Redmond is facing all sorts of challenges, but its Xbox is a clear success, not only as a gaming console, but as an Internet-connected entertainment device, which gives users access to video services like Netflx and HBO Go, and, increasingly, cable programming from the likes of ESPN. Microsoft says Xbox users now spend more time consuming media than playing games.

Which is why we’re very excited to bring two key Xbox executives onstage next month at D: Dive into Media: Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive who is building a new production studio for the device.

Mehdi is the man running marketing, strategy and corporate development for Xbox, and he’s the guy who links the console up with all the studios, networks and publishers who are creating content for the device. Prior to this job, he oversaw Microsoft’s media presence on the Web.

Tellem, a veteran TV executive, is the former CBS president now tasked with creating new programming for the device. She’s building out a Hollywood presence for Steve Ballmer, and her hire last fall was Microsoft’s most aggressive move into the content business so far.

They’re joining a stellar lineup of speakers Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen.

And, yes, we’ll have yet more names to announce in the coming weeks. But if you want to see these folks in person, register now, and we’ll see you soon.

The 65-year-old music industry veteran is taking with him some of his talent-management business, through which he handles the affairs of the Eagles, Christina Aguilera and other acts, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Azoff’s employment contract hadn’t been due to expire until mid-2014. Chief Executive Michael Rapino’s contract, also due to expire in 2014, was recently renewed for a new five-year term, Live Nation said last week, without mentioning Mr. Azoff.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Ask Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer.

Hughes, one of the original Facebook friends, used a bit of his newfound wealth to buy the storied New Republic earlier this year. A few months after that, Gannett put Kramer, a longtime digital media pro, in charge of its iconic USA Today.

Those are two very disparate publications, but they share a similar challenge: It’s very easy to find the stuff they’re best at — political opinion and general news — for free, all over the Internet. So how do you get readers and advertisers to pay attention, and/or money?

There’s a very good chance Hughes and Kramer won’t solve that one by February, when they appear at our D: Dive into Media conference in Laguna Niguel, California. But we’ll get a very interesting progress report. And since they’ll be onstage at the same time, we should get a very entertaining conversation, too.

Kramer is a former reporter and editor who ended up building and running big Web businesses — most notably MarketWatch, which he sold to CBS in 2005. He then stuck around long enough to help the TV giant embrace digital, via deals like the ones that put March Madness on the Web and CBS TV shows on iTunes. For a smart overview of his challenges at USA Today, see Ken Doctor’s take from earlier this year.

Hughes, quite famously, was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s roommates at Harvard, and became Facebook’s first marketing and PR head. Then he joined Barack Obama’s first presidential run, where he played a key role in the campaign’s pioneering use of social media. Now he’s trying to revamp a 98-year-old magazine that used to play a key role in Washington politics; for more on that see this excellent New York magazine profile.

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos and The Person From “Arrested Development” We’d Like to Name But Can’t (Yet).

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

Now it’s a bit of everything: Old and not-so-old TV shows, movies you haven’t heard of, movies you have heard of, and starting next year, TV shows that Netflix is making for itself.

The man in charge of all that is Ted Sarandos, who negotiates all of the Silicon Valley company’s deals with Hollywood. So he’s a perfect guy to bring onstage for our upcoming D: Dive Into Media conference, which is all about the confluence of tech and media.

And appearing onstage alongside Sarandos will be … well, we can’t come out and say who, exactly. (Believe us. We’d like to. And we will! But not today. Hollywood is an odd place.)

But we can tell you that it’s someone intimately involved in Arrested Development, the much-loved Fox comedy series that Netflix is reviving next year.

So that should be fun! And informative, too: Sarandos can explain what it’s like to haggle with partners who can’t figure out if they want to cash your checks, or kill you off, or both. And … person to be named later can explain what it’s like to create a big TV show for a digital-only audience. Among other things!

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun.

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

At our D: Dive into Media conference in February, we’ll be talking to people who make amazing content, the people who make a living selling amazing content and the people who help distribute all of that stuff.

But if you want to figure out the future of media, you also have to talk to the people who make the boxes and gadgets you’ll use to consume all of that content.

That’s why we’re very happy to hear at Dive into Media from two heavyweights with important new roles: Intel’s Erik Huggers, corporate vice president at Intel Media, and Samsung’s David Eun, executive vice president for global media.

Intel’s chips have been powering entertainment boxes for a long time. Now the company is reportedly getting ready to plunge directly into the pay-TV business itself by trying to cut deals with cable programmers and rolling out a next-generation set-top box of its own.

Huggers, who used to run the BBC’s digital efforts, is heading up that push, but hasn’t talked about it publicly yet. For now, the company says his efforts are “focused on exploring new ways to access, interact with and share the latest in digital entertainment.” We’ll get a chance to figure out what that really means when he gets on our stage.

