Corporations Are People, My Friend: Did everyone receive their ‘Ticketmaster Fee Class Action Notice’ Today?
Did everyone receive their ‘Ticketmaster Fee Class Action Notice’ Today? The modern live music industry did not arrive at its current structure organically. What exists today is the result of decades of corporate consolidation, strategic acquisitions, vertical integration, and the transformation of concert promotion from a regional entrepreneurial business into a nationalized corporate infrastructure dominated by a small number of companies with enormous influence over touring, ticketing, venues, sponsorships, artist management, merchandise, hospitality, lodging and live entertainment itself. That transformation fundamentally altered not only how concerts are promoted, but how artists are developed, how venues operate, and how independent entrepreneurs attempt to compete in an increasingly consolidated marketplace.
For many longtime music industry veterans, promoters, managers, venue operators, and entrepreneurs, the issue is not simply about one company becoming large. The deeper concern is that the modern system no longer rewards the same instincts, risks, or entrepreneurial vision that once built the live music business in the first place. The traditional model of artist development, where promoters, labels, managers, and regional scenes invested years building audiences around emerging talent, has largely been replaced by a corporate structure driven by proven metrics, scalable touring assets, sponsorship revenue, data analytics, and predictable returns.
At the center of that discussion sits Live Nation Entertainment, a company whose rise mirrors the broader transformation of the American concert business over the last three decades. Live Nation did not emerge from a single independent venue gradually expanding over time. Its roots trace back to the aggressive consolidation era of the late 1990s when SFX Entertainment, founded by Robert F.X. Sillerman, began systematically acquiring many of the most powerful regional promoters in the country. Historically, concert promotion had been fragmented market by market. Local promoters controlled their own territories, cultivated local audiences, developed regional scenes, and often maintained deep personal relationships with artists and managers. SFX changed that model by using Wall Street financing to acquire those regional operations and assemble a national touring infrastructure capable of controlling major arena and amphitheater routes across multiple cities simultaneously.
That consolidation accelerated dramatically when Clear Channel Communications acquired SFX in 2000 for approximately $4.4 billion. The acquisition transformed the company into Clear Channel Entertainment and marked one of the most significant moments in the history of modern live entertainment consolidation. At the time, Clear Channel already controlled a massive network of radio stations throughout the United States. By combining radio promotion, venue ownership, concert promotion, and advertising infrastructure under one corporate umbrella, the company effectively created a vertically integrated entertainment machine with unprecedented market influence. Artists played the venues Clear Channel owned while simultaneously receiving airplay from radio stations operated by the same parent company. Critics immediately raised concerns about monopolistic leverage and the long-term consequences of allowing a single corporation to exert so much influence over both music promotion and live entertainment infrastructure.
Regulatory scrutiny eventually forced structural changes, leading Clear Channel to spin off its live entertainment division in 2005 under the newly formed Live Nation banner. Under the leadership of Michael Rapino, Live Nation shifted aggressively toward venue ownership, sponsorship deals, global touring operations, and large-scale concert infrastructure. The company’s power expanded even further in 2010 when it merged with Ticketmaster in a deal that permanently altered the economics and structure of the live event industry. The merger effectively combined the dominant concert promotion company with the dominant ticketing platform, creating a vertically integrated corporation capable of influencing nearly every aspect of the live entertainment experience.
With transparency, I went off my business plan for about a year and a half. I would never recommend doing something like that as quickly as I did or without first putting in deep work within your own business. None of my companies ever stopped operating, however, and during that time I became heavily focused on the live music industry model, particularly the business structure involving advances tied to projected ticket sales and venue revenue. I thought that business model was astounding from a financial standpoint. Because of that, I wanted to bring live music back to a venue that had been dormant for a couple of years, along with other aspects of a larger entertainment plan that I will not get into here.
At one point, one of Live Nation Entertainment’s affiliated companies became aware that we could potentially book an artist they were interested in for their own event and, in essence, contacted its parent company, Live Nation. After initially never hearing back from them, people from Live Nation suddenly contacted me out of the blue about potentially taking over the production themselves. That ultimately never happened, and to this day I never heard back from them again.
