Dice founder and CEO Phil Hutcheon has told Music Week that his company is upping its mission to “remove the friction” from the ticket buying business.
Hutcheon was speaking after Dice revealed that its New Shows Thursday feature – which launched in February and targets users with the most relevant new gig – has become its most used product.
Housed in the ‘Discover’ section of the mobile ticketing app, it uses algorithms to find the gigs that will appeal most to individual users. It groups users according to gig history, saved events and, if fans have connected them to Dice, their Spotify or Apple Music profiles.
Hutcheon is billing it as “a personalised gig guide”. Here, he tells Music Week just why the new addition is so important to Dice and addresses the state of play for Dice as we move into Q4...
What can New Shows Thursdays bring to Dice users?
“Hundreds of shows are announced every week. You don’t have time to scour the world to find out when your favourite artist is playing. So every Thursday, using our recommendation algorithms, New Shows Thursdays gives you a personalised selection of what was announced in the last week. The result is a massive increase in awareness for artists and a weekly habit for fans to check Dice to see what was just announced. First week sales for events are now up 320% since launch.”
By using Dice you will go out at least twice as much as you currently do
Phil Hutcheon, Dice
What does it say about Dice's offering at the moment?
“We built Dice for fans to easily discover events and our job is to continue to have incredibly high retention. Eighty-three% of fans who bought on Dice are still buying a year later and we have a huge cohort of fans on Dice every week. Dice helps venues, promoters and artists pack their shows. The discovery and buying behaviour of fans has changed so much so you have to remove all the friction and make it as easy as possible.”
What are your hopes for it and can you tell us about anything else that's in the works?
“We still have so much to do. We know our recommendations are strong but we’re all human! We know this show would be perfect for you but your eye goes to the artist you’re more familiar with. So our current mission is, 'How do you make the unfamiliar compelling?' We did some experiments earlier in the year and created a new squad in the product team to tackle this. It’ll be released before the end of the year.”
Why is yours the live music app fans should be using in 2019?
"By using Dice you will go out at least twice as much as you currently do. In fact, we have some fans who are out every single night.”
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