Re: Outbox

Bob,  how can you get it so wrong?  Outbox technology is open and, therefore, more easily adaptable to new methods (mobile apps, up-selling, shopping carts, etc.) of interacting with the consumer than TM’s somewhat archaic infrastructure.  Having used TM for many years for the sale of millions of our tickets, AEG Live is not an unhappy customer, so I am not here to "bash" a competitor.  When DOJ approved the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, it was through a consent decree in which AEG was "encouraged" to go its own way to create competition in the sector.  Instead of licensing TM’s software as our "white label" solution, we decided after a great deal on due diligence and research, to become a partner and customer of Outbox Enterprises, Llc. Outbox has done an outstanding job for both the Cirque du Soleil properties and the Bell Centre in Montreal. Jean-Francoys Brousseau served as TM’s Chief Technology Officer for many years and Fred Rosen built TM’s dominance in this space over 20 years as its visionary leader, so the Co-CEOs of Outbox were excellent choices for AEG to join forces with.

As far as your premise about there needing to be one "uber-site" to sell tickets, that sounds a bit anachronistic to me.  The venues who have the ultimate responsibility to the consumer when it comes to protection from fraud, the refunding of money from cancelled shows, and their safety when they enter their facility would be the likely place to go to buy tickets for a sporting event, family show, or concert, especially since the majority of tickets are purchased locally.  Another logical site for the purchase of concert tickets would be the artist’s dot com address (URL) since that database is, obviously, the most targeted from a marketing perspective and they are uniquely positioned to offer a plethora of "experiences" to their fans on a premium, value-added basis. The bottom line is that the majority of tickets are sold within a 50 mile radius surrounding the venue and a technologically advanced and flexible "white label" solution feels like the future to me, whereas a centralized "server" type of ticketing system seems like the past.

With respect to "all-in pricing", I fully subscribe to the premise as long as it is truly transparent and lists the actual face value that the artist is charging first, followed by surcharges, venue fees, etc., and the total in bold print.  This is not currently the case with Live Nation shows or the tools that Ticketmaster has provided its promoter/venue customers.  I am told that this will change with new programming upgrades at TM and I take them at their word.  To date, however, "all-in pricing" has not resulted in less expensive tickets. My gut tells me that competition in the sale of tickets will.

As far as the "health" of the concert industry itself, whether Live Nation, AEG Live, or the independent promoters across the world, who now have a lifeline for the sale of tickets to their shows, I will leave you with something I have come to understand after 9 years at the helm of AEG Live:  "There are no bad tours, just bad deals."

Randy Phillips
President & CEO
AEG Live

Amazing that AEG can put out a huge press release about Outbox and there is not a single clickable (or even non-clickable) URL pointing to the Outbox site.  Even if the thing isn’t live yet, they oughta have a landing page, sheesh.

Googling the word "outbox" gets one nowhere.  The domain outbox.com gets one nowhere.  Took me a min to try http://www.outboxtechnology.com/ (great domain name, there), okay here’s something.  So they are live. Okay. Oh. Wait. Flash.

Brilliant, a commercial homepage in 2011 entirely done in Flash.

Brian Dear

Live Nation’s problem is not Outbox, but its crushing debt.  If Live Nation dies, it will be because it couldn’t find a way to be profitable, not because a competitor ate its lunch.

Outbox is a white label solution.  Which allows venues to create their own ticketing system.  That’s a positively eighties solution, back before the Internet took hold.

What do we know about the Internet?

We go to one site, one company dominates in every sphere.

Amazon in books.

Apple in music.

Facebook in social networking.

Google in search.

Let’s stay with Google, because it’s got a competitor, Bing, which is similar to AEG.  You see Microsoft’s got almost unlimited cash.  To the point where it can compete, gaining minimal market share and losing money.  No one else with a deep pocket is going into search, Google is just too good.  Ticketmaster’s too good.  A competitor is not necessary.  Technologically.

But the truth of concert promotion is all the profits are in ticketing, so it’s an important area.  The deals you make, the splits are more important than the technology.  Ticketmaster works.  The public hates the fees.  But the only company moving towards all inclusive pricing is…Live Nation?  The same company that wants paperless?

So hate on LN all you want, but they’re the ones that want change.

But this is really about why Outbox is antiquated.

We don’t want to go to a plethora of sites to buy our tickets, we want to go to one.  We don’t want to go to staplescenter.com to purchase ducats for a downtown show and hollywoodbowl.com for tickets to the outdoor show and santamonicacivic.org for shows by the beach.  We want to go to ONE site!

They call it ticketmaster.com.

Sure, you can use Google.  But then you end up buying tickets from a scalper, who’s gamed the search engine optimization system.

So the concept of a white label system where each venue customizes its own site and does its own ticketing is a head-scratcher.