About six months later, in 2025, I spoke to the head of Visit Atlantic City. In a nutshell, they eventually pursued a concept somewhat similar to what I had proposed, although not exactly the same. Ironically, the head of Visit Atlantic City told me directly, in writing, that this particular genre of music would not work in that market, which I strongly disagreed with. Yet shortly after rejecting the concept, they entered into a deal with Live Nation involving that same general genre and live event space that I had spoke to them about.
That is fine because the show involved is not something I would have worked. It is not an artist I would have gone near, especially when it comes to booking in that region. Live Nation did know about that part of the plan because I did turn over the financials, which included specific artist names. Again, I cannot get too upset about it beyond knowing that it will fail, and that sucks.
Even so, I maintain that on a very good day they might sell between 10,000 and 15,000 tickets while still needing to distribute a large number of complimentary tickets to help fill the venue, because the last thing you want in a venue let alone on that size is visible empty space. I do not believe the event will sell anywhere close to 25,000 tickets, let alone the 35,000 tickets it would realistically take to make the numbers work. I do not even think 18,000 tickets is realistic under normal circumstances which is near break even I bet.
In fact, I still maintain there is a strong possibility the event could ultimately be canceled. That prediction is now in writing here. I know it will fail. How badly it will fail is the real question. It certainly will never help grow tourism, for God’s sake, which is what I thought, at least in part, it was supposed to be about when I contacted that Gary Musich guy at Visit Atlantic City. He and the heads of Live Nation ran with my idea, and they know it, which again is fine.
What it really shows is how weak these people are at their jobs. Still, it is fine watching another production fail as long as I am not part of it.
Think of it this way, Live Nation had two festivals canceled in 2023, which means what? Cancellation is failure when it comes to events. On top of that, Phish is no longer playing there, and even those shows became complete messes. It is a hot mess overall, which is one of the reasons why I stopped going.
Regardless, the earlier portion of that experience is what eventually led to my communications with the federal government during the Merrick Garland era regarding what I believed at the time were potential antitrust concerns. As we now know, aspects of those broader legal disputes involving Live Nation Entertainment and the federal government were resolved last month.
When I was initially asked about my experiences, however, I approached antitrust law from the perspective of business competition, barriers to entry into the marketplace, and overall market structure rather than consumer protection issues specifically. I also never believed that I personally had any legal claim. There are ways to enter that marketplace. The problem I have is with the tactics, lies and attempts used to prevent small businesses or competitors from even entering that part of the industry.
Those actions also demonstrate that if you are that concerned about competition or other companies entering the space, then whatever you are doing creatively or strategically is already failing. Beyond that, those staff members appear weak if they cannot compete based on their own creativity and ideas while making hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary alone. They clearly have no problem stealing ideas or concepts, and that behavior appears company-wide because even their subsidiaries operate that way.
When you have to steal an idea or a concept, you are weak at your job. That is one of the biggest problems with the music industry today. Too many of the people in it are terrible at their jobs. They take shortcuts. They try to rig the system. They are not creative people, and they are not worldly people. There is no mystique and ironically, so much of what they do is ego-driven. They even throw awards shows for themselves, which is odd behavior.
At this point, I am going to leave that portion of the conversation there because I believe its public record today. Instead, I will simply say that it is available upon request if anyone wants to read it. Those include the interactions and government documents related to my experience so people can evaluate them for themselves. Like I said, when I was originally approached about the issue, my understanding of antitrust law and how it applied to the entertainment business was very different from how I know it now and also how they settled that claim.
Today, Live Nation’s business model extends far beyond simple concert promotion. The company operates across multiple interconnected sectors, including touring, ticketing, artist management, sponsorships, premium hospitality, lodging, merchandising, venue operations, and festival ownership. That level of integration is precisely why antitrust concerns should continue to surround the company’s business practices.
