I've said it before and I'll say it again: You're really becoming a important music journalist for many people! Thank you for sharing your insights, thoughts and opinions on a topic most music-consumers wouldn't even think about on their own
Completely agree! I love tanks videos! I used to play in a band that was close to signing with victory or earache records, it didn't work out due to band conflicts. But tank has been that explanation to that what if we had gone further.
I am a cpa and the reason for there being separate entities for all their subsidiaries is not for tax purposes but legal liability reasons. So if the subsidiary gets sued, only that subsidiary can get sued and not the parent company so the parent can only lose their initial investment protecting their exposure to the parent company. That is why when live nation buys a company they do not merge it into the parent company. Also, being Delaware registered saves the companies significant fees. Delaware did it on purpose to attract companies to its state. It mostly favors credit card companies and investment companies. There are companies that the only purpose is to register the businesses in Delaware.
As a long time musician who's floated around the edges of the industry, I find these videos utterly fascinating, disturbing, and completely unsurprising. Tank, while I love your reaction videos (they're why I came here in the first place), please, PLEASE keep making videos like these. By and large, the public has no idea how insidious TicketBastard and LiveNation have been over the past few decades. We need to keep boosting the signal. On a related note, Steve Albini wrote a scathing article about how major labels treat bands, all the way back in the 1990s, for Maximum Rock n' Roll. Despite its age, much of what Albini wrote is still tragically relevant today. I highly suggest you read it (should still be readily available on the interwebs if you search for it).
As someone who does work at a lot of Live Nation venues...I can confidently say they're an evil corporation that cares only for their profits. They don't care about music, they don't care about the artists, they don't care about the crews, the security staff, the vendors, the custodians, the ticketing staff, they ONLY care about the profit at the end of the season. Plain and simple.
One can only hope that Live Nation being suddenly in the spotlight again for shady practices is a good thing. Monopolies prefer it when most people don't even know they exist.The whole dynamic pricing/Blink 182/Taylor Swift stuff put them into the spotlight probably a lot more than they would prefer. Now there's a new federal investigation and everything.
It's happened before, and Congress did nothing. Pearl Jam even came to the capital and told Congress that ticketmaster had a monopoly. That was almost thirty years ago. Mark my words. Nothing will happen.
R’s have House control & that party has no problem with monopolies. Then when R’s obstruct on the corporations behalf, the companies or industries finance their next campaign. Repeat dating back to Reagan.
This is so wild!! I had no idea LiveNation was so widespread, but now that I really think about it I'm not all that surprised. Thanks for shining a light, Tank!!
It's interesting to wonder exactly how such reach affects the touring scene. Me and an ex professional musician friend were chatting about how our local city seems to get passed over for gigs, most notably of late an actual band from our city who skipped the home completely when out on a 40th anniversary album tour, whilst showing up at large venues in neighbouring larger cities. We could only presume that it must have been related to promoter activity and either a bias towards certain venues, the ticket prices which those places might pull down, or a combo of the two aspects.. looking at this series which you've covered here man it wouldn't surprise me if we're on the right lines. Keep rolling with it man.. it's interesting.
I'm not in the music industry but any bigger industry with a reasonable or large logistic tries to brake it down in: - as view stations as possible - circular movement of goods by the same company idealy your own company. - as view people as absolutely necessary This saves huge amount of money and beside reduced number of jobs in logistics it's good for the company. I get why it doesn't translate well to music, and if the system is designed lean enough it's not flexible enough to handle something special like an extra place.
BTW we have this even worse in Finland: one company controls the biggest radio stations, biggest news papers a National TV channel, festivals, and artist promotions. So they decided what artists can play, are written about, are in the spotlight across the media...
Live Nation is currently buying all the concert venues here in Toronto, Canada. Watching them take over all the old venues like Lee's Palace, Mod Club, Velvet Underground and drive out the promoters who built the scene here is depressing as fuck. The complete subversion of the global music industry is real.
@@TankTheTech I heard the deal is in the works from a local promoter here a week ago and he seemed confident it would be in their pocket by next year. I'm not sure if that means just the club, or Collective Concerts as a whole. I assume they'd love to take over Collective the way they did with Embrace, which put Danforth Music Hall and Velvet Underground into the Live Nation portfolio.
Fellow Swedish tech here. Very few shows capable of generating a decent revenue, are performed without LN getting their share. We've known this for years, but it's very hard to get out of the stranglehold.
That sucks. I used to talk to a bunch of swedish bands like 20-15 years ago and it sounded like things were much different then. But also, a lot of them where happy to play in small bars at the time, so maybe that's the difference.
I've only had one experience with LiveNation/TIcketmaster. It was.... Not positive. Nightwish was going to be relatively near my area ("Relatively". Still a six+ hour drive) and I just had to jump on that. I ended up getting a fancy ticket on the balcony floor of a spot in Los Angeles, and they tossed me an email saying that the ticket would be mailed when they could, since Covid was happening at the time. Show got delayed by about a year, and NW's rescheduled event was a month away finally. I toss LN an email inquiring about the ticket, but no response. Event's a week away, I send another to their support. No response. The show's two days away, and the loop repeats. The day AFTER the event, they finally respond back asking if I still needed help. Of course there was no getting a refund, and the ticket never did arrive. They also never responded back when I explained the situation to the support mail that finally got to me the day after the event had ended. It also took me three un-subscribe attempts before I finally got out of their newsletters.
Jimmy Buffett and Phish are two examples of artists that do indeed receive up to 110% of the gate. At least at venues owned by Live Nation. Their fans drink. A lot. So they can afford to offer the higher rate.
Fun fact: In Germany they were too "late" to take the same huge market share fraction they might have elsewhere. The market here is dominated by Eventim - in a quite similar way Live Nation does it elsewhere ...
I went through the list curious if Eventim is in it or not. And for the venues i usually visit it seems fair priced. But most of them are owned by the city, other big companies, or for clubs a typical owner as you would have thought.
Awesome breakdown! Learfield/IMG is the same thing in the sports world, and wouldn't surprise me to find out they are connected. They've hired LiveNation/TM execs already.
The “Half As Interesting” channel did a great little video a few years ago called “The Tiny Building Where 285,000 Businesses are Based”, that explains how everything works there, there’s even a photo of the building :)
I'm absolutely binging your music industry discussions today. Not enough people who know and have been in the business talk about this, and it's so good to see primary and secondary sources for this info. You're doing important work!
Thank you for always putting out such great content, Tank. Not just the usual reactions, I've been learning a lot from the other formats, such as the podcast and these let's say "vlogs" kinda where you just talk about stuff that most of the times escapes us. Keep excellent bro, and again, thank you!!!🤘🤘
As someone on the inside. Live Nation is very good at not making itself feel like it owns the world. Although it seems that money is almost never a problem.
a lot of luxury, super cars are registered in Montanna as well. I see Montanna plates everywhere here in L.A. on Rolls Royce's , Lambos, Bentleys, McLarens etc
Dude, what's REALLY interesting about the whole thing is that T-Swift's tour is actually being managed by a subsidiary of AEG Presents (Messina Touring Group), not by Live Nation (side note - AEG valued at 12.8B as of 2022). But Messina is a 50-50 joint venture with AEG and has freedom to choose venues and ticketing services. Most of the venues that were booked have exclusive deals with Live Nation and so they ended up having to use TM for tickets rather than their own AXS service (not that it would have performed any better). As if one monopoly wasn't bad enough, the only company large enough to provide any real competition is still forced to work with them. I would say thank god for companies like DWP putting on large scale festivals outside of the scope of Live Nation, but even they ticket through Front Gate, who was bought by Ticketmaster, who is owned by Live Nation. SMH We're all screwed LOL!!
