Jones. This kind of listening experience, first a drunken walk through a music collection, then a poorly guided tour, has been improved over the last 12 years as recommendation engines became more prevalent. Now there’s Thumbprint Radio, the best way to hear songs you already know you like.

How it moves the industry forward: Thumbprint Radio is the best of the “guided tour” types of radio stations and ups the ante for delivering a better listening experience.

TICKETFLY INTEGRATION

Hear a song and seconds later purchase a ticket to an upcoming show — without leaving the app. It wasn’t possible before Pandora’s acquisition of Ticketfly and the technology integration that allows Pandora to use its platform to sell concert tickets. The combination of services give the Pandora listener has a simple route — perhaps the simplest path — from learning about a concert to buying a ticket. (If you haven’t gone into your Pandora app’s feed, you’re probably missing concert announcements and ticket offers — some by Ticketfly venues — that show how frictionless this process really is.) From the ticket sellers’ points of view, the integration provides tools to promote concerts and sell tickets. Artists can use Pandora’s Artist Marketing Platform (more on that below) to promote upcoming shows by recording an audio message that’s streamed to fans listening to their Pandora station. The listener hasn’t seen much of the Ticketfly integration but will notice more in 2017. 2016 was a year of hard work integrating the two platforms.

How it moves the industry forward: For the music industry, the addition of Ticketfly creates a more diverse, more powerful partner in Pandora. Taking a wider view, stacking Ticketfly onto Pandora changes the thinking about what a standalone streaming service can be.

ARTIST MARKETING PLATFORM (AMP)

It’s common for artists and managers to look at a streaming service and ask, “What else can you do for me?” Provide information? Help promote, market and sell things? Pandora can say, “Yes, yes and yes.” The Artist Marketing Platform, simply called AMP, launched in 2014 and was updated in October with more features and a cleaner layout. Other tools exist to help artists market, promote and sell, but nothing else reaches such a large number of fans in this way. Not only can AMP help artists sell concert tickets (see above paragraph) it also offers tools that builds campaigns and analyzes their effectiveness. A new feature allows artists to record audio messages — this can also be done on the mobile app, AMPcast — and stream them to fans across the nation or in specific markets. Campaigns built around artist audio message, as they’re called, are good for planning a tour and targeting fans in specific markets. Artists also have the ability to choose a “featured track” that gets accelerated spins to reach more listeners. The potential reach of these audio messages may surprise people because an artist can have far more Pandora stations than followers on social media. Just as an example, Bon Jovi has 5.7 million Pandora artist stations compared to 2.4 million Twitter followers.

How it moves the industry forward: AMP sets a new standard for free artists tools offered by a music streaming service.

QUESTLOVE SUPREME

Questlove was a big get for Pandora. His show, Questlove Supreme, combines interviews, humor, and music that reflect the tastes of it host, the drummer for The Roots, pop culture icon, NYU professor and a tastemaker of the highest regard, Questlove. Listeners get to hear Questlove chat and trade witticisms with guests (Maya Rudolph, Solange, Purple Jewels, Shep Gordon, Q-Tip, and The Revolution, among others) while spinning familiar songs and unearthing rarer ones. Consequence of Sound summed it up well by calling the show it “a music junkie’s dream” for the “handpicked mixtape of Questlove-approved jams.” Each week’s three-hour episode debuts on Wednesdays. Aside from the show itself, Questlove Supreme is also unique from a business angle because the host is a strategic advisor to Pandora and its first artist ambassador.

How it moves the industry forward: Shows like this, and a household name like this, broaden the role and identity of a streaming service. Offering more great content can only help attract listeners, keep them listening and bring them back.

THIS AMERICAN LIFE

The definition of a music streaming service is breaking apart. Pandora got into the podcast business in 2015 by becoming the exclusive streaming partner of the immensely popular Serial podcast. Last year, Pandora took another step into podcasts and began streaming This American Life, the long-running public radio show heard by over 2.2 million people every week. (Serial, a podcast sensation not available on broadcast radio, was a spinoff of This American Life.) On Pandora, This American Life had 28 million episode streams through mid-January. One important facet of Pandora’s approach to podcasts is their visibility. Pandora greeted the show with fanfare and wide media coverage. At Pandora the show has its own station page where listeners can choose from older episodes as well as segments within episodes. It’s a fresh way to hear a 21-year-old classic.