The issue is not merely size. Large corporations exist throughout every American industry. The concern is the extent to which one ecosystem can simultaneously manage artists, own or control venues, operate the ticketing infrastructure, handle merchandising, influence routing decisions, sell sponsorship packages, manage premium seating, collect consumer data, oversee production and promotion, and maintain leverage across nearly every layer of the live entertainment supply chain, including lodging arrangements in cities through hotels, resorts, and motels.
The real concern is not simply the scale of that system, but how the system itself has been rigged and how the company behaves toward competition within the marketplace.
For independent promoters and entrepreneurs attempting to compete within that environment in any of those areas, the structural disadvantages can become nearly impossible to overcome. Access to artists increasingly depends on relationships with management companies tied into broader touring ecosystems, and in some cases, such as with Lady Gaga, that management is Live Nation itself. Therefore, why would they book that artist outside of a Live Nation venue or promotion structure?
Routing decisions often favor existing venue partnerships. Sponsorships follow established corporate infrastructures. Ticketing relationships reinforce existing networks. Once an entertainment ecosystem reaches that level of vertical integration, and you then add tactics designed to proactively block businesses from entering the space while rigging the system, independent competitors can struggle to meaningfully penetrate the marketplace regardless of the quality of their ideas or their understanding of music culture itself.
That problem becomes even more pronounced for entrepreneurs who built businesses independently rather than ascending through existing corporate systems. I cannot complain. I only tried to enter the live music industry within the last two years, but I learned the entire landscape of it in about a year or two, and it is indeed difficult to navigate if you are trying to establish your own ground zero.
However, with or without Live Nation, it is still doable if you have the money or are able to generate a quick return on advanced sales (ROAS), because that business model, when I really thought about it two years ago, was astounding. In reality, if an event is promoted correctly and you secure the right bookings, you can produce a major festival without a massive upfront cash outlay if you are able to leverage advance ticket sales properly.
Depending on your merchant account and the ticketing platform you use, promoters get paid pretty much right away from ticket sales, whereas in some cases I get paid biannually or quarterly. The only platform that pays me within days is eBay, and even that is limited in my world. I have to wait 65 days with Walmart. Amazon pays roughly 30 days later, and the record business pays three months behind the original point of sale. I do, however, make money from TV subscriptions within days once the payments clear via the merchant account.
I had never seen a business model quite like that before, or at least I had never fully thought about it until I seriously studied the industry. Live Nation events also live and die by that model.
There is a significant difference between scaling a company with institutional infrastructure already in place and building something from absolute zero without corporate support. In corporate environments, many operational systems are already established. Travel infrastructure exists. Expense budgets exist. Administrative support exists. Legal teams, marketing departments, manufacturing, distribution, sponsorship divisions, and operational pipelines already function at scale.
Independent operators absorb those risks personally while simultaneously attempting to build the infrastructure itself. Many entrepreneurs within the music business eventually discover that the hardest part is not generating ideas, but surviving financially long enough to execute them without institutional backing.
That distinction also shapes the growing criticism surrounding the modern decline of artist development. Historically, labels and promoters invested into building careers. Artists often released multiple records before achieving mainstream commercial success. Promoters cultivated audiences around emerging acts because they believed in the long-term cultural value of the artist. Managers worked to develop sustainable touring careers rather than simply maximizing short-term metrics. The current environment operates differently. Streaming data, social media engagement, algorithmic visibility, and pre-existing audience analytics now are what heavily influence industry decisions. In many cases, artists are expected to prove their marketability independently before major infrastructure fully engages.
When I initially heard the I Am an Elastic Firecracker CD, which was the Tripping Daisy demo they gave to labels back in the early 1990s, the manager stated that it had already sold 5,000 units on its own. We were all astounded and could not imagine how, because at that time we were used to artists having virtually no sales, let alone significant sales before getting signed.
The demo Skid Row recorded at the studio I managed in the late 1980s eventually became the band’s first album on Atlantic Records. Back then, it was still about someone hearing the music rather than asking how many sales were already in place.