Great exposé Tank, thanks. Well that made me take a look at how we got our tickets for Nightwish at the end of last month, CTS Eventim does not have a regional office in Belgium (according to Wiki) and why we had to go to Germany to get the tickets. I have done a lot of bookings for my sis - in - law and her family and this highlights the cost difference between what we paid for tickets and what my s-i-l pays, Sportpaleis Antwerp for Nightwish were around €50 for a seated ticket, my s-i-l paid €150+ for a seat for Rammstein in the same venue next year, Ticketmaster were handling the sale of both concerts. By the time my wife made up her mind about going to Nightwish the venue was sold out for both nights of the concert in Antwerp. So, we plumbed for going to the one in Dusseldorf, it was almost sold out and the only tickets we could get together were in either VIP or Business, Eventim were handling the promotion and sale of the tickets, for our €150 we got a lot more than what my s-i-l is getting for her €150. The list of companies that you showed were very illuminating, for many years I did remote CCTV surveillance at open air concerts and festivals, mainly I contracted out to Police Forces, but for some I did it for the venue, and some for the security companies that the venue had hired to do crowd safety. I did see a few of those companies on the list you scrolled through and that is just in Scotland.
Hey Tank, I recently had to have a shop work on my guitar because some of the internal hardware had become rusted. When I bought my guitar, I was never told about basic quality of life things you should do on a regular basis. Could you make a video about everything you should do to maintain an electric guitar?
Just glancing thru my ticket apps on my phone. Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Enough said. Next I have AXS, which is owned and operated by AEG (#2 to LN). Then I have Ticketleap which is independent and solely online. And finally, DICE which seems to be unique in its business model. "Customers can add themselves to a waiting list for sold-out shows. If users are no longer able to attend a show they can return their tickets to DICE; these tickets are then passed on those who have added themselves to the waiting list on a first-come, first-served basis." (Note: My (now refunded) tix for (cancelled) Electric Callboy in NYC was thru DICE.
Way behind the timeline cuve on this, courtesy of the algorithm only recently plopping you in my feed, but I want to repeat praise of your discussion on this subject. I think you do a good job trying to look at this methodically and objectively. I declared Pearl Jam as my favorite rock band since I went to high school in the early 00s, even before I knew about the old Ticketmaster politics, or how potently they undercut bootleggers for that matter; part of me is still cynical that it took Swifties to motivate recent attention, but I'll take that cynicism over the topic falling out of public discourse. It kills a part of me every time I have to pay those service fees to basically just open PDFs with a digital watermark. It kills a part of me that I literally CANNOT see live music from signed bands without supporting Live Nation. It kills a part of me when financial powerhouses are able to disguise themselves as independent or grassroots causes, both in the business and political spheres. Again, thank you for covering important subjects like this. You're articulate and charismatic enough to sustain an online career shit talking latest mentally ill influences, like so much of the RUclips space, but I'm happy you spend your time questioning how a business has been able to monopolize the massive profits of live music within an entire fucking country.
Just looking at the list I notice a lack of companies in Japan. I wonder if that is one of the reasons why bands from Asia get a lot of resistance to western markets.
Would be interesting to know if Live Nation owns some technical suppliers too. I mean it would be insane if they only use Meyer Sound PAs because they own them or they only use lamps by Robe or SGM or something (the mentioned are all independent)
Wow...just googled if Live nation and IHeart Media were related. Live nation has a good chunk of Iheartmedia, who owns the vast majority of radio stations in the US.
In your first video I wrote that LN/TM should be forced to name the companies that makes the Concert and ticket industry competitive, but after this I understand that every company name they drop has to be cross checked to see if it is a real competitor or just a dummy company that acts the way they do to justify the actions of LN/TM. The link you give goes to the Securities and Exchange Commission so I trust that they have all the information they need to take a closer look into the matter. I was watching a video by Attorney Tom that one of your viewers was kind enough to point out (ruclips.net/video/UARkrvkd9fg/видео.html , it's 8 mins 14 sec long). In that video Tom says that things like this takes time to get sorted out, A LOT of time. He gives one example where it took 10 years to get to the bottom of everything. I think it's good that this situation gets investigated, but sadly I don't think we can expect any major change to happen right away. Cheers / B.
Delaware gets money and employment out of being a corporate haven. Not as much money per company as they would if they had higher taxes but if they raised those they wouldn't have all those companies... as mentioned 2/3 of the Fortune 500 companies are registered there. Basically it's one of those where it all adds up.
Delaware is very "business friendly" - a great place with low fees to register/maintain a company - I believe their Commercial Courts are considered the same. All those registrations and court case mean $$ and employment opportunities.
I'm typing this at the 5:06 mark of the video so I don't know if this gets addressed later. It's actually VERY common for a corporation to be incorporated in Delaware and have a physical address somewhere else. Delaware has some of the friendliest terms to corporations and they allow incorporation without a physical presence within the state. If you look at any company that has subsidiaries, you'll see the vast majority are incorporated in Delaware. Edit: 9:00 Ah. I see you did go over this. Good. This is actually a good thing for businesses.
Let me tell you a story. My daughter wanted to see Jurassic World at the Hershey Giant Center. So I went on Ticketmaster to check for tickets. Two tickets, sect. 105 row f seats 1 and 2, $395 with fees. I said nope sorry can't get tickets. My daughter was upset but understood. A few days later, I was in Hershey and went directly to the box office. Two seats, sect. 105, row D, seats 5 and 6, $85 dollars.
Mr. Tank . have you ever been to buckeye lake music center ,? Thornville Ohio, just empty field till show is booked. also known as Legion Valley, dont know why i ask but its just great place for fans anyway may be hell for the rest ...
Mate i love, love, love your reactions. Besides this interesting video, i beg for you to react to callejon. Callejon is a german metal band. They do satoric videos of rap songs, even re-creating the videos in cheap. Its hilarios. Songs: - Was du Liebe nennst (what you call love) video reaction? :):) - silver surfer (holy fuck that refraint...) - Von party zu party (from party to party) - Urlaub fürs Gehirn (vacation for the brain) Edit: i didnt expect legend tank you read this so i was pretty rough with my informations... They do often do kinda satirical covers, yet also cover great songs like "schrei nach liebe" from "die ärzte". They also do own songs like "silver surfer".
i wish more % went to artists and stage crews. they create great music then work such long hours to perform live, and get smaller cuts than the corporate office workers pushing papers around 9 to 5.
This was interesting to learn about. I honestly had not really thought of it. I usually go to the artist's website to order tickets and the links always divert to a Ticketmaster or otherwise. Also, Tank! Have you seen the new Crewish video? It's where the crew of Nightwish release their own little songs (usually Nightwish takes) and make it their own. All monies go to the crew. Really cool. I thought you may enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the crew from one of your favorite bands.
I like the Babymetal way of pricing. It's a moderate price, to go to the gig, you get a fantastic show and they film every concert! They then sell the concert DVD. So far, I have 20+ Babymetal concerts, in my DVD collection. They spend millions of £s on their live shows and it's for the DVD release, which they make a profit from. At my last look Sabaton/Babymetal, next year was only £67. For a Stadium gig, I don't think that is unreasonable. 15 years ago, Kate Bush tickets were near on £200. Much as I wanted a ticket, there was no way I could afford that. Music has always been a money making market. We're just realising it now that the money is more important than the music. BTW I'm not criticising Babymetal, in any way. Kobametal and Amuse Inc, have got the balance right.
Since 2017, I've been to over a dozen shows. Using Live Nation to purchase my tickets, ive never paid more than $70, which includes parking, for any of the tickets to these shows.
I had a bunch of record companies and artists as clients back in the early nineties and it was ridiculous how these artists are taken advantage of. The recording companies basically give a small royalties advance to pay for the recording and then then every fee possible is changed to the band such as legal, accounting, etc. basically if the recording does not do extremely well the band will own some of the royalties income back to the record company. It’s insane. You basically will owe the record company but I never saw the record actual try and get the money back. I don’t know how it is today because know everything is digital and no more record sales but I would believe that these record companies are still taking advantage of the artist in other ways.