How it moved the industry forward: See above. See above. Great content and household names — at least in the homes of regular NPR listeners — broaden a streaming service and give people another reason to listen and, if all goes well, subscribe, too.

NEXT BIG SOUND CHARTS

In August, Pandora debuted three charts from Next Big Sound, the Pandora-owned music data and analytics company: Pandora Predictions, Pandora Trendsetters and Pandora Top Spins. Each chart highlights artists at different spots in their careers and levels of popularity. Each adds insights and different perspectives on what artists and songs are connecting with listeners. (For editorial insights, see Next Big Sound’s blog with data-driven writings.) Pandora Predictions is based on social media activity and has up-and-coming artists that haven’t landed on a major Billboard chart (Hot 100, Billboard 200, Country Airplay, et al). Pandora Trendsetters tracks the social activity and Pandora spins of artists in the early stages of their careers. Pandora Top Spins ranks songs by Pandora spins. There are numerous scenarios for using these charts. A&R reps can use Pandora Predictions to track unsigned artists. People in and out of the industry can look to Pandora Trendsetters for the artists of tomorrow and Pandora Top Spins to see how the most popular artists are resonating with listeners.

How it moves the industry forward: The industry benefits from new charts that provide a different look at the music industry. The Pandora Spins chart is especially vital because it reveals the top songs at the country’s most popular digital radio service.

Ever since we acquired WillCall, we’ve been heads down rethinking the mobile purchase experience for all of our users. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, we had to take a huge step back and re-examine our architecture.

Shipping this app has been a tremendous effort from the entire company to create what we think is the greatest ticket purchase experience available. And we’re incredibly proud to share it with you.

Simple Purchase Flow

We wanted to make it as easy as absolutely possible to navigate through the purchase flow. No time wasted on loading new screens. The flow from browsing a list of events though completing a purchase is quick, easy, and efficient.

One Touch Purchase

Buying tickets to concerts has always been somewhat of a pain. In the early days, we could go to a venue in advance and purchase tickets at the box office or a grocery store kiosk. The first big leap in ticket-grabbing efficiency came with ordering online. It was a magical 10 minute process that felt like a gift from angels. 16 years later, mobile commerce has dramatically changed the way we shop and spend money. In a few seconds you can purchase nearly anything imaginable.

There’s a flip side to making it so incredibly easy to purchase tickets — people do it on accident. Sometimes you’re mulling it over and your thumb grazes the Buy button. We’ve all been there, so we had three goals when creating our purchase flow:

1. Make it incredibly easy to purchase tickets.
2. Eliminate accidental taps.
3. Visually communicate that something big is happening.

We think we really solved these problems with our tap and hold purchase confirmation. There’s generous visual feedback to let you know your going through with a purchase, while providing a small window of time to change your mind at the last minute.

Quick Access to Tickets

We’ve all been that person in line at a show, fumbling through emails trying to hunt down a barcode to get scanned into the venue. We still give you that email with the barcode, but you can now also access your tickets in as little as two taps via the app. Or add them to your Apple Wallet. Blammo. Done deal. Ready to go!

City by City Curation

A lot of folks know exactly what they’re looking for. They’re rabid fans of amazing acts and don’t need any help finding something great to see. The rest of us may need a little help from tasteful experts. So we created tools to curate great shows in our top cities. Our curators are constantly updating these wonderful lists, so feel free to dip in as often as you like. Each city has it’s own unique title card that we hope are fun, playful representations of those places.

Just the Beginning

The result of all of this hard work is a brand new Ticketfly app for iOS that we’re incredibly proud of. Purchase tickets in just a few taps, and never worry about misplacing your tickets again. It’s a big step forward, and we hope you love it.

Grab the app and let us know what you think. 🎉