Regardless, Tripping Daisy was playing all over Texas and selling CDs directly at shows. That was when I realized this was the beginning of the end of that phase of the music business because I already knew the major labels wanted publicity in place, some level of radio play, and now they were also evaluating album sales before artists were even signed.
Within a few years, traditional A&R, where you actually discovered music and developed artists, largely went out the window at major labels. By the 2000s, the new standard was that every artist signed to a major label already had to be established. From there, that part of the music industry increasingly focused on releasing greatest hits collections, “Best Of” compilations, and licensed products like boxed sets that largely repackaged material already in its repertoire.
My deal at Sunset, when I did the upstream arrangement with Universal Music Group and its labels, was that they had the option to pick up anything after it hit around 26,000 units sold. Independent labels essentially became outsourced A&R departments that developed artists on their own time and dime before the majors ever got involved.
The democratization of digital distribution accelerated that transformation. Technically, anyone can now release music globally through streaming platforms, particularly after the industry standardized the now-common 70/30 revenue split model, which dramatically reduced the financial viability of independent record labels. This all followed the Napster era, when music was effectively distributed for free for years and the entire economic structure of recorded music was permanently disrupted. While that accessibility removed barriers for independent artists, it also flooded the marketplace with unprecedented oversaturation and, frankly, an enormous amount of low-quality material created by people with little interest in genuinely developing as artists.
The collapse of traditional A&R standards created an environment where visibility often became disconnected from artistic quality. Pay-to-play marketing structures emerged throughout distribution, social media, playlist promotion, influencer campaigns, and even live performance opportunities. In fairness, some version of pay-to-play had already existed for decades. Goldenvoice was running pay-to-play style shows at Whisky a Go Go back in the 1990s.
The problem was that, for the most part, those systems rarely broke meaningful new music or developed lasting artists. I still maintain that the modern environment weakened long-term talent development by prioritizing visibility, monetization, and marketing leverage over genuine artistic growth.
I also maintain that this is part of the reason why so many older artists have become commercially viable again after doing very little for decades. The music has become so weak today that people often return to older eras when, even on a bad day, you could still find a decent song.
Even today, I want to know of one artist that paid money to a CD Baby or a TuneCore, or used a percentage-based revenue share with any of these so-called music distributors, which business model is a large pyramid scheme, and then went on to become a massive artist after starting with virtually no sales. I can safely say there are none.
In nearly two decades, CD Baby, TuneCore, or almost any company selling music distribution services has seen any artist go from having almost no audience to becoming a major recording artist through those systems alone. If you have to pay to play in any form, that should tell you something about the state of the business, and, in many cases, the talent itself.
I know of four major examples, by the way, if you count Drake, but they were all in rap and hip-hop and it was manipulated. Drake used TuneCore early on to keep 100% of his streaming revenue, which helped fund and build his brand independently. He also generated strong publicity from that success before eventually being picked up by a major label. 21 Savage used DistroKid and benefited from its fast, automated distribution system to quickly feed algorithmic playlists. Russ also leveraged TuneCore, particularly its analytics reporting, to help finance and expand his independent touring business. Meanwhile, Lil Nas X used DistroKid to avoid per-song upload fees while experimenting with and independently releasing multiple tracks.
What is interesting is that they were able to gain traction without even leaving the house before signing their respective major label deals. They made the modern system work, but no viable rock act or mainstream pop act consistently breaks this way. Even in rap and hip-hop, success through that route is extremely difficult. These artists were exceptions, and again, they largely operated within binary digital systems and algorithm-driven platforms to gain traction.
The live concert experience itself also changed alongside this corporate evolution, particularly at aging amphitheaters now attempting to host increasingly large-scale productions. One venue is The Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. For decades, the venue has maintained a reputation as one of the region’s premier outdoor music destinations. However, many rock, jam band, and metal fans argue that the venue’s original design was never structurally suited for modern high-volume amplified touring productions.