And Samsung is already a huge deal in the media world, given its position of power in both the TV and mobile markets. Eun, a tech and media veteran (Google, Time Warner, NBC, AOL), is supposed to leverage that clout to bring software and services to his company’s devices.

Now he’s trying to expand the company’s presence in Silicon Valley, where he’s opening up a new outpost in an effort to build out digital content and services. His Dive appearance will be his first public opportunity to make his case to tech and media hotshots.

Huggers and Eun are joining an all-star lineup in February. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith.

And we’ve got more great names to announce very soon: Watch this space. In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference, which will be held Feb. 11 and 12 at the stunning Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California.

And if you end up at LiveNation.com today, you’ll probably end up doing the same thing. But the live events giant is hoping that you’ll start doing more there, as a result of a site overhaul. It’s supposed to give you a reason to stay longer, and maybe even pay a visit when you’re not going to pay for a show.

As always, it’s a lot easier for you to visit the site than for me to try to explain what it looks like.

That said, there are a couple of things you’ll want to pay attention to when you’re there: There’s a lot more video and other material produced by Live Nation itself, in cooperation with the performers it is doing business with. And there’s a lot of stuff produced by fans themselves, who are now generating content for the site without knowing it.

That second feature is what Live Nation is calling “Showbook,” and it’s quite clever. It harvests photos that fans have taken of a particular event, then posted to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc., collects them in one place, and sorts them by date and show. It works as a preview for the show you’re going to see, and a reason to come back after, because you can see your pictures, and lots of pictures from people just like you.

This seems straightforward to an ignoramus like me, but Eric Garland, who heads up Live Nation’s digital team, assures me that it’s not.

Head over to the listing for Justin Bieber’s upcoming show in New York for a good example.

The idea, says Garland, who came aboard last year when Live Nation bought his BigChampagne entertainment data company, is that while all of that stuff might be of interest to your Facebook friends, Twitter pals, etc., most of them probably don’t care about it at all.

Meanwhile, there are lots of people who don’t know you, but who do love Bieber, and they’d like to see your snapshots: “We’re bringing all of those moments together in the right rooms, for the right people.”

The challenge for Garland and his group will be convincing people that they should be checking out LiveNation.com more than a couple times a year, when they want to buy a ticket. Right now the site gets around three million visitors a month.

One of the reasons music sites have struggled to get scale on the Web in general is that unlike “TV” or “sports,” most people aren’t fans of “music” — they like specific bands and specific genres.

So if they’re Bieber believers or crusty Neil Young fans or whatever, they end up on sites that cater to that narrow band. But Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino figures there’s still an open space for him to create a consumer brand that people associate with “live entertainment,” and the site overhaul is supposed to be a first step toward that.

We’ll be talking with Rapino in February at our Dive Into Media conference, so we can check up on the strategy then.

Or you can save yourself a lot of hassle and ask two guys who are already making pretty good progress.

That would be CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media’s Shane Smith. And you can find them both at our Dive into Media conference next year.

To refresh your memory: Dive Into Media is our one-night-plus-one-day tour of the media landscape, and the way technology is changing that world day by day. That means unscripted, unrehearsed conversations with an all-star cast of moguls who hold very different perspectives. They’re all joining us Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, just south of Los Angeles.

Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines President David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.

And here are two more — both of whom have done very well on the Web and are now trying to figure out how to apply those lessons to more traditional outlets:

Ricky Van Veen co-founded CollegeHumor in 1999, when he and his buddies were actually in college. Seven years later, the site had evolved from a frat-tastic side project into an ambitious, successful content creation machine, and Barry Diller bought it for his IAC conglomerate. Now Van Veen is still working for Diller, but he’s moved from the Web to older media: He’s making TV shows like “Chopped” via IAC’s Notional production company, and next year he’ll release “Coffee Town,” a full-length feature film.

Shane Smith and his Vice Media co-founders started out publishing a raucous, no-holds-barred magazine back in the ’90s, and fumbled their way into the Internet during the first Web boom. Now they seem to have it figured out: They’re on track to generate $200 million this year, while making eye-popping videos — here’s a tour guide for Kabul — backed by blue-chip advertisers like Intel. Next up: An HBO series, and lots of attention from guys who run really big media empires.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now, you can find registration information here.

In this case, it’s Madonna’s new pact with Universal Music Group. The New York Post says she’ll get around $1 million an album for a three-album deal, and music industry folks say the paper has its numbers right.

This is a very reasonable contract. Madonna is long past her music-selling peak, and the music industry is a decade past its peak, too.