But here’s where it really gets interesting.  Why is ticketmaster.com so lame?

It hasn’t got the best interface and it’s not fast.  But the real problem is it only sells tickets.

I’ve bought multiple television sets from Amazon.  The price is the cheapest, delivery is free and they set it up, what more could you ask for?  A no haggle, no hassle experience.

And Amazon not only sells hardcover books, it sells electronic titles too, Amazon pioneered this market and still dominates.

And iTunes is not only about music.  There are TV shows and movies and apps and free podcasts.

And Facebook makes a profit not only on ads, but gaming.

And ticketmaster.com sells tickets.

Yes, the story isn’t AEG’s move with Fred Rosen’s Outbox, but the money Live Nation is leaving on the table.

And the reason it’s leaving said money has something to do with the vision thing, or more specifically, the lack thereof.

But it’s got even more to do with money.  Live Nation just hasn’t got any.  It’s firing people to make its numbers.  It’s a public company, with shareholders, needing to make a profit, whereas Phil Anschutz funds AEG.

Ticketmaster.com should not only be selling t-shirts and tour booklets, but food coupons and virtual goods, and to create stickiness there should be a social networking component.

But years after Michael Rapino started talking about the future, it’s yet to arrive.

And the old roadblock of acts and labels saying no, not granting rights, is gone.  So many acts don’t even have record labels anymore.  But even more important, Live Nation is in business with so many acts, through its ownership/relationship with Irving Azoff’s Frontline.

No one’s going to kill Live Nation.  If it dies, it kills itself.

Live Nation has the best opportunity to triumph in the future, it’s got the most assets, the best starting point, why can’t it run with the ball?

Everybody knows you’ve got to have an iPad app.

But the L.A. "Times" doesn’t have one.  That’s what happens when you focus on the bottom line instead of the future, you get left behind.

Oh, there’s a $1.99 iPhone app, but that’s like watching on a tiny cathode ray TV when there’s HD.  Something that you only do when necessary, when for some reason the free "Huffington Post" app with its great sliding feature suddenly stops functioning, which it never does.

You’ve got to have an iPad to appreciate it.  Because it seems superfluous until you own one.  Doesn’t your laptop do all this? But your laptop’s got a hard drive (except for the new MacBook Airs, which follow in the iPad’s footsteps) and has to boot up and is fragile.  You treat an iPad like an expensive phone.  You’re careful, but not that careful.  You’ll take it to bed, read on it while you eat, you suddenly can surf everywhere.  Is this a good thing?

We won’t bother to debate that, the future is here.

And those companies that realize this are surfing into the future, on the cutting edge.  Turning the iPad into a giant remote control, like Comcast, like Sonos.

A Sonos system with a streaming service and iPad control is pure heaven.  Sure, you can listen on headphones with your iPod everywhere, but sometimes you want bigger speakers, a bigger sound.

Which is how I ended up listening to Don Henley’s "Everybody Knows" while eating dinner.  Inspired by the Eagles BBC concert of ’73, I wanted to continue to listen to the band.  But that would require me to stream MP3s from my computer, since the Eagles authorize no streaming services, and my computer was asleep.  So I did the second best thing, I started streaming Don Henley’s greatest hits from Napster.  And that’s when I heard "Everybody Knows".

It may be a Don Henley record, but it’s not a Don Henley song, "Everybody Knows" was written by Leonard Cohen.

Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor and the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

But nobody talks about it.  Politicians paint a rosy future, where if you just buckled down you too could be rich.

Horseshit.

Everybody knows the boat is leaking
Everybody knows the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Is America going in the right direction?  Explain to me again how cutting taxes on the rich whittles away the deficit?  Even Ronald Reagan’s budget director thinks this is bullshit.

And that feeling when you lose a member of the family.  It’s a deep hole of emptiness, people send you condolence cards but this poet nails the feeling better than your friends.  You’re broken, and only a record can heal you.

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Give or take a night or two

This is the stuff they make movies of.  Only in the flicks, the woman is Demi Moore or somebody else naturally beautiful with a surgically-enhanced body.  What about the imperfect?  The women with muffintops?  Those who look closer to the doctors on the "Twilight Zone" as opposed to someone on "Friends"?  Would they trade up?  Would they go for a fling with their coworker?  Can they resist adding a bit of spice to their life?

Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody’s ashamed of their bodies.  But they’ll take their clothes off to do the dirty.  Because sex only works when you throw off your inhibitions, you can’t think about your imperfections when you’re trying to achieve orgasm.

Everybody knows that it’s now or never

That’s what all the business coaches tell us.

What exactly are  Tony Robbins’s qualifications again?  All those life coaches, why do they know?

But really it’s less about carpe diem than desperation.  That’s what usually gets us to act.

