LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Live Nation is now offering music fans a way to learn about upcoming music live performance events in their area, even at non Live Nation venues. Until recently, they did not include many details about non LN venues but now they are offering promoters and artists the opportunity to list their events and even maintain and to control a page relating to their facility/event and ensure that the content is correct and up-to-date.
"The idea is to allow any third-party venue or promoter to control their page and populate it with custom content, so they can market their building and all its attributes, and make sure their event data is correct," President – Global Digital for Live Nation Bryan Perez told VNU, adding that "We recognize that if the venue has significant brand equity or a third-party promoter has significant brand equity, that has value to the consumer, All we want to do is allow the fan [to] get the best information from the most authoritative source."
The website allows a user to search for events in their region by zip code, tells you where the event is, how to get tickets and if the event is a Live Nation-promoted show.
While this seems very charitable of LN, not every promoter is willing to hop on the bandwagon just yet, wondering why they would provide content that could be leveraged into a revenue stream for their competitor.
Fantasma promoter Jon Stoll was less than keen on the concept. "It makes it look like they're doing my shows," he told VNU. "I've told them I don't like it and to this point they have been unable to take 100 percent of my shows off their site."
Other promoters are taking a more cautious approach. "One of the things I've learned in the last couple of years is that you don't say 'no' off the top of your head for spite," Scher told VNU. "If they've got a way to help sell more tickets and to publicize our events or my clients` events, you want to listen to them."
Live Nation seems to be positioning themselves to challenge Ticketmaster.com's dominance as the one-stop shop for consumer concert information. Ticketmaster's weakness is that they only publish data on shows that they are vending tickets for and it's this soft spot that Live Nation seems to be trying to capitalize on. If they can convince other promoters to participate however, remains to be seen. A quick survey of venues in this writer's area showed that as of yet there was little enthusiasm from non-LN venues. – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