And I agree, which begs the question, if you are running a poorly operated venue, how do those staff members continue moving upward within a company like Live Nation Entertainment? There is a term for it, “failing upward.” That phenomenon exists not only in politics, but also throughout major corporations as well.
That venue has constant flooding issues, recurring weather problems that repeatedly stop shows in their tracks, overcrowded walkways, and seating so tight that dancing, fist-bumping, or whatever people do at heavy live shows becomes nearly impossible. Fans constantly bump into one another while standing in puddles of spilled beer throughout the night and being forced to move through narrow aisles and long lines.
It was like that at every Phish show. Granted, I stopped going to that venue a few years ago. The Dead & Company show was flooded and moved so slowly that I left at intermission. I did not really see Dead & Company again until John Mayer joined.
Regardless, and sorry for going off on a tangent, what I am describing was happening even in the 100 and 200 seating levels. Simply getting to your seat or making a trip to the bathroom became a hassle when it should have been easy. From what I remember, even the bathrooms were poorly maintained. Eventually, I stopped going to the venue altogether.
The overall experience always felt chaotic and poorly managed rather than professionally designed for large-scale live music events. Ironically, many of the people associated with running that venue seem to have moved into broader leadership roles within the larger Live Nation structure that I had to deal with professionally. I think they were the people I dealt with when they said they would take over the production.
The reason I mention that venue as well is because I know a lot about it. The venue was originally engineered in the 1970s, when I was a kid, as an orchestral summer home for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Its pavilion architecture emphasized natural acoustics intended for symphonic and acoustic performances.
My first show there was Steve Forbert and Joan Armatrading. That is the type of music that sounds great there, and it is also much easier to move around the venue without constantly getting beer spilled on you.
Most of all, that design philosophy creates significant complications once high-powered rock productions enter the space. The sound is almost always clunky, and fans frequently describe muddy audio reflections caused by amplified bass frequencies interacting with the pavilion’s wooden structure. Vocals and guitars can become buried beneath low-end reverberation, while lawn seating areas often suffer from inconsistent sound projection and delay synchronization issues. The result is a listening environment many concertgoers describe as acoustically compromised for heavier genres.
Name one Phish show at that venue that is collectively considered by its fans as one of the band’s greatest performances ever, or even one of the most monumental shows of a particular run. The shows I saw were good, but not overwhelmingly great from beginning to end. Trust me, I understand that even an average Phish show is still sick. But those performances at that venue rarely seemed to hit every element necessary to become the kind of legendary shows people talk about for years afterward.
To me, it often felt more about the party atmosphere than the music itself. You could find nitrous oxide everywhere. The Parking Lot scene was active. Ironically, when the shows are truly great, the atmosphere naturally becomes more intense because the music itself drives the energy rather than everything surrounding it but we are way in the weeds.
To me, that comes back to the venue itself. Its design simply does not serve that kind of music particularly well, even if the business side continues prioritizing ticket sales and capacity over the overall artistic and acoustic experience.
Oh, and regarding operations at Mann Center for the Performing Arts, beyond the acoustics, critics like myself also point to longstanding logistical problems involving parking, traffic flow, pedestrian bottlenecks, sightline obstructions, and weather-related accessibility issues.
The venue’s grass parking fields can become hazardous during major summer storms, while the limited access roads frequently create severe post-show traffic congestion. The lots are often overcrowded with cars and people, and even the VIP parking areas require attendees to walk across large portions of the grass fields just to reach the pavilion.
Structural pillars obstruct views in several seated sections, and the uneven lawn topography can create poor sightlines depending on where audience members are positioned. These criticisms became increasingly difficult to ignore as modern touring productions grew larger and more technically demanding.
Yet somehow, I am fairly certain many of the people who operated the venue still ended up receiving promotions within Live Nation Entertainment.
Moreover, one of the most obvious aspects of the modern live entertainment industry is that many of the executives running major companies today did not actually build artists from the ground up in the traditional sense. What is especially ironic is that the industry now has award shows specifically designed to honor the executives and corporate staff themselves. It reminds me of those “top attorney,” “top law firm,” or “top moving company executive” lists where industries constantly seek validation from one another.