In CT. they have so many venues with events that they're giving in to the union contracts just to keep the events happening on time. they are baking the overtime into their cost of day to day operations. which makes for a lot of tired local stagehands.
This is so crazy. Hey new subscriber here can you do a video on Upstaging trucking. I have 24 years of driving in the trucking industry and almost went there seems like a great place to work but unfortunately the time away would be rough on me and my family. Thanks.
Sabaton is operating all their business through Cyprus registered companys which is a kind of EU Delaware. Band members are residents of Cyprus too because of the taxes laws and they literally live their. I ones met 2 bands members just on the street and soon found out that they are literally living in the same neighborhood as me (when i lived in Cyprus).
A bit late to the party, but yeah Live Nation (and all its subsidiaries) sucks so much and are only getting worse. To the point they are killing the live event business, at least for the regular people who just want to enjoy the events. Thank you for this broad explanation Tank, really interesting!
Thank you for sharing your inside information on Livenation and TM. Taylor Swift fans already filed a class-action suit against TM. Don’t know if they really have a case against them stating TM violating the anti-trust laws and or their rights to buy tickets to see Taylor in concert due to TM’s overload demand cancelled tix sell. Do fans have the right and case to sue TM / Livenation if they get screwed or denied from tix sales like this? Thanks.
I worked for a company which got buyed by LN few years ago. LN mostly Buys kinda 51 % of a company or splits it between other subsidiaries. They want to Organize everything.... obviously. Biggest competitors ... yeah AEG and Eventim (mostly Europe). But bookers are just hopping from one big company to the other. Live Nation wins, cause they paying more than others. And yeah... All For The Profit... but it's the same with AEG and Eventim.... Keep supporting the Underground and independend organizers ... thats kinda all we can do. But they struggle with implementing a lot of those companies they buy, you just cant buy a small company and integrate into this Monstrosity without any problems. But as long you can raise the ticket prizes, sponsorings and anything else, they dont have to keep an eye on their own company. Instead of getting better, you just raise the prizes. And looking at the sales of the Metallica Tour etc.... I don't have much faith, that people may learn... And dynamic prizing and Platinum Tickets are the purest Evil sht ever....
Thank you for this video, it's very important! A comment: something being legal does not mean something being just. Tax evasion by registering companies or subsidiaries in e.g. Panama or other "tax paradises" can be considered unjust because they are in some sense stealing money from the countries they actually operate in. Using a system that's there does not make this just, unjust practices facilitated by a system makes the system unjust and in need of criticism and/or revision. Of course this would be a completely different - and very stingy - issue to get into, which I understand you would not do in this video.
As I pointed out in the comments of the other Live Nation vlog, I hope you do a podcast about how Live Nation (and therefore _all_ of its subsidiaries) are owned by I heart Radio, thus giving them a nearly complete monopoly on the American music industry. Thanks for helping expose this Tank, I have watched it unfold and am sickened by also having to watch what it has done to our beloved biz. Between their stranglehold on the airwaves and the "360 deals" they force upon artists, they have basically ruined it all.
bro..how the fuck is this possible?! They're the ones that killed terrestrial radio by buying all the fucking radio stations because of the 1996 Telecommunications Act! WHY DONT OUR ANTI-TRUST LAWS WORK?!!!
I had to scroll down the list and check, but nothing Japanese on that list. At least not yet. I hope it stays that way to be honest. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there's the same situation, different company in Japan. Also had to check back on it, but the EC tour in the USA was AEG. 😮
I looked at that list and one thing I notice is that there aren't any gear production companies that I recognise. If you don't have speakers, instruments, forklifts for loading trucks and building stages you won't have a concert, so if live nation wants to be a monopoly on events, why don't they own everything practical that makes a concert happen. Because I'm sure that it's a multi billion dollar industry on the other side as well, like trucking, rigging, portable toilets, catering, local crew etc. Everything that makes the event happen practically on site.
While they don't outright own some of those companies, there are a lot of companies that Live Nation has small ownerships in that aren't listed on there.
I'm gonna talk about Mexicio because we are on a different place that most, here we have Ocesa whihc is tehe biggest promoter, that Live Nation has been trying to acquiere and they bring the biggest artist and shows, also another big one is Telmex which is the biggest telecommunication company in the country, but they have so much money they actually promote events mostly cultural ones if there's a big orchestra or a broadway musical in Mexico Telmex is probably the one who booked that show, but even with those 2 big companie the bussines is mostly regional, Ocesa even being the biggest promoter mostly does shows on the countries capital and rarely does outside of it, and here the industry is mostly about big regional promoters that bring the artist to perform, here in my state Nuevo Leon we actuallyt have 3 big promoter which is Apodaca Entertainment which mostly does the popular stuff and alternative, then there's Primitime Entertainment and they have no preference they have book from big port artist to, regional mexican, to metal shows etc. and then there's Cacique Entertainment whihc are sepecialized on Metal and weird stuff experimental stuff like if someday Swans comes to my state they would be most likely be the company that books them, and it also works the same for every state all of the have their regional companies that book shows, so we cant's say that one company has consolidated power on the country, also is the same with ticket companies there are 2 big ones in the contry which are Super Boletos and Ticketmaster, and both have almso the same market share, i have even seen events were tickets are being sold by both ticket companies, also there's regional ones here in my state Nuevo Leon we have Hot Ticket whichi is a regional ticker company and actually has sold tickets for big events, so yeah here in Mexico we have a healty market mostly because of how regionalized the market is. P.D. Also most big show here the tickets start at 40 USD, and 300 USD tickest are mostly VIP stuff, and for smaller regional shows i have been in a lot of metal show were the tickets are as low as 10 USD most of the time the ticket on those show are like 20-25.
I went and took a closer look at the list of subsidiaries. There are sooo many talent management companies... but there's also at least one financial management agency in there... music publishing companies.... artists themselves are listed on there too.... and a company who makes rubber gloves...
They also own cd and cassette manufacturers, recording production and pist production companies. T shirt companies and printing companies in addition to merchandising companies. They own entire production lines. Software companies. Data analytic companies. Asset management companies. Literally any service they could ever need. And then some superfluous stuff like a company that sells fine art prints of rock stars.
Holy shit, even though everyone knows this was all just to save face, literally as I opened RUclips just now, just after live nation announced no more merch cuts, at least at certain venues at least as I understand, with the stipend on top of that, this video popped up in my feed. Gotta watch it again of course.😏👍
If artists like M Shadows want supply and demand to push ticket prices into the stratosphere, then they better not be on the mic asking for the crowd to make noise when it's made up of a bunch of rich people sitting on their hands, when the only reason they are there is because it's the cool thing to do and they can afford it.
The issue is there's a deference between a de facto monopoly and a legal one. There are a ton of companies who don't meet the legal definition of a monopoly despite effectively having the market cornered in a specific industry.
It's been like this since they went internet. The whole 1st come 1st serve days of standing on line at box office was WAY more fair. Yea there were always some people working for scalpers on the line but mostly if you wanted tickets up close & were in line overnight , you got them. Now, highest bidder
I had to do the same type of "training" when the independent strip club I did security at was aggressively bought out by the Deja Vu Corporation. They own a large percentage of clubs all over the world. Between them and RCI, Inc, there aren't a whole lot of independent clubs left. I'm 50 and have been doing security since I was 18 and Deja Vu's operating system was the dumbest I've dealt with. Coincidentally, the club just happened to burn down 3 months after they bought it, and since they now owned every club in town, the insurance money and less overhead and funneling customers into their other 2 clubs, they weren't exactly hurting.
There are massive companies in Delaware who just service these corporations (do the paperwork and provide an address), my favoritely named one being Corporation Services Company.