Everybody knows that you live forever
When you’ve done a line or two

Pity the drug abuser.  If his life was really that good, he wouldn’t be partaking.  You do drugs to escape.  Sure, they can kill, but you want to forget for a while that we all end up a corpse and that life is more about drudgery than excitement.

Everybody knows the scene is dead

This is what hurts the music industry.  Everybody inside wants to believe it’s the same as it ever was.  That music drives the culture, that it’s more exciting than Angry Birds, more thrilling than the latest product from Apple, but that’s not true.  Too often it’s just a dash for cash.

Don Henley got away with including a cover on his greatest hits package, why waste an original.  But give him credit for impeccable taste, because Leonard Cohen’s song is as honest as "Hotel California", containing the same insightful examination of society’s underbelly, but it’s even more eloquent.

Canvass the populace.  Send Jay out walking.  Everybody does not know who Leonard Cohen is.  Hell, he never even had a hit!

But Leonard Cohen just completed a three year tour.

There were 168 shows.  And a total gross of 96+ million dollars.

Hell, there were 55 shows in 2010 alone.  And the average attendance was 8,150.  And the average ticket price was $104.30. The only acts in the Top 50 with a higher average ticket price were superstars, Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney, the Eagles, Roger Waters, Whitney Houston and Cher.  Hell, Leonard Cohen is number thirty on the chart, higher than Eric Clapton, Carrie Underwood, Elton John and the Jonas Brothers.

Everybody knows that Leonard Cohen is an artist.

Everybody knows that Leonard Cohen is about meaning first.

Sure, everybody knows he’s not going to live forever, that this might be their last chance to see him, but they EMBRACED IT!

Everybody knows what’s got value, what touches their hearts, what lasts.  Ignore the hypemeisters, because everybody knows.

The truth.

Don Henley – Everybody Knows

Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows

The story of the week is not Amos Lee entering the chart with an anemic sales total of 40,000.  That’s like seeing your name in print in the newspaper.  All your homies call you up thrilled and the following day you’re forgotten.  Ditto with Cake.  These are not bad stories, the fans come out and support these acts, they can make a living playing music.  But they’re never going to go platinum.  They’re never going to blow up like Mumford & Sons.

Could it be the Hot AC play?  And there’s been adult radio spins, but there are barely any adult radio stations.

We could debate all week long what’s fueling Mumford’s sales, but the fact is Mumford & Sons’ "Sigh No More" sold 31,000 copies this week to place number six on the SoundScan chart.  They’re almost at 750,000 copies.  And number 10 on the 2010 chart was Ke$ha, with 1,143,000 copies sold.

In other words, in the world of recorded music, Mumford & Sons are SUPERSTARS!

Katy Perry’s vaunted "Teenage Dream" has sold barely over a million.  Despite being on the chart for 22 weeks.  Then again, Mumford’s been on the chart for 49.  You see it takes that long to build.

And building is the story.

It’s no longer about the peak.  The Black Eyed Peas are going to headline the Super Bowl this weekend on the downswing of their career.  Not because they’re decades beyond their moment in the sun like the classic rockers, but because their latest album, "The Beginning", is the beginning, of the E.N.D.  It’s over.  It’s like everybody in America looked at each other and said THESE GUYS SUCK!  In a world searching for meaning, the Peas are meaningless.  It’s hard to party all the time when you’re broke and don’t have a job.

When that happens, you’re looking for something more soul-fulfilling.

It turns out Top Forty radio is not king.

Most of those Top Forty acts, which do sell singles on iTunes, can’t tour for shit.  Whereas Mumford sells every ticket.  Then again, Mumford underplays and undercharges.  What a concept!  Create a frenzy, get everybody talking about you!

In other words, your friend says he’s going to the show.  Do you want to come?  You debate.  The Ticketmaster charges, the lame opening act, you’re gonna pass.  But when your friend is going to the show of an act you’ve never heard of, and is foaming at the mouth about it, and you get excited and want to go too and you can’t get a ticket you’re frustrated and ask yourself WHAT IN HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

What is going on here?

The media is driving towards a cliff of its own device.  The record labels and the movie studios and the newspapers and magazines and TV stations are in cahoots, believing it’s still the nineties, when hype is everything and it pays to be mainstream.

You know how you become mainstream today?  By driving in the complete other direction and doing something so different, so unique, so ALIVE that the public is drawn to it.

Mumford doesn’t need the usual suspects.  It’s just the music.  That’s enough.  Acoustic instruments, no beats, HUH?

You can decry the Internet.  But it’s the Net that breaks these new acts.  Because the mainstream, if it cares at all, cares last. People are looking for something new.  And they’ve found Mumford & Sons…  WHO’S NEXT?