SXSW 2010: More doubts about Live Nation-Ticketmaster
AUSTIN, Texas -- Federal officials addressed concerns about such hot-button issues as the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger and net neutrality Thursday at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, but ended up raising far more questions than they answered.
The merger of Live Nation, the nation's most powerful concert promoter, and Ticketmaster, the all-powerful ticketing agency, was approved a few weeks ago by the Justice Department's anti-trust divsion, headed by Christine Varney.
Varney showed up Thursday to explain why she allowed the two companies to join forces and create a monolith of unprecedented proportion, one that could potentially dominate every aspect of the music industry, from concert ticketing to artist management. By merely showing up, she demonstrated a lot more respect for the music community than did the top guns at Ticketmaster and Live Nation, Irving Azoff and Michael Rapino, who were conspicuous by their absence (South by Southwest representatives said both executives were invited to speak but declined).
"The same factors that led to the Paramount ruling aren't present today," Varney said.
When specifically asked by the Tribune why the new Live Nation-Ticketmaster entity was not required to divest itself of its management company (which oversees the careers of major acts ranging from the Eagles to Christina Aguilera) as part of the merger, Varney said the "only actionable overlap" between the two companies was in the area of ticketing. Ticketmaster was ordered to aid two its biggest competitors, AEG and Comcast, by divesting itself of a ticketing subsidiary and sharing software. But when pressed by the Tribune on why Ticketmaster wasn't required to share its software with all of its competitors, including Chicago's Jam Producions and other independent promoters, Varney said there are "behavioral provisions" in place that will require Live Nation Entertainment "to behave fairly with competing companies." She urged companies to "let us know" if the consent decree isn't being followed.
"Time will tell," she said, if the merger was a good idea. "We need to allow the market to innovate."
But the companies and artists not under the Live Nation Entertainment umbrella may not have the luxury of time if they want to compete or innovate.
Also speaking on the panel was Austin Schlick, general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, who outlined a plan to bring affordable broadband-Internet access to the 100 million Americans currently without it. The goal ties in with the FCC's net neutrality initiative, which is designed to "safeguard the Internet's essential openness," and prevent service operators from creating tiered levels of access based on ability to pay and other factors.
Yet Schlick cautioned that the notion of democratic Internet access will apply only to the exchange of "lawful" content. It remains to be seen how what is "lawful" will be determined and by whom in regard to the sharing of music files. Shlick insisted that copyright protection of music files is "not inconsistent with an open Internet" and that it is a "legitimate interest of network operators to assist in enforcement of copyright." But as with Varney, Schlick left lots of questions hanging. He stopped short of saying the federal government would get involved in cracking down on illegal file sharing, as is the case in certain European countries such as France. But will service providers really be expected to enforce copyright law on the Internet? Schlick left the room before reporters had a chance to follow up with him.
Complete BS...you let LiveNation and Ticketmaster get away with ripping america's of 100's of millions of dollars. Hopefully you (christine) can sleep well at night while the rest of us hard working america's are going to have to pay 20%-50% more to see our favorite performers. Hey do you remember when "big label" music companies got greedy...then we started downloading music...the same thing will happen with concerts..we will find a way to just download them and stay home and Issac/Michael/Christine can sit back and always be known for "Killing Live Music". Thanks and please look at what ticket prices are now (post-merger). These people didn't wait even a week to start to sucking us for all we're worth.
Posted by: Tim | March 21, 2010 at 06:51 PM