Still! Reasonable contracts — especially for superstars — are still very new things for the music business. Not too many years ago, Sony handed Bruce Springsteen a reported $100 million, and that was well into the post-Napster slide. So let’s just walk through what each side gets here:

• Madonna gets the kind of money, upfront, that she would have laughed at in the past. A million bucks is what you used to give a hot “baby band” no one but a few hipsters had heard of. But the world’s biggest music company will buy her billboards, etc., and that’s still worth something. Plus, on the off chance that one of these albums does take off, the low advance means she could actually earn royalties on the sales.
• Universal gets bragging rights and one of the music industry’s few living worldwide icons, for what amounts to walking-around money. And, again, who knows? She might still sell some records, perhaps on the back of her upcoming Super Bowl appearance.
• Universal doesn’t get Madonna’s lucrative back catalog — Warner Music Group still has those songs, which it continues to sell, repackage, and sell some more. And Universal doesn’t get a piece of her lucrative touring business — concert giant Live Nation has that. (Remember when Live Nation was also going to be a big deal in the record business? What happened to that?)

But wait a minute. Why does Madonna need a record deal at all? Couldn’t she just sell her music on her own, like Prince and Radiohead and the Eagles and lots of folks?

Sure. But not everyone wants to be Louis C.K., who has just declared his direct-to-fan experiment a huge success. (To play devil’s advocate: Even though everyone who bought one of his concerts blogged about it (more than once, in some cases), he has still only reached 130,000 people — far less than would have seen him had he done an HBO deal or a Netflix deal. And those guys would almost certainly have paid him more, too. Though if you want to be a contra-contrarian, you can note that he could still do that. (Which I have!)

Some people, it turns out, are still happy to take money up front from Big Media companies and hope they can deliver the Big Reach, which the do-it-yourself Web can’t guarantee.

Here’s the latest: “iTunes Festival London 2011,” a free app that will stream live footage from an Apple-branded concert series throughout July.

The app will work on both iPhones and iPads, and includes AirPlay support so you can get the shows up on your plasma, via Apple TV.

This looks like a pretty cool lineup (Coldplay! Bruno Mars! The Arctic Monkeys! And, um, Gwyneth Paltrow!), so it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t want to at least play around with the app on a slow summer day. Concert giant Live Nation handles the actual producing duties for the shows, and will stream them via its app, too.

Wired.com’s John Abell thinks this app could be the precursor to a long-running series of live events streamed by Apple. Who knows? Could be. My hunch is that Apple is putting the app out as a glorified demo and will be happy to let other companies carry the ball forward from here.

The announcement is being made today at the D Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., before Groupon CEO Andrew Mason gets on stage.

“Groupon Getaways with Expedia” will work similarly to the daily emails sent by Groupon today, but instead of offers for spas, restaurants and other local services, consumers can buy vouchers for airline tickets, car rentals, cruises and other activities.

Travelers can sign up for the emails starting today at Expedia.com or Groupon.com/getaways, and the service is expected to launch in late June.

“Travel is a very popular category on our normal site, and Expedia is the biggest and best brand in travel. The partnership made a ton of sense,” Mason said.

Together, the two will leverage their combined sales forces to find travel deals across the U.S. Initially, it will offer discounts on hotels and expand to other segments, like air and cars, as well as internationally.

Scott Durchslag, Expedia’s president, said the partnership with Groupon will allow them to serve a new customer segment. Expedia customers typically know when and where they want to go on a trip. ”This is spontaneous travel. You get the best offer you can find and then you can choose when you want to go,” he said.

The partnership model is one that Groupon is using to expand into new categories.

In May, Groupon announced a joint venture with Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, which allows it to expand its group-buying model to concerts, sports, theater productions and other live events across North America. That partnership is expected to launch later this summer.

Mason said the daily deals business model stays the same with partnerships, except that the margins will be lower. The merchant still receives about half of what the consumer pays, but the other half will be split between Expedia and Groupon (specific terms were not disclosed).

Together, the two will be able to market to about 50 million people with their combined email subscriber lists in the U.S.

Groupon and Expedia are entering a crowded market full of discount travel sites, ranging from Groupon’s next-nearest competitor LivingSocial’s own branded Escapes business to other companies, such as Gilt Groupe’s Jetsetter and even Overstock.com.

The two believe the value they are offering is in the fine print and by making it as straightforward as possible. For example, once a customer purchases a voucher, they will be able to redeem it over the next year based on availability, and that they’ll do their best to avoid the dreaded blackout travel dates.