How big is CTS Eventim in the US? Here in Germany it's like there is Eventim where you can buy your tickets and nothing else. Ok somewhere is Ticketmaster and MyTicket too, but literally everyone uses Eventim. I wonder if this is a German/European thing or if it is somehow the same in the US
CTS Eventim Operates only in Central Europe (and a few select countries in Eastern Europe), however has a third of the value of Live Nation according to Google, Considering they are only operating in like a dozend countries, that should give you an idea how powerful they are over here. btw, Live Nation does sell more tickets to their shows on Eventim here than on ticketmaster. Eventim is also shitty, but by far not as bad as Live Nation. But that might be partially due to them losing a couple lawsuits when they tried to do more shitty things.
This explains why a group called my job to see what Delaware's unpaid internship laws were, but they were calling the wrong number, and the girl got snippy with me and acted like her deadline for an answer was my problem.
So if that's the case with live nation, wouldn't a way to stick it to them would be introducing bands you dig on, doing interviews with bands outside of that? Just a thought.
Live Nation (aka Ticketmaster) is a giant greedy beast who needs to be knocked down a few notches. They have way too much power and influence, the fees are friggin ridiculous and their customer service sucks! I just had a run-in with them just over a week ago regarding a simple change in format of my ticket to see Jinjer at the HOB and they flat-out denied it and offered no work-around or even a hint of an apology or sympathy. (luckily, I was still able to see Jinjer and they rocked the house!)
Live nation is part of the booking for Janet Jackson concerts that are intentionally overbooked you are stuck and concert can’t even enter the place and and they don’t plan on giving money back. WHERE ARE THE LAWYERS!! Class action lawsuits
Hi Tank, just curious if you've seen LN push the tailgating parties at venues across the country. I saw a Connecticut family is suing them for promoting that, denying someone venue entry, who then drove away heavily intoxicated and killed their 17 year old son.
Delaware is very freindly on corporate taxes and rules on publicly traded companies as a such most really big US companies and subsidiaries thereoff are primarily in delaware. And the broker is a "service company" they accept service documents, they are the owner of that small brick building, they basically act as a PO Box for companies pay them to be the registered agent, collect the paperwork and mail it on.
There isn’t a single show in Montreal that isn’t promoted or has tickets sold through Livenation/Ticketmaster. It’s infuriating because they can just hike up the price of a ticket at any time.
In Germany the biggest ticket company I know of is Eventim CTS, which as far as I can tell is not owned my Ticketmaster (yet). But these guys are also not the good guys, they are noted at the stockmarket, BlackRock is one mayor investor, they tried to get in the German toll road system which was thankfully cancelled by EU law and they are watched by the German federal cartell office for being the quasi monopoly on ticket sales here.
Disgusting! This is why I refuse to attend live nation shows and give the money. Independent venues and eventbrite for tickets these days for me. This is also why I want to open my own club. When are antitrust laws going to come into play?! Late stage capitalism is really dirty.
Another fun deep dive into a topic like this is personal data sharing companies. The amount of companies involved is migraine inducing. Obviously not related to this channel's content.
Delaware is also frequently chosen for the vast majority of businesses because of the Court of Chancery which is advantageous for corporations dealing with various legal disputes. Delaware is structured to be extremely pro business for organization for corporations. And under laws as they exist now corporations have two theoretical “homes”, that being the state of incorporation as well as their state with their headquarters. But as you address there are various jurisdictions for many different business lines and structures that have their statutes geared to attract various entity types. Wyoming for example is extremely popular for LLCs thanks to their tax structure, protection of liability and privacy. Or for a seemingly less nefarious example I work for a state agency that regulates insurance and we are extremely popular because the taxes we charge are by comparison low to many other states but we require you have material operations here otherwise we won’t regulate you because we feel if we are to regulate you then your business needs to bring economic benefit to our state citizens. But we also have a much larger department with much more funding and have the funding and work load that we can hire specialists for more nuanced things that other jurisdictions can’t. It seems wild but preferred jurisdictions for various business things is extremely common.
I'm a musician, I go to live shows often, listening to this makes me kind of glad im not famous lol..well I sort of am in some ways but not because of music lol
if bands and venues want to sell tickets, an alternative would be Brown Paper Tickets. When I was a promoter in Southern California, I used to use them to sell all my tickets. Barely a fee (usually $1.33 per every $10), though my ticket pricing for my shows (generally 8-16 per month) were always between $8 - 25 at most. I know one of the benefits of using Ticketmaster for a promoter is the reach of their email / promotions. That was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Ticket web before I retired. 16 years as the small promoter wore me and my wallet out!
What I have always hated about Ticketmaster was that you can't get around them. So I get taxed to pay for a stadium, then if I want to pay to get in to it to see something, I am required to give money to a private third party. I really hope the politicians that approve this crap get paid well for it.
so when I am looking at that list, I see only three companies in Germany (being Live Nation and two Ticketmaster companies). So apparently CTS Eventim is not owned by Live Nation? Because they are (I think) a serious competitor to Live Nation in Germany and a viable alternative in other countries too. They own for example ticketing companies all over Europe. Question is... are they any better than Live Nation or are they just the same with a different label..? If you have any insight on that, I think your german audience would appreciate that 😉
Fan of the channel, but your stuff about Delaware incorporation is way off base. I'm a former corporate lawyer. It isn't a tax dodge to incorporate in Delaware. In the USA, you pay state income tax based on where you generate revenue, where your operations are located, and where you employees are located. It is based on a formula. The location of your state of incorporation has nothing to do how much state income tax you pay. The franchise tax is where states charge a fee to use their states for incorporation and it is not based on income. Delaware actually has a moderate fee. The low franchise tax state is actually Nevada, a popular place for tiny companies to form. Anyways, the reason why businesses choose Delaware is that they have a very flexible corporate law that allows the business structure their business in many ways, but offers some bright line protections to deter scammers. It is a good balance. But then it offers a lot of gap fillers of how corporate law works if the corporate charter is silent on issues that can resolve a lot of potential future disputes. And then it has a very strong corporation judiciary that can handle disputes related to control of the company. These are hard core judges that know a lot about corporate law and aren't judges that do gun or drug possession cases and then a corporate takeover challenge the next. That certainty as to how the corporate law works and disputes will be resolved in a objective manner makes investors more comfortable. I see it all the time, as an investor, if I saw a corporation incorporated in a place like Kentucky, it would make me nervous because he don't know how those judges would act and if they would protect the rights of the shareholders. Anyways, boring legal stuff, not a big conspiracy to avoid taxes. That is another issue and doesn't have to do with Delaware. Just saying Delaware corporations are usually a good thing for both investors and corporate management and the public at large.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: You're really becoming a important music journalist for many people! Thank you for sharing your insights, thoughts and opinions on a topic most music-consumers wouldn't even think about on their own
Thank you!
Completely agree! I love tanks videos! I used to play in a band that was close to signing with victory or earache records, it didn't work out due to band conflicts. But tank has been that explanation to that what if we had gone further.
@@GryHen-pg9iywhat was your band?! I'd like to hear it!
I am a cpa and the reason for there being separate entities for all their subsidiaries is not for tax purposes but legal liability reasons. So if the subsidiary gets sued, only that subsidiary can get sued and not the parent company so the parent can only lose their initial investment protecting their exposure to the parent company. That is why when live nation buys a company they do not merge it into the parent company. Also, being Delaware registered saves the companies significant fees. Delaware did it on purpose to attract companies to its state. It mostly favors credit card companies and investment companies. There are companies that the only purpose is to register the businesses in Delaware.
Good info to know. Thank you!
There's more companies in Delaware than there are residents.
Can confirm. Also, Corporations registered in Delaware will still pay income taxes in the states where they operate as well as on the federal level.
