Spotify doesn’t just want to be your music streamer of choice. The digital music startup aims to be a whole lot more than that as it offers a growing number of products you can buy—like selling makeup.
That’s right: If you know where to look, you can buy makeup on Spotify now. While it may sound incredibly random at first, the move actually makes a lot of sense. Spotify is evolving not just into a music streaming destination, but a destination for all things around your favorite artists. Through a partnership with MerchBar that started last year, artists can sell their merchandise through Spotify, giving them an additional revenue stream in the app besides pithy streaming music royalties.
And with its latest move, Spotify listeners can now shop the look of their favorite artists, starting with makeup artist Pat McGrath and musician Maggie Lindemann. Lindemann is launching a new single, and in conjunction, McGrath is selling three shades of lipstick from her line Pat McGrath Labs, along with an eye pencil, and other products.
“Maggie Lindemann is an extremely exciting young artist, with over 7 million fans listening to her all over the world every month on Spotify,” Jordan Gremli, head of artist and fan development for Spotify, said in a statement. “In partnering with Pat McGrath to offer beauty products in this innovative new way, she will be connecting directly with her fans in the place where they go to enjoy her music already on Spotify.”
Spotify isn’t just trying to compete with the likes of Pandora and Apple Music anymore—it’s also trying to compete with the likes of Instagram and perhaps even Amazon, too.
Similarly to Instagram and Amazon, Spotify is merely acting as the platform here. It’s not taking a cut of artist merchandise and product sales (although perhaps it’d be wise from a revenue standpoint if it did). It’s simply giving artists more agency over how they connect with fans in the app, along with how they can make money off of those fans.
These sorts of merchandising and product partnerships are also helpful to Spotify, as it gives listeners more reason to hang around on the app besides listening to music. It should also entice artists to use Spotify more often for marketing.
H/T TechCrunch