Here’s an illustrative video with Mason and Durchslag:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-groupon-books-travel-plans-through-expedia-partnership/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110419/ticketfly-raises-another-12-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20110419/ticketfly-raises-another-12-million/#comments Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:09:44 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31938 TicketFly, the live event start-up that wants to take a piece of the market dominated by LiveNation’s Ticketmaster, has raised $12 million in a round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The company, which had previously raised $3 million, helps small venues run their own ticketing operations on the Web, and plays up its Facebook and Twitter hooks.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110419/ticketfly-raises-another-12-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110203/promoter-crowds-ticketmaster/ http://allthingsd.com/20110203/promoter-crowds-ticketmaster/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:28:03 +0000 Ethan Smith http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=35894 One of the nation’s biggest concert and sports promoters said it is joining forces with a start-up technology company to sell tickets to events at 105 arenas and theaters, in what could become a broader battle with Live Nation Entertainment Inc.’s Ticketmaster.

The promoter, Anschutz Entertainment Group, had been expected to distance itself from Ticketmaster since early last year, when the Justice Department approved the ticketing giant’s merger with Live Nation Inc., AEG’s only larger rival in concert promotion.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110203/promoter-crowds-ticketmaster/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100805/live-nation-entertainments-irving-azoff-tweets-up-a-storm/ http://allthingsd.com/20100805/live-nation-entertainments-irving-azoff-tweets-up-a-storm/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:00:36 +0000 Ethan Smith http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=27954 Now we know why executives have handlers.

Irving Azoff, Live Nation Entertainment’s colorful executive chairman, has long been known in the music industry for his short fuse. Now thanks to Twitter, anyone who feels like it can get a taste of Azoff’s legendary temper.

In less than 24 hours, during which he’s posted just eight tweets (and changed his profile picture twice), @irvingazoff has already gotten involved in a series of surreal microblog brawls: with celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, Billboard business columnist Glenn Peoples (”u r a jerk,” Azoff tweeted) and rival concert promoter Randy Phillips, whom Azoff implied was a habitual liar.

Azoff apparently signed up for a Twitter account earlier this summer, but until Tuesday night, he had barely used it. Then, out of the blue, he let loose a tweet that set the music world—industry and fans alike—ablaze: “so if you want ticket prices to go down stop stealing music.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100805/live-nation-entertainments-irving-azoff-tweets-up-a-storm/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100719/how-to-become-rich-and-famous-in-three-months-the-live-nation-way/ http://allthingsd.com/20100719/how-to-become-rich-and-famous-in-three-months-the-live-nation-way/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:35:21 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=21619 Sure, it’s easy to become Internet-famous these days. But how about real fame–the kind that lets you fill an arena with ticket-buying fans?

Also easy, it turns out. You need just three months! Check out this handy guide from Live Nation, which included it in a presentation to investors last week (click to enlarge):

This slide has generated much music industry guffawing in the past few days (thanks to Bob Lefsetz for highlighting). And the overall presentation didn’t win over Wall Street, either: Shares tumbled 14 percent last Thursday, the day that Live Nation (LYV) made its pitch, which is supposed to explain why the concert business is in much better shape then you’d think. Live Nation stock is still falling today.

I’m assuming Live Nation had someone in mind when it talked about the three-month instafame plan. I just can’t think of who it is.

Justin Bieber, apparently, became dangerously famous via Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. But even he took a year to start playing arenas (says Wikipedia; I’m admittedly out of my depth here).

So I’ve asked Live Nation for an example of the three-month song-to-sold-out-arena trajectory, and I’ll report back if I hear from them. Meantime, anyone else have any suggestions? The comment section is all yours.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100719/how-to-become-rich-and-famous-in-three-months-the-live-nation-way/feed/ 14 http://allthingsd.com/20100512/ticketfly-rounds-up-3-million-to-fight-ticketmaster/ http://allthingsd.com/20100512/ticketfly-rounds-up-3-million-to-fight-ticketmaster/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 15:30:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=19346 Average concertgoers go to two shows a year, and there’s a very good chance some of the money they spend on those shows goes to Ticketmaster, which dominates the ticketing business.

So here’s a company that wants a piece of that: TicketFly, a New York-based start-up that just raised a $2 million Series A round led by High Peaks Venture Partners and Contour Venture Partners. The company had previously raised $1 million in convertible debt last year, via angels Howard Lindzon and Roger Ehrenberg, among others.

If TicketFly works, there’s a good chance you won’t ever know about it, because it’s a B2B business: Consumers fund the operation via surcharges on their tickets, but the real customers are the concert venues, which strike exclusive deals with ticketing companies.

So most of the features are designed with the venues and promoters in mind. TicketFly says it can help with Web site design and management, promoting shows on Twitter and Facebook, tracking sales data in real time, etc.

All of this sounds like fairly straightforward stuff, but the ticketing business is an old, archaic one. And Ticketmaster, the industry’s eight million-pound gorilla, now owned by Live Nation (LYV), is particularly slow-moving when it comes to all things tech. So some of this really will feel fresh for the concert guys.