As a long time musician who's floated around the edges of the industry, I find these videos utterly fascinating, disturbing, and completely unsurprising. Tank, while I love your reaction videos (they're why I came here in the first place), please, PLEASE keep making videos like these. By and large, the public has no idea how insidious TicketBastard and LiveNation have been over the past few decades. We need to keep boosting the signal.
On a related note, Steve Albini wrote a scathing article about how major labels treat bands, all the way back in the 1990s, for Maximum Rock n' Roll. Despite its age, much of what Albini wrote is still tragically relevant today. I highly suggest you read it (should still be readily available on the interwebs if you search for it).
@TankTheTech Huh? What's this?
As someone who does work at a lot of Live Nation venues...I can confidently say they're an evil corporation that cares only for their profits. They don't care about music, they don't care about the artists, they don't care about the crews, the security staff, the vendors, the custodians, the ticketing staff, they ONLY care about the profit at the end of the season. Plain and simple.
In this system, which company doesn´t have the profit as their goal?
thats why "they " called the Music Business haha.
@@zvolencan1 There's a difference between earning profit, and pursuing maximum profit to the exclusion of everything else.
You just described capitalism. No corporation cares about anything other than profits. Hell, they legally can't!
@@Khazandar not in a capitalist hellscape like America.
One can only hope that Live Nation being suddenly in the spotlight again for shady practices is a good thing. Monopolies prefer it when most people don't even know they exist.The whole dynamic pricing/Blink 182/Taylor Swift stuff put them into the spotlight probably a lot more than they would prefer. Now there's a new federal investigation and everything.
It's happened before, and Congress did nothing. Pearl Jam even came to the capital and told Congress that ticketmaster had a monopoly. That was almost thirty years ago. Mark my words. Nothing will happen.
I think its high time for a congressional hearing myself
R’s have House control & that party has no problem with monopolies. Then when R’s obstruct on the corporations behalf, the companies or industries finance their next campaign. Repeat dating back to Reagan.
NOTHING WILL HAPPEN..CORPORATIONS OWNS AMERICAS POLITICAL
This is so wild!! I had no idea LiveNation was so widespread, but now that I really think about it I'm not all that surprised. Thanks for shining a light, Tank!!
It's interesting to wonder exactly how such reach affects the touring scene. Me and an ex professional musician friend were chatting about how our local city seems to get passed over for gigs, most notably of late an actual band from our city who skipped the home completely when out on a 40th anniversary album tour, whilst showing up at large venues in neighbouring larger cities. We could only presume that it must have been related to promoter activity and either a bias towards certain venues, the ticket prices which those places might pull down, or a combo of the two aspects.. looking at this series which you've covered here man it wouldn't surprise me if we're on the right lines. Keep rolling with it man.. it's interesting.
I'm not in the music industry but any bigger industry with a reasonable or large logistic tries to brake it down in:
- as view stations as possible
- circular movement of goods by the same company idealy your own company.
- as view people as absolutely necessary
This saves huge amount of money and beside reduced number of jobs in logistics it's good for the company.
I get why it doesn't translate well to music, and if the system is designed lean enough it's not flexible enough to handle something special like an extra place.
😮There's more?! The first video was already so insane. Thanks for putting this stuff out there Tank!
BTW we have this even worse in Finland: one company controls the biggest radio stations, biggest news papers a National TV channel, festivals, and artist promotions. So they decided what artists can play, are written about, are in the spotlight across the media...
@Tomas Bolin Have you got any idea if Tiketti is still independent?
@@marjokauppinen9784 yes, they are independent from Ticketmaster. Always buy tix from there.
We have that here in America where Clear Channel and Cumulus own huge swaths of terrestrial radio
Live Nation is currently buying all the concert venues here in Toronto, Canada. Watching them take over all the old venues like Lee's Palace, Mod Club, Velvet Underground and drive out the promoters who built the scene here is depressing as fuck. The complete subversion of the global music industry is real.
Damn, they bought Lee’s?!?!?
@@TankTheTech I heard the deal is in the works from a local promoter here a week ago and he seemed confident it would be in their pocket by next year. I'm not sure if that means just the club, or Collective Concerts as a whole. I assume they'd love to take over Collective the way they did with Embrace, which put Danforth Music Hall and Velvet Underground into the Live Nation portfolio.
Fellow Swedish tech here. Very few shows capable of generating a decent revenue, are performed without LN getting their share. We've known this for years, but it's very hard to get out of the stranglehold.
Oj va världen va liten, ljus tekniker här. Vi jobbade ihop för nått år sedan på sillsalteriet.
@@GothicLightingQueen Hahaha jäpp! =D
nämen fan anamma! Tintin, kom och titta!
@@FinnishedThirdMusic Tjenare! =D
That sucks. I used to talk to a bunch of swedish bands like 20-15 years ago and it sounded like things were much different then. But also, a lot of them where happy to play in small bars at the time, so maybe that's the difference.
I've only had one experience with LiveNation/TIcketmaster. It was.... Not positive. Nightwish was going to be relatively near my area ("Relatively". Still a six+ hour drive) and I just had to jump on that. I ended up getting a fancy ticket on the balcony floor of a spot in Los Angeles, and they tossed me an email saying that the ticket would be mailed when they could, since Covid was happening at the time. Show got delayed by about a year, and NW's rescheduled event was a month away finally. I toss LN an email inquiring about the ticket, but no response. Event's a week away, I send another to their support. No response. The show's two days away, and the loop repeats. The day AFTER the event, they finally respond back asking if I still needed help. Of course there was no getting a refund, and the ticket never did arrive. They also never responded back when I explained the situation to the support mail that finally got to me the day after the event had ended.
It also took me three un-subscribe attempts before I finally got out of their newsletters.
Wow! I would be pissed if that happened to me.
Jimmy Buffett and Phish are two examples of artists that do indeed receive up to 110% of the gate. At least at venues owned by Live Nation. Their fans drink. A lot. So they can afford to offer the higher rate.
Yea, from what I've seen, it varies from artist to artist. But to say that it doesn't happen is disingenuous and misguided.
Just came across this channel and its incredible. Going back through to watch all episodes. Great work
Thanks a ton!
Fun fact: In Germany they were too "late" to take the same huge market share fraction they might have elsewhere. The market here is dominated by Eventim - in a quite similar way Live Nation does it elsewhere ...
I went through the list curious if Eventim is in it or not. And for the venues i usually visit it seems fair priced. But most of them are owned by the city, other big companies, or for clubs a typical owner as you would have thought.
Awesome breakdown! Learfield/IMG is the same thing in the sports world, and wouldn't surprise me to find out they are connected. They've hired LiveNation/TM execs already.
thx for your work tank!
it is really insane how deep this mess is
I've been enjoying the hell out of these, keep them coming!
The “Half As Interesting” channel did a great little video a few years ago called “The Tiny Building Where 285,000 Businesses are Based”, that explains how everything works there, there’s even a photo of the building :)
I'm absolutely binging your music industry discussions today. Not enough people who know and have been in the business talk about this, and it's so good to see primary and secondary sources for this info. You're doing important work!
Thank you for always putting out such great content, Tank. Not just the usual reactions, I've been learning a lot from the other formats, such as the podcast and these let's say "vlogs" kinda where you just talk about stuff that most of the times escapes us. Keep excellent bro, and again, thank you!!!🤘🤘
As someone on the inside. Live Nation is very good at not making itself feel like it owns the world. Although it seems that money is almost never a problem.
BTW I work for Live Nation GSA (Germany, Switzerland, Austria)
a lot of luxury, super cars are registered in Montanna as well. I see Montanna plates everywhere here in L.A. on Rolls Royce's , Lambos, Bentleys, McLarens etc
Oh interesting. Never thought about something like that happening.
