Every couple of months, usually at a large concert or music festival, I’d meet a friendly person who worked for Live Nation. We’d share a few minutes of enjoyable conversation about music, concerts, shared contacts and the industry in general, then head our separate ways. I would always be too polite to admit that I really had no idea what the hell Live Nation was, beyond some vague notion that they sold tickets to concerts.
The fact that I was running into so much Live Nation staff should have tipped me off that the company was becoming a powerhouse, but it’s only within the last year that the company has really put into motion its aggressive business model. The concert-promoting machine is vying to become to become a triple-threat, merchandise-selling/venue-owning/record-releasing powerhouse. It’s already inked unusually comprehensive (and expensive) deals with Madonna, Jay-Z and Shakira; today it announced another deal with one of the industry’s reliable album-movers, Nickelback.
At a time when music sales are slumping, it makes sense that an outsider would try to challenge the wounded major record labels�especially an outsider that deals primarily in live music, one of the few branches of the music industry that’s still as profitable as ever.
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