More interesting are TicketFly’s plans, which involve giving venues the chance to sell tickets using the same dynamic pricing/yield management techniques hotels and airlines use: That is, prices for hot shows may shoot up, and if you want to see a band no one else wants to see, you may end up paying very little.

TicketFly has about 50 venues signed up so far, and most are fairly intimate places like Maxwell’s in Hoboken, N.J., or the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis–the kinds of of places where you could see Nirvana before Nirvana became Nirvana.

They’re also the kinds of places that used be served by TicketWeb, another Web-based upstart that Ticketmaster acquired a few years back. No coincidence: TicketFly co-founder Andrew Dreskin used to run that company.

Here’s a little wayback machine: Nirvana at Maxwell’s in 1989. Audio and video quality is about as rough as you’d imagine:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100512/ticketfly-rounds-up-3-million-to-fight-ticketmaster/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100216/almost-famous-julia-hartz-of-eventbrite/ http://allthingsd.com/20100216/almost-famous-julia-hartz-of-eventbrite/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:50:05 +0000 Drake Martinet http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=21190 A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We got all-access passes to Skype for an interview with Julia Hartz, co-founder and president of Eventbrite, the four-year-old Web-based ticketing service aiming to unseat the big guys.

Using the Eventbrite Web interface, organizers can set up ticket sales and publicize their events using social media tools. It’s a labor of love, too, as Julia shares the big office with co-founder and husband Kevin.

Who: Julia Hartz

What: President and co-founder

Why: Hartz said Eventbrite has cracked the code on merging business and the social graph. It enables event organizers to publish events online and sell tickets, then publish the events to Facebook. And if your event is free, so are Eventbrite services. Julia says it is democratizing the ticketing industry, but it can’t all be free. Eventbrite saw $100 million in ticket sales in 2009.

Where: eventbrite.com (Web site); @eventbrite (Twitter); San Francisco, Calif. (analog place)

Who else: Eventbrite services put it in competition with most of the ticket-selling world, especially Ticketmaster, which is now owned by Live Nation (LYV). But Hartz said most of the people using Eventbrite for the first time are switching from using spreadsheets.

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Five Stats You Won’t Find in Her Facebook Profile

Worst Job Ever: I was an intern on the set of “Friends.” It was this awful experience taking place in this wondrous environment. There was a serious level of paranoia there. And basically, my job was to hold a phone and anytime it rang, I had to go find that person on the set. My second worst job was as a barista at The Ugly Mug in Santa Cruz. I would drink like three mochas and eat some pastries during my shift and then be depressed for the rest of the day.

Her Big Event of 2010: I’m really looking forward to Chirp, the upcoming Twitter conference. That and maybe F8, the Facebook conference.

Gadget of the Moment: My new iPad…just kidding. I guess just my Apple (AAPL) iPhone. We’re kind of a gadget family. Our two-year-old has a Pleo, because we can’t get a puppy in our place.

Wants to Be When She Grows Up: I want to be a great mom.

Fails At: Being a working mom and running the start-up. I feel like I’m never doing 100 percent in either. I feel 80 percent in everything. Kevin would say I fail at taking big risks–stuff like skydiving or petting a spider at the children’s museum.

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Bio in 140 Characters

Hartz grew up in Santa Cruz. She went to Pepperdine for a degree in being a TV exec. She was at MTV, FX, then left for the start-up world.

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The Five Questions

You started Eventbrite in 2006–why this and why then?

Well, I’ll just be honest; it had a lot to do with logistics. I’d just moved up here and Kevin and I had just gotten engaged. I was about to go to Current TV and didn’t know if that was the right move. We got to talking about all the events we heard about after the fact, and all the event “postcards” we got on our car windshields. There was little to no innovation in the events market. Unless you were using Ticketmaster, you really had no access to tools and technology that could help you as a smaller events planner. Also, Kevin was very close to PayPal, so we were looking at what we could do based on the PayPal API. The transaction is where it began.

So, you and Kevin have sort of made Eventbrite your baby. How does being a start-up couple change things?

Well, in working with somebody you know quite well, we sort of divide and conquer. We sort of have our own areas of the business that we strive to excel in, and we try to support each other. We received some really great advice early on from Michael and Xochi Birch, who co-founded Bebo. When we asked them how they worked together, they said divide and conquer–don’t work on anything together. That’s sorta what we do. And we do really well on a day-to-day basis. But if you get us behind the same spreadsheet, we’ll definitely be fighting for the mouse.

What sorts of mistakes have you guys made doing this?

I think we’ve been pretty good on avoiding most big mistakes, but I do think we’ve been too focused on making decisions around customer reactions…that sounds a little weird. Let me give you an example. So, we were a free service early on, then we were freemium. The problem was that our basic service was so robust that our premium service was only a little better. We were toying with the idea of going all paid for too long. When we finally bit the bullet and did it, we had very little decrease in use. We think it’s because event organizers don’t have to make an additional choice now about which service to use. The cost just scales with the ticket price. We just took too long to make the decision, I think.