The music business never used to work that way. There used to be a mystique surrounding the industry that came naturally through the music itself, through reading liner notes, and through watching artists develop over time. The awards were for the artists, not the executives behind desks. The most we would get is a mention in the back of Billboard Magazine.
I remember Phish thanking their ticket window guy and various staff members during one of their final shows, but then again, I think they even brought their grandparents out on stage too, which always struck me as a little odd, yet also representative of that particular scene and what it often seems to value. It reminds me of when kids started receiving participation trophies. Many of the people working in live music entertainment today were probably those same kids.
That kind of constant validation appears important in certain circles, whereas real music people usually focus on simply creating or helping put out great music rather than having their names publicly announced. Then, the accolades come naturally. That entire industry, and many of the people within it, often feels more focused on hearing their own names mentioned than on the art itself. They even created award shows for themselves. Need I say more?
I still have to ask, why would you thank the ticket window guy during a concert? It is not as if real bands like The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead or Van Halen spent time thanking the person picking out the brown M&M’s backstage, so to speak.
It is their job to read a list and hand out tickets, or what am I even saying anymore? There are barely any physical tickets today. You do not even need more than a few people working the ticket window anymore, and in some cases you do not need any if everything is handled electronically. Maybe it was a swan song. Maybe Phish knew that job would eventually become obsolete and felt bad about it. Okay, I will think of it that way instead. Maybe they were simply ahead of the curve in realizing there would eventually be no need for ticket window staff at all and thanked them at their first or second final show.
Today, these business structures are nominating people and handing out awards for essentially doing jobs built around paperwork, infrastructure, production, and systems that are already in place. During my years at MCA Inc., Universal Music Group, PolyGram, and Warner Music Group, where I worked three different times, we received plaques tied to successful projects or sales milestones, but nobody was being placed into categories celebrating how great they were at corporate management or simply for doing their jobs.
There was no “Best Publicity Person” or “Best A&R Representative” type of awards show. That concept was never even seriously discussed because it would have seemed so odd at the time.
The focus remained on the records, the artists, the tours, the administration, and the cultural impact of the music itself. The real reward was advancing professionally and moving up within the company.
I will take it a step further by asking anyone to name another industry that gives itself awards every year simply for doing its job. Are there major awards shows for real estate staff, supermarket employees, or set builders? Even the Screen Actors Guild Awards in film, TV and Theatre are centered around actors, producers, and writers, and those awards are still considered industry-driven compared to the larger mainstream awards shows.
The live music entertainment industry today seems uniquely focused on celebrating itself. It often feels like many people within that business love seeing their names in lights almost as much as the artists do. Yet without the artists, none of those jobs would even exist. Maybe that is part of why the industry feels the need to hand itself awards.
That is part of the larger problem now. Conversations about the modern music industry increasingly revolve around executives, infrastructure, corporate growth, market share, sponsorships, and internal recognition rather than the art itself. We have spent enormous amounts of time discussing the business structures surrounding live entertainment today while barely discussing the actual music. Too many people inside the industry now seem to need constant professional validation and public recognition, as though the business itself has become more important than the culture it was originally supposed to support.
The irony is that many of these individuals became highly successful corporate executives, which is a legitimate skill in itself, but that is very different from identifying an unknown act, developing it over time without money, taking risks on unproven talent, and helping create something culturally important from nothing.
There is a major difference between operating a massive corporate infrastructure and actually breaking artists through instinct, talent, relationships, promotion, and long-term development. Too often in today’s entertainment business, people confuse access to money, infrastructure, and institutional leverage with creative brilliance.
It is very easy to appear brilliant when you have hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars behind you. It is easy to win awards or be recognized as the best at something when massive financial resources are already supporting the operation. That is not difficult. It is barely even creative.
