Maybe we need to let Ticketmaster and Live Nation merge to pave the way for what comes next.<\/p>\n
What killed the major labels was radio consolidation.\u00c2\u00a0 With Clear Channel owning so many stations and populating them with twenty plus minutes of commercials per hour, people started tuning out.\u00c2\u00a0 Conventional wisdom is Bill Clinton fucked up, he never should have let these mergers take place.\u00c2\u00a0 But if terrestrial radio hadn’t gotten so bad, would Pandora have flourished?\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, is it fruitless to prop up the past? Does it only delay the coming of the future?<\/p>\n
I hate to quote the "Wall Street Journal" editorial page, but today’s lead opinion piece, "The Antitrust Anachronism", caught my eye.<\/p>\n
You see Peter Paterno is vehemently antitrust.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter’s not a right winger, but he is a free-thinker.\u00c2\u00a0 Most music business attorneys are not attorneys.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they can make you a deal…but understand the legal underpinnings?\u00c2\u00a0 Foresee what will happen in a crisis?\u00c2\u00a0 Peter never leaves out the law.\u00c2\u00a0 And has been very successful being a maverick.\u00c2\u00a0 (Yes, there was that stint at Hollywood Records, but unlike all other attorneys who left practice to run labels, Paterno’s been able to rebuild his legal business after the fact.)\u00c2\u00a0 So I pay attention to what Peter has to say.\u00c2\u00a0 And he’s truly gotten this dyed-in-the-wool leftie thinking…is antitrust good for the people?<\/p>\n
The merger the WSJ is speaking about is last week’s big deal, between Microsoft and Yahoo on search. How long will it take the government to give its stamp of approval?\u00c2\u00a0 Or withhold it?\u00c2\u00a0 Months, at least.\u00c2\u00a0 Does government ever work at the speed of technology?\u00c2\u00a0 And diving into the details, the author of this piece, L. Gordon Crovitz, references Google’s triumph over AltaVista and Excite.\u00c2\u00a0 I still occasionally use the former, does the latter still exist?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, Microsoft dominates the office apps market, but when apps move to the cloud, which is inevitable, will the Redmond company still dominate, will it even be able to charge?\u00c2\u00a0 Will the apps be free, but service the key?<\/p>\n
I don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 But I do know that Congress and D.C. regulatory bodies know little about tech.\u00c2\u00a0 And almost nothing about the concert business.<\/p>\n
Google doesn’t search Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 Bing has made an attempt.\u00c2\u00a0 Real-time searches make spider-crawling results look like last year’s baseball scores.\u00c2\u00a0 Will Google dominate in real-time search?<\/p>\n
If Ticketmaster and Live Nation are prevented from merging will the public truly benefit?<\/p>\n
Those challenging the merger most vehemently, Seth Hurwitz and Jerry Mickelson, are not newbies, they’ve been promoting for years.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re fiercely independent, cut in the cloth of their progenitor, Bill Graham, but are they truly where the innovation is coming from?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, JAM promotes concerts on baseball fields, and Hurwitz does festivals, but could the revolution be coming from people much younger, with no investment in past relationships?<\/p>\n
The concert business is not a paragon of health.\u00c2\u00a0 Live Nation says 40% of its tickets go unsold.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the summer of papering.\u00c2\u00a0 And few superstars are being developed.\u00c2\u00a0 This system is not working.<\/p>\n
And it’s not making the public happy.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that’s why there’s such an uproar.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticketmaster is more hated than North Korea!\u00c2\u00a0 Is prevention of this merger going to solve the add-on crisis?\u00c2\u00a0 Azoff says that he’ll lobby for all-in ticketing when the merger takes place, and controlling both acts and promotion, he’s got a good shot.<\/p>\n
But maybe he’ll fail.<\/p>\n
Live Nation is burdened with debt, and has razor-thin margins.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticketmaster is not Apple, rolling in profits with a surging stock price.\u00c2\u00a0 So maybe the two companies merge and we get a disaster.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that good? Doesn’t that pave the way for the future?<\/p>\n
Or maybe by merging, whatever the result, new opportunities are created for upstarts.\u00c2\u00a0 The more the major labels merged, the more opportunities grew in the indie sphere.\u00c2\u00a0 The majors want to sell millions.\u00c2\u00a0 The indies can make money on fewer sales, having less overhead.\u00c2\u00a0 And now you’ve got no cred if you’re on a major, you almost can’t make it in the KCRW world unless you’re on an indie.<\/p>\n
And maybe the Ticketmaster\/Live Nation merger results in the new Google.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe what Irving says is true. That he’ll be able to get all the rights in the hands of the artists, that the artists will make all the money, not the labels.\u00c2\u00a0 Is this a bad thing?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not.\u00c2\u00a0 Should we stay in a past where you search in AltaVista and rarely get what you want?\u00c2\u00a0 Unless you know how to use Boolean logic?\u00c2\u00a0 So only the brilliant can get the results they need, the same way only the rich and connected can get good tickets?<\/p>\n
Stopping this merger certainly isn’t going to make things better.<\/p>\n
Sure, it could make them worse.<\/p>\n
But maybe, like with radio consolidation, they’ve got to get worse to get better.<\/p>\n
Don’t have a knee-jerk reaction here.\u00c2\u00a0 Concerts have become an overpriced, once a year event.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe they’re imploding under their own weight, maybe the public is mad as hell and isn’t gonna take it anymore. Maybe the future is small scale shows by virtual unknowns, niches on steroids.\u00c2\u00a0 Will Live Nation be the king in that world?\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t think so.\u00c2\u00a0 That would be like Warner telling Wall Street that it’s found the key to success, from now on the company’s only going to sign acts that sell fewer than one hundred thousand copies!<\/p>\n
That would make Warner’s stock tank.\u00c2\u00a0 The Wall Street game is about tonnage.\u00c2\u00a0 How do we generate more more more from less less less.\u00c2\u00a0 Major labels aren’t signing more acts, but fewer, in a world where anybody can make music and distribute it.\u00c2\u00a0 Are they really going to rule the future?<\/p>\n
Sure, concert promotion involves real estate.\u00c2\u00a0 But look at the failure of malls.\u00c2\u00a0 They raged for decades, now few want to shop there and they’re stumbling.<\/p>\n
The past doesn’t go on forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless you use all your power to prevent the future.<\/p>\n
The future can be bleak, but only by going through the rough times can you get to the good.<\/p>\n
No one’s preventing a ticketing company from establishing a better service than Ticketmaster.\u00c2\u00a0 No one’s preventing anybody from being a concert promoter.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, Ticketmaster and Live Nation look dominant now. But the Walkman was eclipsed by the iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 Samsung rules flat screen TVs, not Sony.\u00c2\u00a0 Wii is the gaming superstar, not PlayStation.\u00c2\u00a0 Sony’s lost its cred.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it took its eye off the ball.\u00c2\u00a0 Should we have prevented its failures?\u00c2\u00a0 No.
Let this merger go through.<\/p>\n
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