You guys are building a pretty interesting picture of who attends what events. Are you planning to tread further into the social graph and begin recommending events to people based on past attendance?

Yes. We see that to be something that’s very exciting, but we want to do it in the right way. Hyper-relevancy is key to us, so, um, I can’t say how we’ll do it, but when we do it, we’ll definitely take into account what’s out there right now and try to innovate on that. I’d say that will happen in the broad window of the next two years.

What are your major moves going to be in 2010?

How about this? How about the fact that in five years, Eventbrite will be the only place that you will ever go to buy a ticket for any event that you would ever attend. I truly believe that, and I can actually see how we’ll get there. We are a smaller business and can move quite quickly. We don’t have a bullseye in your office with the Ticketmaster logo in the middle. We aren’t a Ticketmaster killer, but we see our model as becoming the status quo for all ticketing.

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The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100216/almost-famous-julia-hartz-of-eventbrite/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100125/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-gets-conditional-thumbs-up-from-doj-plus-d7-video-with-ceo-azoff/ http://allthingsd.com/20100125/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-gets-conditional-thumbs-up-from-doj-plus-d7-video-with-ceo-azoff/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:46:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23474

While many thought it would not sail through regulatory scrutiny easily, and it has taken a year, the merger of two entertainment industry giants–Ticketmaster and Live Nation–can go forward as long as a certain set of conditions is met, the Department of Justice said.

And while DOJ’s antitrust head, Christine Varney, told reporters today that she warned the two companies that the federal government was prepared to litigate if necessary, it–well–did not.

“We concluded the transaction as originally proposed was anti-competitive,” said Varney, a statement that was pretty much negated by her decision not to block the merger, given that the conditions she set were not a stretch for the parties to meet.

Still, Varney noted: “The proposed settlement allows for strong competitors to Ticketmaster, allowing concert venues to have more and better choices for their ticketing needs, and provides for anti-retaliation provisions, which will keep the merged company in check.”

We shall see about that–many are expecting even higher ticket prices and “fees.”

The companies also reached an agreement with 17 State Attorneys General as part of the U.S. consent decree, as well as with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition.

Not surprisingly, shares of both West Hollywood-based Ticketmaster (TKTM) and Live Nation (LYV) of Beverly Hills, Calif., were up about 15 percent today, even though the deal still has to undergo public comment and be approved by a judge.

But after today, Ticketmaster investors will get Live Nation stock, valued at $15.49, and with its ticker retired, Ticketmaster shares will no longer trade.

Now the combined company will be able to do everything from selling tickets to booking artists to selling their T-shirts and more.

And all Live Nation and Ticketmaster have to do to operate like this is sell off a college sports ticketing unit to Comcast (CMCSA) and license ticketing software to Live Nation’s nearest competitor, the Anschutz Entertainment Group.

Also, for a decade, the merged company cannot play dirty, blackballing those who decide they don’t want to use its services.

With 75 big venues across the U.S. under the purview of Live Nation, that’s a lot of places the world’s largest concert promoter could apply pressure.

And because Ticketmaster is the dominant player in ticketing for sports and entertainment events, as well as the manager of a spate of major acts that play at those Live Nation venues, it’s clear you have a very powerful entity.

It will all be led, in part, by Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff, who can be seen below in an interview with BoomTown at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last May.

One of the most influential behind-the-scenes movers and shakers in the music industry for a long time now, Azoff talked about with me about the merger and digital forces buffeting the entertainment business.

Azoff will be the executive chairman of the merged company, which will be called Live Nation Entertainment, as well as CEO of Front Line artist management. Longtime Hollywood and Internet mogul Barry Diller is set to be chairman, and Michael Rapino will be CEO and president.

Here’s the video of the D7 interview, including the very funny intro that music legend Joe Walsh of the Eagles did for Azoff (and below it, a video of a terrific version of “Life’s Been Good,” sung by Walsh, which it certainly is today for Ticketmaster-Live Nation):

And here’s the press release from Live Nation and Ticketmaster:

LOS ANGELES and WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Jan 25, 2010–Live Nation, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. today announced that they have reached agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition, clearing the way for the merger of the companies. Upon closing, the company will be renamed Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. to reflect the combination of Live Nation’s concert promotions expertise with Ticketmaster’s world-class ticketing solutions and artist relationships.

Under the terms of the proposed final judgment filed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the companies have agreed to divest Ticketmaster’s self-ticketing subsidiary, Paciolan, to Comcast-Spectacor and to license the Ticketmaster Host technology to Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc., as well as to other terms that protect competitive conditions in ticketing and promotions. Seventeen State Attorneys General also participated in the matter and have joined in the U.S. consent decree. The parties’ consent agreement with the Canadian Commissioner of Competition is on substantially equivalent terms.

