Spotify Expands Into Selling Makeup

While best known as a $16 billion music streaming service, Spotify is expanding its ambitions and diversifying its platform — possibly in preparation for an initial public offering (IPO).

That first step toward a wider purview will apparently be makeup. Yes, Spotify wants to help consumers look pretty while rocking out to tunes.

The expansion comes care of a partnership with band merchandise provider Merchbar, a company with which Spotify began working last year to sell artists’ merchandise via their profile pages.

In cooperation with makeup artist Pat McGrath Labs and musician Maggie Lindemann, Merchbar is now building on that idea. New offerings give fans the opportunity to not only buy merchandise directly from artists but also shop the artists’ looks. The offering will be reminiscent of eCommerce through Instagram.

“In this digitally-empowered, digital era of makeup, where fans crave instant glamour gratification, I always want to reach fans where they’re most engaged,” said McGrath in a statement. “That’s why this relationship with Spotify is absolutely major, because it merges beauty and music in a whole new way, that’s never been done before. I’m thrilled to see it finally come to life.”

Jordan Gremli, Spotify’s head of artist and fan development, added similar thoughts in a company statement.

“Maggie Lindemann is an extremely exciting young artist, with over 7 million fans listening to her all over the world every month on Spotify,” said Gremli. “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.”

This will not be a new revenue stream for Spotify as the company does not take a cut of artists’ merchandise sales that occur on the platform. What it does do for the streaming services, however, is create another incentive for artists on Spotify to better capitalize on their personal brands.

The beauty brand offerings might be critical for the platform’s future growth, considering the main complaint lodged against Spotify is that it makes it nearly impossible for artists to make money on their music since royalties are minuscule for all but the most popular artists in the world.

Other efforts to be a more artist-supportive platform include the launch of a new concert event in London called “Who We Be,” based on one of its popular playlists — an event that is now sold out  Spotify has similarly sold tickets in the U.S. for RapCaviar Live, a six-city hip-hop tour also tied in with music on the streaming platform.