That is why it becomes difficult to automatically label corporate executives as visionaries simply because they successfully operated within systems that already existed. Building something entirely from scratch without institutional backing is an entirely different level of difficulty and brilliance. Being stopped by companies like Live Nation Entertainment makes that process even harder and can set you back months, often because of misinformation or tactics designed to slow down competition.
Ironically, the personal reality behind much of this criticism is not rooted in bitterness toward Live Nation Entertainment itself. It is rooted more in the belief that the company became powerful and structurally integrated enough to effectively rig the system in its favor and control nearly every layer of it.
In fact, there is also an acknowledgment that part of my own problem was misreading the entire modern music landscape entirely. The one major failure among a much broader group of successful business ventures at Sunset was the modern frontline record label strategy I had built around signing developing artists during a period when the entire structure of artist development was collapsing industry-wide and shifting toward making money primarily through live performances.
Overall, I can afford to have one company fail because I still have 17 other companies making money under Sunset. Also, that is an easy problem to fix with enough capital or backing but I would never sign anything today unless they have tour dates. I also realized that today the business is driven more by marketing than talent in many cases. That was another miscalculation on my part when it came to signing new acts.
When I was growing up in the major label system, the industry released albums and artists toured in order to sell those records. That was the model I applied throughout my life and later at my own labels. Now, artists make their real money through live performances, while downloads and recorded music have become secondary revenue streams.
Again, that was my major miscalculation when I started Sunset’s frontline label. None of the acts I signed played live ever. Over the years, out of all the artists on the frontline label at Sunset, not one booked a truly viable show, let alone developed a legitimate touring schedule. Not one. And I do not mean occasional appearances at a retirement community, coffeehouse, or small local gathering. I mean legitimate live performances capable of building an audience, selling 20 to 40 CDs per night, and developing an actual career. That was something I never truly had at Sunset’s frontline label, although SSM and Sunset Music still make money to this day.
The collapse of traditional A&R changed everything. That environment also fundamentally changed the economics of live promotion. Historically, promoters developed artists by building audiences city by city and market by market. The old-school model associated with figures like Bill Graham relied on taking chances on new talent he genuinely believed in, then developing scenes and cultivating long-term cultural movements while always keeping the focus on the music itself. It is a form of doing A&R.
Today, much of the industry operates in reverse and a lot like the record industry today. These companies increasingly identify artists who already possess massive sales, streaming numbers, social engagement, and proven ticket demand, then scale those artists through existing touring infrastructure that, once again, they largely own and control at every level. That is not necessarily promotion in the traditional sense. It is amplification of momentum that already exists.
The staff at Live Nation Entertainment is very good at booking shows in many of the same ways we were at Universal Concerts back in the 1990’s. It is all fairly cookie-cutter, and honestly, the main difference is that back then we were still using fax machines to get signatures on deal memos, contracts, and routing agreements.
This is where the antitrust issues surrounding modern concert strategy become more specific. Certain tours and genres are now booked into venues simply because they fit larger corporate routing structures, not necessarily because they make sense for the market, the fans, or the venue itself. In many cases, those tours can only realistically be booked through Live Nation Entertainment, the same company that also manages the artist, handles the merchandise, books the artist into venues it controls or owns, uses its own ticketing and pricing systems, promotes the event, produces the show, and even coordinates reservations at local hotels, motels, and resorts connected to the event.
If that is the reality, and in many respects it is, then how is that not at least a legitimate antitrust concern? Where exactly is an independent operator supposed to go if they want to break into any of these marketplaces when so many layers of the system are already vertically integrated and controlled by the same corporate infrastructure?
That disconnect became especially noticeable during conversations involving tourism and entertainment development in Atlantic City.
When those same genres were later booked through larger corporate channels after being dismissed earlier because its me, it reinforced the perception that scale and infrastructure often outweigh actual market analysis. It also reinforced something else, how weak parts of the industry have become creatively. When companies or executives rely on absorbing concepts, repackaging ideas, or using institutional leverage instead of generating original thinking themselves, it says a great deal about the lack of creativity and conviction inside portions of the modern entertainment business. People know what they did and how they did it. That is ultimately their issue to live with. I still maintain that operating that way reflects weakness rather than genuine innovation or leadership.