As previously announced, in connection with the merger, each issued and outstanding share of Ticketmaster common stock will be cancelled and converted into the right to receive a number of shares of Live Nation common stock such that Ticketmaster stockholders will receive approximately 50.01% of the voting power of the combined company. Subject to final confirmation, the companies expect each share of Ticketmaster common stock to be cancelled and converted into the right to receive 1.474 shares of Live Nation common stock in connection with the merger and for Live Nation to issue approximately 84,613,661 shares of Live Nation common stock to Ticketmaster stockholders in the aggregate.

The combined company will be led by Michael Rapino as CEO and President of Live Nation Entertainment and Irving Azoff as Executive Chairman of Live Nation Entertainment and CEO of Front Line. Barry Diller will serve as Chairman of the Board of Live Nation Entertainment. The Board will consist of 14 directors, seven from each company.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100125/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-gets-conditional-thumbs-up-from-doj-plus-d7-video-with-ceo-azoff/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20091124/does-this-mean-we-can-expect-a-live-nation-itunes-convenience-fee/ http://allthingsd.com/20091124/does-this-mean-we-can-expect-a-live-nation-itunes-convenience-fee/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:10:08 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=29759 This year, Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, will put on some 22,000 live shows–each one attended by carping about the asinine “convenience” and “courtesy” charges the company likes to tack on to ticket purchases. Funny, isn’t it, how quickly a $28 show can become a $50 one?

But much as concertgoers might loathe the idea of giving Live Nation (LYV) even more of their money, they may soon do so. Because beginning today, the company is offering exclusive audio and video recordings of some of its events through Apple (AAPL) iTunes. Prices start at $7.99, which seems astonishingly reasonable for live recordings of this quality. More so when you factor in Live Nation’s involvement.

Not an original idea, by any means; Metallica, Primus, The Pixies, Phish and others have been peddling soundboard recordings of their shows through their official sites for years now. But this is the first time, I think, that we’re seeing the live side of the music business really leverage iTunes and its massive installed base.

And, let’s face it, this is a great idea, indeed. I saw two live shows in the past few months and happily paid $10 and $14 for soundboard recordings of each. But I had to spend some time seeking them out, creating a new customer profile, etc. It would have been much nicer to just fire up iTunes and buy them both with one click.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091124/does-this-mean-we-can-expect-a-live-nation-itunes-convenience-fee/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091109/live-nation-sees-ticketmaster-deal-closing-in-q1/ http://allthingsd.com/20091109/live-nation-sees-ticketmaster-deal-closing-in-q1/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:34:23 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=17614 Live Nation (LYV) today said it expects the acquisition of the company by Ticketmaster (TKTM) to close in the first quarter of next year. Meanwhile, both companies today posted solid results for the third quarter.

Live Nation posted Q3 revenue of $1.81 billion, up from $1.59 billion a year ago, and ahead of the Street consensus at $1.62 billion. The company said the 14 percent increase in revenue was driven by a 12 percent increase in event attendance. Adjusted operating income of 160.8 million was up sharply from $109.5 million; free cash flow of $123.2 million was nearly double the $64.4 million reported for the year-ago quarter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091109/live-nation-sees-ticketmaster-deal-closing-in-q1/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090527/irving-azoff/ http://allthingsd.com/20090527/irving-azoff/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 16:31:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://d7.allthingsd.com/?p=178

As a longtime music executive and talent manager, Irving Azoff has had to find a way to work with everyone from inebriated rock stars to David Geffen. But he’s never had to placate Washington, D.C., before. But that’s what Azoff needs to do in order to pull off the deal of a lifetime: A merger between his Ticketmaster (TKTM) Entertainment, which dominates the ticketing business, and Live Nation, (LYV), which dominates the live concert business.

When Azoff isn’t busy trying to convince people that the merger doesn’t violate antitrust regulations, or running his ticketing company, he manages the careers of everyone from the Eagles to Christina Aguilera. Note the one thing in the music business he doesn’t spend time on: selling recorded music.

Session Highlights

Live Blog

• Introduction: Legendary Eagles survivor Joe Walsh, looking very much worse for wear, shows up via video to talk about his longtime manager. “Irving is the only manager that I ever knew that said to David Geffen ‘pffft,’ and he’s still here.” Also: “He’s a friend of mine….All the guys in the Eagles love him. He has a beautiful house that we bought him.”
• Irving notes that Joe is now sober.
• Irving rattles off his management empire: 16 management companies, handling everyone from Miley Cyrus to Willie Nelson. Country, classic rock “where the tour money is.”
• Kara: Where’s the music business going? Irving: Obviously, with the “demonetization of recorded music,” everyone got into a woe-is-me attitude, but I’m enthusiastic. “Narrowcasting” of the industry has created new stars, and live business is good.

