Live Nation Working To Turn Website Into More Of A Platform

from the this-could-be-interesting dept

Mon, Nov 2nd 2009 10:22pm — Mike Masnick

Live Nation gets a bit of a bad reputation for some of the way it handles large stadium shows, but of the "big" music industry players, it's actually one of the more interesting and better positioned companies out there, because it really has aligned itself to benefit from the sale of scarcities, rather than the sale of music itself. It does have some legacy issues, such as huge commitments to some large acts and a distracting merger fight with Ticketmaster, but the company is still worth watching. It's been trying to do more and more with its website, to make it something of a destination/e-commerce play, and its latest move is to make it more of a platform. Both artists and fans will be able to upload concert footage, as well as various community features (wikis, reviews, Twitter streams, fan Q&As and more). It increasingly seems like Live Nation is trying to enable a platform where fans and artists can connect, and on which fans can buy (mainly concert tickets, but other things as well). It's a smart move, but I wonder whether or not Live Nation ends up competing with a band's own web presence. What could be cool is if Live Nation also makes it so an artist can integrate many of these features into their own site as well. In the meantime, though, we're once again seeing why now is a great time to be a musician. There are so many different services that help enable artists to both connect with fans and set up business models.

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Filed Under: concerts, music, platform
Companies: live nation

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2009 @ 5:27am

Remembering of course that Live Nation signs those "360" deals that mean they are making the lions share of merch and all that stuff. This is a case of pure self interest, I think.
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Lion XL, 3 Nov 2009 @ 6:18am

I agree
I agre with the AC, live nation seems great on paper, and it seems to moving in the right direction. BUT, not every artist is on par with the Jay-Z's, and will probably get screwed in the long run. I would love to see them succeed and create new methods of revenue for the artists, but I'll wait and see if the greed takes over.....
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2009 @ 9:07am

Live Nation has just figured out a way to get their mitts on every part of the pie, so that all those things that artist do in the CwF gendre is in fact to their profit, not to the artist. Basically, 1970's record deals, applied to everything including concert tickets and merch. Sound excellent. rejoice, the new music business arrives, and makes the old one look like wimps!
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