At the same time, there is an important distinction between personal concerns and broader antitrust concerns. The issue is not necessarily that a single independent promoter or entrepreneur lost out on one opportunity. The larger concern involves structural consolidation. When one ecosystem can simultaneously manage artists, own or control venues, are the only bookings agents, operate ticketing infrastructure through Ticketmaster, coordinate merchandising, manage sponsorships, and maintain relationships with hospitality and lodging systems connected to touring operations, independent competitors face enormous structural barriers before negotiations even begin.
Especially when these companies also had the ability to charge $365 for the same exact ticket that might otherwise reasonably cost $59. That may be one of the greatest conflicts of interest in the entire live entertainment business. If a company can simultaneously control the infrastructure and decide how aggressively to increase pricing based on demand, the system becomes deeply problematic on even the best day.
The concern is not simply about competition between ticketing. It is also about whether one vertically integrated system controls too many layers of the live entertainment experience simultaneously. Artists are managed within affiliated ecosystems. Tours are routed through affiliated venues. Ticketing remains tied to affiliated infrastructure. Merchandising is already built into the system. Sponsorships reinforce the same corporate relationships repeatedly. The entire structure can become self-reinforcing to a degree that leaves very little room for meaningful independent competition at scale. Plus, some artists, venues and regions are not even allowed to deal with anyone else.
Ironically, one area where the market has evolved positively is ticketing alternatives. More venues and artists now use independent ticketing platforms outside the dominant systems, and legitimate alternatives have emerged throughout the industry. I see it on Explore New Jersey every day when adding events at certain venues. Yet even with those developments, the broader concentration of power across artist management, venue ownership, promotion, sponsorship, merchandising, and touring infrastructure still creates an environment where independent operators struggle to penetrate the marketplace in meaningful ways.
That concern becomes even more relevant historically when comparing today’s entertainment industry to earlier regulatory eras. During previous consolidation periods involving companies like MCA Inc. and Universal Concerts, regulators once forced divestitures involving venue ownership and concert operations because overlapping entertainment control was viewed as potentially anti-competitive. By today’s standards, however, many Live Nation Entertainment conglomerates now operate across multiple overlapping sectors simultaneously, including record labels, artist management, promotion, venue ownership, merchandising, live events, lodging platforms and ticketing infrastructure.
That model will only work for established artists that can generate millions of streaming sales and tens of thousands of ticket sales.
For many independent operators and longtime industry veterans, the larger concern is not simply whether companies like Live Nation Entertainment succeeded financially. Clearly, they did. The deeper question, along with whether the system itself became rigged in favor of large corporate infrastructure, is whether the live music business still meaningfully rewards originality, independent thinking, artist development, and entrepreneurial risk-taking in the way it once did.
The concern is that the industry increasingly rewards infrastructure ownership over cultural vision and, in some cases, continues rewarding people and systems that are not necessarily producing better creative outcomes or even excelling at their jobs.
For many entrepreneurs who spent decades inside various sectors of the music business, the current debate surrounding antitrust enforcement in live entertainment is not simply theoretical. For myself, it reflects larger concerns about whether industries function differently when consolidation reaches a certain threshold. Music is not merely another commodity. Concerts shape cities, scenes, communities, tourism economies, artistic careers, and cultural identity itself. When too much of that infrastructure becomes centralized, the industry risks losing the unpredictability, experimentation, depth and regional individuality that once defined American live music culture.
That is ultimately why the discussion surrounding Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster, venue ownership, artist management, merchandising, and corporate consolidation continues generating such intense reactions throughout the music business. The debate should no longer simply be about ticket fees or venue contracts. It is about whether the modern concert industry still leaves meaningful room for independent operators, artist developers, regional promoters, and entrepreneurial outsiders capable of building something culturally significant outside the dominant corporate systems that now control so much of the live entertainment marketplace.
