Irving told me he had something really big coming.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t expect it to be THIS big.<\/p>\n
In a world where David Geffen was left out of the negotiations of MCA’s sale to Matsushita, because he notoriously couldn’t keep his mouth shut and meddles, one has to say no single individual as ever had this much power in the music industry.\u00c2\u00a0 Clive Davis may publicize the fiction that he’s the man with the golden ears, but he got fired by his bosses at Arista, and even though he crawled back, he was neutralized\/marginalized in Sony’s recent acquisition of BMG.\u00c2\u00a0 And Doug Morris…\u00c2\u00a0 That’s one powerful dude.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s not positioned well for the future.\u00c2\u00a0 Sales dropped 17.6% year to year last week, and Kenny Chesney’s album debuted with 176,000 sold, a fraction of last year’s total of 387,000, for "Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates".\u00c2\u00a0 Doug’s presiding over a declining business.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas Irving truly controls the talent.\u00c2\u00a0 The creme de la creme, over 100 acts.\u00c2\u00a0 And with the talent comes the true power.<\/p>\n
And TicketMaster has been spun off from IAC…\u00c2\u00a0 So, unlike Doug, Irving’s not really reporting to anybody.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s his fief.\u00c2\u00a0 To do what he wants.<\/p>\n
And despite allegations of untrustworthiness, Irving’s got Warner on his side, and\u00c2\u00a0 Dolan…\u00c2\u00a0 They may have cashed out, but this is a business of loyalty, the money comes second at this high level.\u00c2\u00a0 Because what goes around comes around, the same players always meet in the corral.\u00c2\u00a0 You thought Edgar Bronfman, Jr. was done?\u00c2\u00a0 Now he runs Warner…<\/p>\n
And Michael Rapino…\u00c2\u00a0 Smart dude.\u00c2\u00a0 But from a new era.\u00c2\u00a0 He grew up working for a beer company, Irving Azoff managed Dan Fogelberg and the Eagles.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about experience…\u00c2\u00a0 He wasn’t there at the birth of Christ, but he knows everybody who was.\u00c2\u00a0 Intimately.<\/p>\n
But what is the plan?<\/p>\n
I’m not exactly sure.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving specializes in playing people off against each other, neutralizing them.\u00c2\u00a0 When he’s the man…\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t work so well.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving rebuilt MCA, but it never became number one.\u00c2\u00a0 And when he left in ’89 to make some real money, with Giant…\u00c2\u00a0 He did well in merchandising, but his record company operated in fits and starts.\u00c2\u00a0 A movie soundtrack, Big Head Todd, eventually Disturbed…\u00c2\u00a0 One doesn’t see the company as a paragon of excellence.<\/p>\n
In other words, I’d rather have Irving cocking up the works rather than running the works.<\/p>\n
But it is a changed marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 The money is in live.\u00c2\u00a0 And monetizing all other aspects of an act’s career.\u00c2\u00a0 New products.\u00c2\u00a0 New kinds of promotions.\u00c2\u00a0 Rapino realizes this, but he’s saddled with the low margin concert promotion business.\u00c2\u00a0 And he controls very few acts.\u00c2\u00a0 With very rich contracts.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas Irving\/Front Line is the MANAGER!\u00c2\u00a0 They split the revenue that comes in.\u00c2\u00a0 If nothing comes in, there’s no obligation to the act.\u00c2\u00a0 If the act’s new album stiffs, it doesn’t get paid.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas Jay-Z gets his money, no matter what happens in the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a big bet, the river of nickels flowing from the concert promotion business covering that overhead.\u00c2\u00a0 Such a big bet that Rapino battled with Michael Cohl over doubling down, and won, and slowed the process.<\/p>\n
But how is Rapino going to get acts to exploit his new products on favorable terms if Irving controls all the acts? Sure, Irving will do a deal.\u00c2\u00a0 But the terms won’t be good!<\/p>\n
It’s uphill for Rapino and Live Nation.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, TicketMaster is no longer dependent on ticket fees to make its numbers.<\/p>\n
And we’re sitting here wondering what this does with regard to developing acts and ticket prices.<\/p>\n
Well historically, and history is very brief in this case, the modern Front Line is not interested in developing acts. Maybe that will continue to be the case.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this is about maximizing revenue as opposed to new business concepts.<\/p>\n
But this is all very new.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving wanted to cash out.\u00c2\u00a0 One didn’t foresee him both cashing out and ending up with MORE power.\u00c2\u00a0 Does he have a plan?\u00c2\u00a0 You betcha!\u00c2\u00a0 What it is?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m still thinking about that…<\/p>\n
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Irving told me he had something really big coming.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t expect it to be THIS big. In a world where David Geffen was left out of the negotiations of MCA’s sale to Matsushita, because he notoriously couldn’t keep his mouth shut and meddles, one has to say no single individual as ever had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}