Dude, what's REALLY interesting about the whole thing is that T-Swift's tour is actually being managed by a subsidiary of AEG Presents (Messina Touring Group), not by Live Nation (side note - AEG valued at 12.8B as of 2022). But Messina is a 50-50 joint venture with AEG and has freedom to choose venues and ticketing services. Most of the venues that were booked have exclusive deals with Live Nation and so they ended up having to use TM for tickets rather than their own AXS service (not that it would have performed any better). As if one monopoly wasn't bad enough, the only company large enough to provide any real competition is still forced to work with them. I would say thank god for companies like DWP putting on large scale festivals outside of the scope of Live Nation, but even they ticket through Front Gate, who was bought by Ticketmaster, who is owned by Live Nation. SMH We're all screwed LOL!!
Great exposé Tank, thanks. Well that made me take a look at how we got our tickets for Nightwish at the end of last month, CTS Eventim does not have a regional office in Belgium (according to Wiki) and why we had to go to Germany to get the tickets.
I have done a lot of bookings for my sis - in - law and her family and this highlights the cost difference between what we paid for tickets and what my s-i-l pays, Sportpaleis Antwerp for Nightwish were around €50 for a seated ticket, my s-i-l paid €150+ for a seat for Rammstein in the same venue next year, Ticketmaster were handling the sale of both concerts. By the time my wife made up her mind about going to Nightwish the venue was sold out for both nights of the concert in Antwerp. So, we plumbed for going to the one in Dusseldorf, it was almost sold out and the only tickets we could get together were in either VIP or Business, Eventim were handling the promotion and sale of the tickets, for our €150 we got a lot more than what my s-i-l is getting for her €150.
The list of companies that you showed were very illuminating, for many years I did remote CCTV surveillance at open air concerts and festivals, mainly I contracted out to Police Forces, but for some I did it for the venue, and some for the security companies that the venue had hired to do crowd safety. I did see a few of those companies on the list you scrolled through and that is just in Scotland.
Third party registered agents are pretty common. Costs me like $100/year to have my lawyer act as registered agent for all my LLCs.
Hey Tank, I recently had to have a shop work on my guitar because some of the internal hardware had become rusted. When I bought my guitar, I was never told about basic quality of life things you should do on a regular basis.
Could you make a video about everything you should do to maintain an electric guitar?
Just glancing thru my ticket apps on my phone. Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Enough said. Next I have AXS, which is owned and operated by AEG (#2 to LN). Then I have Ticketleap which is independent and solely online. And finally, DICE which seems to be unique in its business model. "Customers can add themselves to a waiting list for sold-out shows. If users are no longer able to attend a show they can return their tickets to DICE; these tickets are then passed on those who have added themselves to the waiting list on a first-come, first-served basis." (Note: My (now refunded) tix for (cancelled) Electric Callboy in NYC was thru DICE.
Thanks for your research, Tank!
Way behind the timeline cuve on this, courtesy of the algorithm only recently plopping you in my feed, but I want to repeat praise of your discussion on this subject. I think you do a good job trying to look at this methodically and objectively. I declared Pearl Jam as my favorite rock band since I went to high school in the early 00s, even before I knew about the old Ticketmaster politics, or how potently they undercut bootleggers for that matter; part of me is still cynical that it took Swifties to motivate recent attention, but I'll take that cynicism over the topic falling out of public discourse. It kills a part of me every time I have to pay those service fees to basically just open PDFs with a digital watermark. It kills a part of me that I literally CANNOT see live music from signed bands without supporting Live Nation. It kills a part of me when financial powerhouses are able to disguise themselves as independent or grassroots causes, both in the business and political spheres.
Again, thank you for covering important subjects like this. You're articulate and charismatic enough to sustain an online career shit talking latest mentally ill influences, like so much of the RUclips space, but I'm happy you spend your time questioning how a business has been able to monopolize the massive profits of live music within an entire fucking country.
Registering business in Delaware has been a thing for a very long time and is widely known.
Just looking at the list I notice a lack of companies in Japan. I wonder if that is one of the reasons why bands from Asia get a lot of resistance to western markets.
Love your content! We talked about this on the Guitar Dads Podcast and would love to have you on to talk more!
We seriously appreciate all your videos and information.
The literal Touring bible for bands!
Tank your channel has really gotten good, keep it up!!!
Would be interesting to know if Live Nation owns some technical suppliers too. I mean it would be insane if they only use Meyer Sound PAs because they own them or they only use lamps by Robe or SGM or something (the mentioned are all independent)
Im really interested to see if they're in bed with the major labels...in my mind there's no way they arent.
Wow...just googled if Live nation and IHeart Media were related. Live nation has a good chunk of Iheartmedia, who owns the vast majority of radio stations in the US.
In your first video I wrote that LN/TM should be forced to name the companies that makes the Concert and ticket industry competitive, but after this I understand that every company name they drop has to be cross checked to see if it is a real competitor or just a dummy company that acts the way they do to justify the actions of LN/TM. The link you give goes to the Securities and Exchange Commission so I trust that they have all the information they need to take a closer look into the matter.
I was watching a video by Attorney Tom that one of your viewers was kind enough to point out (ruclips.net/video/UARkrvkd9fg/видео.html , it's 8 mins 14 sec long). In that video Tom says that things like this takes time to get sorted out, A LOT of time. He gives one example where it took 10 years to get to the bottom of everything. I think it's good that this situation gets investigated, but sadly I don't think we can expect any major change to happen right away. Cheers / B.
Got another one of those Telegram replies again, reported to YT so it's probably gone by the time you see this. Cheers / B.
There was a question in chat which also crossed my mind - what does Delaware get out of the whole thing?
That, is an interesting question actually.
Delaware gets money and employment out of being a corporate haven. Not as much money per company as they would if they had higher taxes but if they raised those they wouldn't have all those companies... as mentioned 2/3 of the Fortune 500 companies are registered there. Basically it's one of those where it all adds up.
Delaware is very "business friendly" - a great place with low fees to register/maintain a company - I believe their Commercial Courts are considered the same.
All those registrations and court case mean $$ and employment opportunities.
Generous campaign funding for the politicians responsible for creating those corporate friendly laws.
I'm typing this at the 5:06 mark of the video so I don't know if this gets addressed later. It's actually VERY common for a corporation to be incorporated in Delaware and have a physical address somewhere else. Delaware has some of the friendliest terms to corporations and they allow incorporation without a physical presence within the state. If you look at any company that has subsidiaries, you'll see the vast majority are incorporated in Delaware.
Edit: 9:00 Ah. I see you did go over this. Good. This is actually a good thing for businesses.
Let me tell you a story. My daughter wanted to see Jurassic World at the Hershey Giant Center. So I went on Ticketmaster to check for tickets. Two tickets, sect. 105 row f seats 1 and 2, $395 with fees. I said nope sorry can't get tickets. My daughter was upset but understood. A few days later, I was in Hershey and went directly to the box office. Two seats, sect. 105, row D, seats 5 and 6, $85 dollars.
I know I'm late to the party but your streams are great very informative.
Mr. Tank . have you ever been to buckeye lake music center ,? Thornville Ohio, just empty field till show is booked. also known as Legion Valley, dont know why i ask but its just great place for fans anyway may be hell for the rest ...
Honestly can't say that I have.
I saw the WOMAD festival there back in the day. It was completely wide open back then. 3 stages and a pretty good time.
Mate i love, love, love your reactions. Besides this interesting video, i beg for you to react to callejon.
Callejon is a german metal band.
They do satoric videos of rap songs, even re-creating the videos in cheap. Its hilarios.
Songs:
- Was du Liebe nennst (what you call love) video reaction? :):)
- silver surfer (holy fuck that refraint...)
- Von party zu party (from party to party)
- Urlaub fürs Gehirn (vacation for the brain)
Edit: i didnt expect legend tank you read this so i was pretty rough with my informations...