• Irving: Music labels have always been slow to react to technology, and a lot of people in this room profited from that. Basically the record industry sat around and tried to protect an old model.
• Kara: Could the business have reacted differently? Irving: Yeah, suing your customer is a bad idea.
• Kara: Will there be record companies in the future? Irving: Yes. They have 100 years of content. They’ll be more like publishing companies, where they are a repository of rights.
• Kara: How do you feel the technology business has treated the music business? [Apologies for gap, technical issues]. Eagles have generated about $400,000 in Apple (AAPL) iTunes royalties. Which is about what they get for a couple live shows.
• Irving: Overall, the state of music industry is promising. Was fallow for a bit, but there’s a whole new generation of singers, songwriters, performers. “You never know where it comes from.” In terms of the business, there will be more companies than the four big labels that dominate today. “It will be a great time for entrepreneurs….It’s not over, but it’s warping into 2.0, 3.0.”
• Kara: What does a music executive have to do to survive? Irving: You have to take chances. They can’t complain about the iTunes deal. They have to embrace new technology, and I think they are, and it’s easier to get deals done now.
• Kara: What about these little digital companies like Playlist and iLike, which Ticketmaster owns  a piece of? They can survive, and they’re excellent marketing opportunities. But they’ll have to find other ways of making money. Can they? “I don’t know.” Advertising? “I don’t know.”

• Onto the merger. Irving lays out the case. Everything revolves around live music, and they’re the biggest player in live music. It’s really the promotion piece, and the marketing piece, added to Ticketmaster. Without that, Ticketmaster wouldn’t survive. “Any of you guys can write a program that does what Ticketmaster does….I’ve been there a couple of months and I have gripes myself.”
• People’s gripe with Ticketmaster isn’t with what we do, it’s demand issues: People want tickets to attend sold-out shows, so we have unhappy customers. Plus we’ve been the “collection agency” for a whole bunch of fees. “But the decision is ultimately made by the act.”
• What about criticism to the merger from the likes of Bruce Springsteen? “Everything we do revolves around what’s good for the artist and what’s good for the fan. That’s our new model.”
• Not really an answer, Kara points out. Irving: “I would say that Bruce is uninformed about the potential of what this could be.” [Maybe someone could tell Jon Landau.] For instance, we could be bundling new songs along with tickets. “The business traditionally resists change,” so complaints about the merger are nothing news. And there’s plenty of competition: Phil Anschutz competes with us and he’s worth more than the combined market cap of both of these companies. Warner Music Group’s (WMG) Edgar Bronfman Jr. says he’s in the ticketing business, etc.
• Discussion of TicketsNow, a StubHub-like  “secondary market”/scalping business owned by Ticketmaster. Irving has said that in the past that he wouldn’t have bought it. Would he sell it now? Maybe.
• What are the prospects for the merger? “Very optimistic” that it will get done between now and end of the year.
• Back to griping about prices and availability: “People in the music industry, we’ve had a horrible record of shooting ourselves in the head.” We haven’t done enough dynamic pricing for tickets, and we should, and that will help make people happy. But these issues are fundamentally the artists’ responsibility. They decide what tickets we sell, and at what price.

• Where is the music business going, overall? Who’s your favorite? “It’s like asking what’s your favorite kid.” Internet makes things very exciting, distribution is opening up. What about the industry suing customers? I think that’s a “very small issue.” We do need to protect intellectual property, and the people who make it.
• Q&A: Esther Dyson wants to know what Ticketmaster/Live Nation will  do with all the data they collect about customers, etc. “Any artist that calls up and says I’d like the email list of the people who came to my show, we’ll make that available.” But with regard to pricing, etc., artists and their management are not being sophisticated about how they use data. And we have to keep the press from chastising artists that use dynamic pricing.”
• Q: Not clear what the question is. But seems to be about using an auction model from the get-go. “Auctions are falling into real disfavor at the moment….We’re finding that people don’t want to spend the time to participate in them.” They just want to know that this VIP package costs this much.
• Q: What do you think about subscription services? “I’ve always thought subscription was an incredible model.” But tricky to pull off with labels, publishers, unions, mobile guys all trying to figure out how to split the money.
• Q: Do you have specific advice for classical music artists? The great thing about the Internet is that you no longer have to be popular with everybody to have a career. Classical should flourish in this era. Build a base, get in front of people, have people like you live. “That’s been true in 1966, and that will be true as long as there is music.”
• Do your artists like Twitter? Some do. “Very useful” but other artists “refuse to get a mobile phone.”

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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