They’re selling Hall & Oates’ Christmas album at the pharmacy.<\/p>\n
What do they say, all politics are local?\u00c2\u00a0 It still comes down to who you know.\u00c2\u00a0 John Oates lives in Aspen.\u00c2\u00a0 Therefore he gets special treatment.\u00c2\u00a0 You know the proprietor, he does a solid for you.\u00c2\u00a0 And since there were only three CDs on the counter, the other two unrecognizable Christmas discs, I’m sure Hall & Oates are selling a bunch.\u00c2\u00a0 Christmas albums are impulse items.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll be the last CDs to evaporate.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you don’t want to download Santa…\u00c2\u00a0 (Then again, I downloaded "Let It Snow"…)<\/p>\n
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Vince couldn’t stop raving about Zeppelin at dinner.<\/p>\n
You’ve got to know Vince, every company he works for is the shit.\u00c2\u00a0 You should have heard him talk about Best Buy when he worked for their label!\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, their label might be gone, but Best Buy IS the shit.\u00c2\u00a0 At least compared to other big box electronics retailers.\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t go to Circuit City.\u00c2\u00a0 Dingy.\u00c2\u00a0 Best Buy is bright, and even though they sell white goods, they’ve got seemingly all the TVs, and reasonable prices.\u00c2\u00a0 And how fucked up is it that a flat panel is more desirable than a stereo system?\u00c2\u00a0 God, in the seventies we had multi-thousand dollar stereos and went WITHOUT TVs.\u00c2\u00a0 We needed to get closer to the sound.\u00c2\u00a0 We needed to hear what the instruments sounded like.\u00c2\u00a0 We needed to FEEL the music.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t feel the music on what passes for a stereo today, no wonder everybody’s listening on their iPod.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I thought Vince was bragging about his iPhone, which I won’t buy, because of AT&T, which once again got horrific ratings in "Consumer Reports", but it turned out to it was an iPod Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 Which contained not only all his music, but pictures…of his baby, of his time in London…<\/p>\n
You see Vince works for Getty Images.\u00c2\u00a0 And, unlike the record sphere, business is BOOMING!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about licensing everybody for a little and aggregating the results.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, Getty licensed Perez Hilton.\u00c2\u00a0 Others sue, they made a deal.<\/p>\n
Vince will tell you anything, but he wouldn’t tell me about Getty’s moves in music (other than their involvement in Zeppelin’s O2 show).\u00c2\u00a0 Said he was under a nondisclosure agreement.\u00c2\u00a0 They bought Pump Audio…\u00c2\u00a0 This is a company that’s expanding, this is a company to watch.<\/p>\n
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All the agents are talking shit about LiveNation.\u00c2\u00a0 Why are they moving their buyers around?\u00c2\u00a0 Some of the people are good, but they’re unfamiliar with business conditions in their new domains, and they don’t seem to know the developing acts.\u00c2\u00a0 And do they have to close the sheds because no one can fill them anymore?<\/p>\n
Rap on the sheds was most buildings were ugly, bad experiences that people didn’t want to go to.\u00c2\u00a0 But the real issue seems to be they just can’t be filled, not without papering the house.\u00c2\u00a0 So, what’s LiveNation’s play now?<\/p>\n
Promoters need to break acts.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t count on record companies.\u00c2\u00a0 But too many promoters are used to selling tickets to what the labels built.<\/p>\n
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The secondary market.\u00c2\u00a0 How about that organization in the U.K. wanting a piece of the secondary market?\u00c2\u00a0 What kind of bullshit is that?\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t the first sale doctrine apply, at least in the U.S?<\/p>\n
Either raise the prices to market value, or figure out a way to get the tickets in the hands of the fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they did it for Zeppelin, you can do it for other acts.<\/p>\n
But the most fascinating thing is the belief that the secondary market is indomitable, that it’s changed the business forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Did you see the pictures from the Spice Girls gig in Vegas?\u00c2\u00a0 The building was HALF FULL!\u00c2\u00a0 The story’s all over the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 Wait a minute here, didn’t the promoter talk about a very quick sell-out?<\/p>\n
So punters are buying tickets to re-sell.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’re getting stuck.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the dot com\/day trader scenario all over again.\u00c2\u00a0 Superstar tickets will be scalped.\u00c2\u00a0 But it appears you can get a ticket to ANYTHING these days, so why pay the inflated price on the secondary market?\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, just go to the show and pick up the tickets for next to nothing!\u00c2\u00a0 If the promoter himself doesn’t paper the show…<\/p>\n
Once again, the demand comes from the music.\u00c2\u00a0 And most acts fly under the radar these days.\u00c2\u00a0 No wonder LiveNation’s stock has tanked.\u00c2\u00a0 What NEXT?\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck signing Madonna, they’re going to have to BUILD NEW ACTS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE!<\/p>\n
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