They do often do kinda satirical covers, yet also cover great songs like "schrei nach liebe" from "die ärzte".
They also do own songs like "silver surfer".
i wish more % went to artists and stage crews. they create great music then work such long hours to perform live, and get smaller cuts than the corporate office workers pushing papers around 9 to 5.
This was interesting to learn about. I honestly had not really thought of it. I usually go to the artist's website to order tickets and the links always divert to a Ticketmaster or otherwise.
Also, Tank! Have you seen the new Crewish video?
It's where the crew of Nightwish release their own little songs (usually Nightwish takes) and make it their own. All monies go to the crew. Really cool. I thought you may enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the crew from one of your favorite bands.
Party was over when they took control too… working in rock n roll was fun
I like the Babymetal way of pricing.
It's a moderate price, to go to the gig, you get a fantastic show and they film every concert!
They then sell the concert DVD.
So far, I have 20+ Babymetal concerts, in my DVD collection.
They spend millions of £s on their live shows and it's for the DVD release, which they make a profit from.
At my last look Sabaton/Babymetal, next year was only £67.
For a Stadium gig, I don't think that is unreasonable.
15 years ago, Kate Bush tickets were near on £200. Much as I wanted a ticket, there was no way I could afford that.
Music has always been a money making market. We're just realising it now that the money is more important than the music.
BTW I'm not criticising Babymetal, in any way. Kobametal and Amuse Inc, have got the balance right.
never knew that sabatons merch is made in cyprus. actually makes me want a shirt now lol
Since 2017, I've been to over a dozen shows. Using Live Nation to purchase my tickets, ive never paid more than $70, which includes parking, for any of the tickets to these shows.
I had a bunch of record companies and artists as clients back in the early nineties and it was ridiculous how these artists are taken advantage of. The recording companies basically give a small royalties advance to pay for the recording and then then every fee possible is changed to the band such as legal, accounting, etc. basically if the recording does not do extremely well the band will own some of the royalties income back to the record company. It’s insane. You basically will owe the record company but I never saw the record actual try and get the money back. I don’t know how it is today because know everything is digital and no more record sales but I would believe that these record companies are still taking advantage of the artist in other ways.
It's worse. The 360 deals, etc.
@@k53847exactly 💯
In CT. they have so many venues with events that they're giving in to the union contracts just to keep the events happening on time. they are baking the overtime into their cost of day to day operations. which makes for a lot of tired local stagehands.
This is so crazy. Hey new subscriber here can you do a video on Upstaging trucking. I have 24 years of driving in the trucking industry and almost went there seems like a great place to work but unfortunately the time away would be rough on me and my family. Thanks.
Sabaton is operating all their business through Cyprus registered companys which is a kind of EU Delaware. Band members are residents of Cyprus too because of the taxes laws and they literally live their. I ones met 2 bands members just on the street and soon found out that they are literally living in the same neighborhood as me (when i lived in Cyprus).
I know Pär lives there, but I don’t know if any of the other guys do.
A bit late to the party, but yeah Live Nation (and all its subsidiaries) sucks so much and are only getting worse. To the point they are killing the live event business, at least for the regular people who just want to enjoy the events. Thank you for this broad explanation Tank, really interesting!
they're not just killing live events, they're killing indie musicians as well since touring and merch is now the main source of income for these bands
Thank you for sharing your inside information on Livenation and TM. Taylor Swift fans already filed a class-action suit against TM. Don’t know if they really have a case against them stating TM violating the anti-trust laws and or their rights to buy tickets to see Taylor in concert due to TM’s overload demand cancelled tix sell. Do fans have the right and case to sue TM / Livenation if they get screwed or denied from tix sales like this? Thanks.
To be honest, I have no idea.
I worked for a company which got buyed by LN few years ago. LN mostly Buys kinda 51 % of a company or splits it between other subsidiaries. They want to Organize everything.... obviously. Biggest competitors ... yeah AEG and Eventim (mostly Europe). But bookers are just hopping from one big company to the other. Live Nation wins, cause they paying more than others. And yeah... All For The Profit... but it's the same with AEG and Eventim.... Keep supporting the Underground and independend organizers ... thats kinda all we can do.
But they struggle with implementing a lot of those companies they buy, you just cant buy a small company and integrate into this Monstrosity without any problems. But as long you can raise the ticket prizes, sponsorings and anything else, they dont have to keep an eye on their own company. Instead of getting better, you just raise the prizes. And looking at the sales of the Metallica Tour etc.... I don't have much faith, that people may learn...
And dynamic prizing and Platinum Tickets are the purest Evil sht ever....
Thank you for this video, it's very important!
A comment: something being legal does not mean something being just. Tax evasion by registering companies or subsidiaries in e.g. Panama or other "tax paradises" can be considered unjust because they are in some sense stealing money from the countries they actually operate in. Using a system that's there does not make this just, unjust practices facilitated by a system makes the system unjust and in need of criticism and/or revision. Of course this would be a completely different - and very stingy - issue to get into, which I understand you would not do in this video.
As I pointed out in the comments of the other Live Nation vlog, I hope you do a podcast about how Live Nation (and therefore _all_ of its subsidiaries) are owned by I heart Radio, thus giving them a nearly complete monopoly on the American music industry. Thanks for helping expose this Tank, I have watched it unfold and am sickened by also having to watch what it has done to our beloved biz. Between their stranglehold on the airwaves and the "360 deals" they force upon artists, they have basically ruined it all.
bro..how the fuck is this possible?! They're the ones that killed terrestrial radio by buying all the fucking radio stations because of the 1996 Telecommunications Act! WHY DONT OUR ANTI-TRUST LAWS WORK?!!!
I had to scroll down the list and check, but nothing Japanese on that list. At least not yet. I hope it stays that way to be honest.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if there's the same situation, different company in Japan.
Also had to check back on it, but the EC tour in the USA was AEG. 😮
I looked at that list and one thing I notice is that there aren't any gear production companies that I recognise. If you don't have speakers, instruments, forklifts for loading trucks and building stages you won't have a concert, so if live nation wants to be a monopoly on events, why don't they own everything practical that makes a concert happen. Because I'm sure that it's a multi billion dollar industry on the other side as well, like trucking, rigging, portable toilets, catering, local crew etc. Everything that makes the event happen practically on site.
While they don't outright own some of those companies, there are a lot of companies that Live Nation has small ownerships in that aren't listed on there.
I'm gonna talk about Mexicio because we are on a different place that most, here we have Ocesa whihc is tehe biggest promoter, that Live Nation has been trying to acquiere and they bring the biggest artist and shows, also another big one is Telmex which is the biggest telecommunication company in the country, but they have so much money they actually promote events mostly cultural ones if there's a big orchestra or a broadway musical in Mexico Telmex is probably the one who booked that show, but even with those 2 big companie the bussines is mostly regional, Ocesa even being the biggest promoter mostly does shows on the countries capital and rarely does outside of it, and here the industry is mostly about big regional promoters that bring the artist to perform, here in my state Nuevo Leon we actuallyt have 3 big promoter which is Apodaca Entertainment which mostly does the popular stuff and alternative, then there's Primitime Entertainment and they have no preference they have book from big port artist to, regional mexican, to metal shows etc. and then there's Cacique Entertainment whihc are sepecialized on Metal and weird stuff experimental stuff like if someday Swans comes to my state they would be most likely be the company that books them, and it also works the same for every state all of the have their regional companies that book shows, so we cant's say that one company has consolidated power on the country, also is the same with ticket companies there are 2 big ones in the contry which are Super Boletos and Ticketmaster, and both have almso the same market share, i have even seen events were tickets are being sold by both ticket companies, also there's regional ones here in my state Nuevo Leon we have Hot Ticket whichi is a regional ticker company and actually has sold tickets for big events, so yeah here in Mexico we have a healty market mostly because of how regionalized the market is.
