Meet Live Nation Entertainment

On Monday the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed a merger between two mega companies despised by frequent concert-goers: Ticketmaster and Live Nation. The new company will be called Live Nation Entertainment. The merger was proposed last February and it has been under consideration by governments worldwide ever since. The Department of Justice has made some changes to the merger proposed by the campiness last year. They are as follows:

•Ticketmaster must license it’s Ticketing software for 5 years to competitors Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and another yet-to-be-determined company. After this time the other companies will have the option of purchasing the software
permanently.

•Ticketmaster must sell its subsidiary ticketing company Paciola to either Comcast or another large entertainment company.

•The newly created company is forbidden by law retaliate against any venue that chooses to use a competitor ticketing service. This is especially important as Live Nation serves as a pseudo-record label for such notable acts as Jay Z, Madonna, Nickelback, U2, and Shikira.

Although the merger will undoubtedly further monopolize the live entertainment market, I believe the provisions added by the Department of Justice will encourage more serious competition to emerge over time. As our country moves more towards online efficiency every day, it is foreseeable that the guidelines established by the U.S. government will allow other companies to create a more fan-friendly ticking experience with new online tools. One can hope that once venue’s contracts with Live Nation or Ticketmaster expire (most contracts are 5 or 10 year deals) they will be able to find more efficient and respectable alternatives to the current super-company.
Live Nation owns thousands of U.S. venues (including all House Of Blues franchisees and the title ‘Fillmore’ made famous Bill Graham) and Ticketmaster has exclusive rights to sell tickets to most, if not more, of these same venues. So, if a noteworthy band decides to book a nationwide tour they are forced into using Live Nation/Ticketmaster as their ticketing and production team. An example of the companies' powers is when Pearl Jam refused to play Ticketmaster venues from 1994-1998. Despite their strong commitment to lead the fight against the ticketing agency the band was persuaded to end the boycott by their fans. Pearl Jam fans were upset by the difficulty of obtaining tickets since the playing was forced to play mainly small venues.



According to the standards of ethical business practices neither Live Nation nor Ticketmaster are good at customer service and support. In fact, there are the only companies I have ever truly believed to be evil. Yes, evil (keep in mind I go to a lot of concerts). Yesterday I bought a ticket to see Yonder Mountain String Band at the House of Blues through Live Nation’s website, an $18.50 face-value ticket. Once the outrageous ‘service’ fees were added to my order my debit card was charged a $29. These added ticket costs are unavoidable, even if you drive to a Ticketmaster or Live Nation Location ahead of time, use Will Call, or print the tickets at home. Last year I bought a ticket through Ticketmaster’s subsidiary company Ticketweb and the ‘service’ fees actually exceeded the face value of the ticket.
Lets hope that future will bring a more fairly minded ticketing industry. I am optimistic that the shear amount of opposition and hatred directed at Live Nation Entertainment will alert competitors of the demand for a respectable ticketing industry service.

Myspace strikes deal with Sound Exchange

Since entering the internet lexicon in 2004 Myspace has been called labeled a lot of things: revolutionary, useful, addictive, and creepy to name a few. However, of all the terms that could be used to describe the website the last one that likely comes to mind it fair.

Myspace is aware of their fall in popularity as a social networking site. However, Myspace Music, (the section of the site that allows artist to make a page to post their music, pictures, tour dates, ect) is forever growing in size and annual advertising revenue. Surprisingly, Myspace is the largest advertising supported music website on the internet. They make more money than anyone else from recorded music, yet fail to pay the performers their deserved royalties. Seems unfair right? Well, that’s about to change.

Myspace just announced that it will team up with the company Sound Exchange to pay performers and copyright owners the appropriate royalties generated from their Myspace pages. Initially funded by the U.S. government, Sound Exchange is a not-for-profit company that collects royalties from internet and satellite radio or streaming stations on the behalf of performing artists and sound recording copyright owners. Basically, Sound Exchange keeps track of what songs are played, on what stations, and at what times, then compiles all this information in order to determine the money that each station owes it’s featured artists. Internet radio stations and other websites like Myspace pay Sound Exchange in a single payout semi-annually, and the company then distributes the appropriate monies to artists and copyright holders registered with Sound Exchange.

Here.s video explaining Sound Exchange . Note the super-cool graphics:



This deal with Myspace is a huge breakthrough for Sound Exchange, which main challenge is lack of awareness. Hopefully, by notifying all Myspace music users of Sound Exchange, thousands of recording artists will have the opportunity to receive money that is rightfully theirs.

The Future of Online Music?

Many who follow the online music world closely are already familiar with music streaming sites like Lala.com and its European counterpart Spotify.com. Undoubtedly, you have Googled one of your favorite bands or a new artist that you are interested in, and songs off their Lala artist page appear at the top of your Google search results. Welcome to the new model of accessing music: streaming.

This new model combines the instantaneous nature of internet radio stations like Pandora and Last.fm with the music player layout characteristic of traditional online music stores (most notably Itunes). However, the Lala music store is entirely online and keeps your music files online too. When one signs up for Lala, they can play over 8 million songs for free off Lala.com. If one downloads the Lala Music Player one can still stream for free, but to eliminate searching for specific songs over and over again the listener has the option to buy a song for 10 cents and keep it in their Lala library. When a listener downloads the music player, the application searches the listener’s computer for existent music and adds it to their Lala player- all for free. Lala is the U.S. leader of the latest crop of digital music distribution models all geared towards streaming music instantly rather than possessing it. Why take up the hard drive space to store you music when it is cheaper to buy music though Lala and then have it stored online. The argument Lala begs you to consider: why is worth owning music in 2010 anyway?

Apples acquisition of Lala last month will surely bring us a new potential leader for playing music online. Although already #1, it is expected that Itunes will consider Lala's successes when fully developing their latest version of the Itunes music store, and maybe even launch a new online version of Itunes akin to Lala. Either way, it is no surprise that the kings of Web 2.0; Apple, Google, and Microsoft, all showed interest in buying Lala last month. As already stated, Apple prevailed over these companies, but that does not mean we shouldn’t expect Lala’s future to be limited to Apple products. It is curious to note why Lala songs jump to number one on all Google search results for musicians. It seems there might be more in store for this relatively small music website than I formerly anticipated.

Welcome to New Speedway Blog

This is my page dedicated discussing Music, Politics, Technology and convergence of these topics. As we enter a new decade the way we access music is rapidly changing. Similarly, there is a shift in how we as Americans share ideas and understand Politics. I hope to publish content that will help us understand where music and politics are heading in light our new ways of accessing information. Change is all around us, and this blog gets it's title from the Grateful Dead song New Speedway Boogie, which is all about the inevitably of change.

"Who can deny, who can deny, it's not just a change in style?"

New Speedway Boogie - Grateful...