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back to article UK's richest man backs music minnow merger to annoy Ticketzilla

Two former MySpace featurettes which became companies — Songkick, which alerts you to acts playing near you, and CrowdSurge which handles merchandise and ticket sales — have agreed to merge. They will "do business under the globally recognized Songkick brand, bringing together over 500 of the world’s biggest artists with a …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Words cannot describe my hate for TicketMaster

    Someone, anyone, PLEASE do something to overthrow TicketBastard. It's to the point now where I simply won't pay their extortionate "Service Charges" any longer to see a show. And much as I'd like to support touring acts, I refuse to give one more dollar to those crooks.

    They are the worst kind of parasite, living off the work of others and providing zero value. I realize the venues are ultimately to blame by signing exclusive contracts with TicketMaster, but if ever there was a monopoly business that deserved to be broken, it's these guys.

    10 0 Reply

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Turtle

    Disruption.

    "LiveNation's ownership of TicketMaster gives it a powerful control over pricing."

    Now here's where I'd really like to see some "disruption". Provided by the anti-trust regulators.

    4 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Disruption.

      You mean like eBay owning PayPal?

      0 0 Reply
  3. Irongut

    "Concert attendance rates are stagnant, with the same 40-50 per cent of tickets left unsold"

    Every concert I've been to in the last 5 years was sold out. Even relatively unknown bands in nightclub sized venues pack the house.

    "LiveNation hosts over half a dozen of the UK's biggest festivals, and shares the cream of London's most lucrative music venues with AEG... When you reach a certain scale (larger than a pub) and want to play live, you're going to bump into AEG or LiveNation fairly quickly."

    There are music venues outside London. These 'facts' do not match what I know of the Glasgow scene.

    1 0 Reply
    1. AbelSoul
      Reply Icon

      Every concert I've been to in the last 5 years was sold out. Even relatively unknown bands in nightclub sized venues pack the house.

      There are music venues outside London. These 'facts' do not match what I know of the Glasgow scene.

      I go to a lot of gigs in Glasgow too, probably about one per week on average. Whilts I agree that most are sold out, I still find myself in half-empty gigs from time to time. (Seems to happen in King Tut's more than anywhere else.)

      As for the topic in general, the sooner the LiveNation monopoly is addressed the better for everyone.

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    2. AlbertH
      Reply Icon

      You might be lucky up in Glasgow, but here in London, live music is dying. We have less than half the venues we had in 1997 (the year of the start of the demise might give a clue), and the onerous "live music laws" and stupid licensing rules have done much to kill them off.

      Also the nature of the music produced today isn't conducive to live performance - kids recording digitally in their bedrooms aren't going to have any stage ability. It's just not what they do any more.

      London used to have a burgeoning pub music scene, but it's pretty much died off now. So we're stuck with Ticketgougers and the other similar parasites.

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    3. therealmav
      Reply Icon

      Ring ring

      Every concert I've been to in the last 5 years was sold out. Even relatively unknown bands in nightclub sized venues pack the house.

      +1 Same here, every gig I've been too from new act indie to AOR like Fleetwood Mac has been packed. Praps not sold out, but certainly not half empty.

      0 0 Reply

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