P.D. Also most big show here the tickets start at 40 USD, and 300 USD tickest are mostly VIP stuff, and for smaller regional shows i have been in a lot of metal show were the tickets are as low as 10 USD most of the time the ticket on those show are like 20-25.
I went and took a closer look at the list of subsidiaries. There are sooo many talent management companies... but there's also at least one financial management agency in there... music publishing companies.... artists themselves are listed on there too.... and a company who makes rubber gloves...
They own crossroads presents.... wonder when that happened. Because they are one of the biggest promoters in boston.
They also own cd and cassette manufacturers, recording production and pist production companies. T shirt companies and printing companies in addition to merchandising companies. They own entire production lines. Software companies. Data analytic companies. Asset management companies. Literally any service they could ever need. And then some superfluous stuff like a company that sells fine art prints of rock stars.
Oh and radio stations.
Holy shit, even though everyone knows this was all just to save face, literally as I opened RUclips just now, just after live nation announced no more merch cuts, at least at certain venues at least as I understand, with the stipend on top of that, this video popped up in my feed. Gotta watch it again of course.😏👍
You should do a podcast on this with Hoeg Law firm who is on RUclips as a corporate lawyer.
If artists like M Shadows want supply and demand to push ticket prices into the stratosphere, then they better not be on the mic asking for the crowd to make noise when it's made up of a bunch of rich people sitting on their hands, when the only reason they are there is because it's the cool thing to do and they can afford it.
that is crazy how many businesses are in Delaware!!
The issue is there's a deference between a de facto monopoly and a legal one. There are a ton of companies who don't meet the legal definition of a monopoly despite effectively having the market cornered in a specific industry.
It's been like this since they went internet. The whole 1st come 1st serve days of standing on line at box office was WAY more fair. Yea there were always some people working for scalpers on the line but mostly if you wanted tickets up close & were in line overnight , you got them. Now, highest bidder
I had to do the same type of "training" when the independent strip club I did security at was aggressively bought out by the Deja Vu Corporation. They own a large percentage of clubs all over the world. Between them and RCI, Inc, there aren't a whole lot of independent clubs left. I'm 50 and have been doing security since I was 18 and Deja Vu's operating system was the dumbest I've dealt with. Coincidentally, the club just happened to burn down 3 months after they bought it, and since they now owned every club in town, the insurance money and less overhead and funneling customers into their other 2 clubs, they weren't exactly hurting.
@Nicegram_Tank_the_tech my coffers are overflowing already. You text me and I'll send you a gift.
There are massive companies in Delaware who just service these corporations (do the paperwork and provide an address), my favoritely named one being Corporation Services Company.
How big is CTS Eventim in the US?
Here in Germany it's like there is Eventim where you can buy your tickets and nothing else.
Ok somewhere is Ticketmaster and MyTicket too, but literally everyone uses Eventim. I wonder if this is a German/European thing or if it is somehow the same in the US
CTS Eventim Operates only in Central Europe (and a few select countries in Eastern Europe), however has a third of the value of Live Nation according to Google, Considering they are only operating in like a dozend countries, that should give you an idea how powerful they are over here. btw, Live Nation does sell more tickets to their shows on Eventim here than on ticketmaster.
Eventim is also shitty, but by far not as bad as Live Nation. But that might be partially due to them losing a couple lawsuits when they tried to do more shitty things.
This explains why a group called my job to see what Delaware's unpaid internship laws were, but they were calling the wrong number, and the girl got snippy with me and acted like her deadline for an answer was my problem.
Please do Mother's Cake, such an underrated band, they deserve some recognition
So if that's the case with live nation, wouldn't a way to stick it to them would be introducing bands you dig on, doing interviews with bands outside of that?
Just a thought.
Live Nation (aka Ticketmaster) is a giant greedy beast who needs to be knocked down a few notches. They have way too much power and influence, the fees are friggin ridiculous and their customer service sucks! I just had a run-in with them just over a week ago regarding a simple change in format of my ticket to see Jinjer at the HOB and they flat-out denied it and offered no work-around or even a hint of an apology or sympathy. (luckily, I was still able to see Jinjer and they rocked the house!)
Live nation is part of the booking for Janet Jackson concerts that are intentionally overbooked you are stuck and concert can’t even enter the place and and they don’t plan on giving money back. WHERE ARE THE LAWYERS!! Class action lawsuits
Hi Tank, just curious if you've seen LN push the tailgating parties at venues across the country. I saw a Connecticut family is suing them for promoting that, denying someone venue entry, who then drove away heavily intoxicated and killed their 17 year old son.
Are those IEMs custom JHAudios?
They are!
Delaware is very freindly on corporate taxes and rules on publicly traded companies as a such most really big US companies and subsidiaries thereoff are primarily in delaware. And the broker is a "service company" they accept service documents, they are the owner of that small brick building, they basically act as a PO Box for companies pay them to be the registered agent, collect the paperwork and mail it on.
There isn’t a single show in Montreal that isn’t promoted or has tickets sold through Livenation/Ticketmaster. It’s infuriating because they can just hike up the price of a ticket at any time.
The vast majority of corporations in the US are incorporated in Delaware due to their business laws being the best in the nation as pro business.
In Germany the biggest ticket company I know of is Eventim CTS, which as far as I can tell is not owned my Ticketmaster (yet). But these guys are also not the good guys, they are noted at the stockmarket, BlackRock is one mayor investor, they tried to get in the German toll road system which was thankfully cancelled by EU law and they are watched by the German federal cartell office for being the quasi monopoly on ticket sales here.
live nation has decided to stop merch cuts this is great for the artists
Disgusting! This is why I refuse to attend live nation shows and give the money. Independent venues and eventbrite for tickets these days for me. This is also why I want to open my own club. When are antitrust laws going to come into play?! Late stage capitalism is really dirty.
Another fun deep dive into a topic like this is personal data sharing companies. The amount of companies involved is migraine inducing. Obviously not related to this channel's content.
I can never hear ‚Delaware‘ without thinking of Wayne’s world 😀
Tank, will you do a reaction for BabyMetal's new singles?
Also LN also tours the biggest names in Comedy now as well.
Delaware is also frequently chosen for the vast majority of businesses because of the Court of Chancery which is advantageous for corporations dealing with various legal disputes. Delaware is structured to be extremely pro business for organization for corporations. And under laws as they exist now corporations have two theoretical “homes”, that being the state of incorporation as well as their state with their headquarters.
But as you address there are various jurisdictions for many different business lines and structures that have their statutes geared to attract various entity types. Wyoming for example is extremely popular for LLCs thanks to their tax structure, protection of liability and privacy. Or for a seemingly less nefarious example I work for a state agency that regulates insurance and we are extremely popular because the taxes we charge are by comparison low to many other states but we require you have material operations here otherwise we won’t regulate you because we feel if we are to regulate you then your business needs to bring economic benefit to our state citizens. But we also have a much larger department with much more funding and have the funding and work load that we can hire specialists for more nuanced things that other jurisdictions can’t. It seems wild but preferred jurisdictions for various business things is extremely common.
I'm a musician, I go to live shows often, listening to this makes me kind of glad im not famous lol..well I sort of am in some ways but not because of music lol
if bands and venues want to sell tickets, an alternative would be Brown Paper Tickets. When I was a promoter in Southern California, I used to use them to sell all my tickets. Barely a fee (usually $1.33 per every $10), though my ticket pricing for my shows (generally 8-16 per month) were always between $8 - 25 at most. I know one of the benefits of using Ticketmaster for a promoter is the reach of their email / promotions. That was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Ticket web before I retired. 16 years as the small promoter wore me and my wallet out!
Grateful Dead mail order ticketing was the bees knees. Yes, I am old.
A publicly traded corporation has to declare their board and top paid employees regardless of the state of incorporation
I´ve read, that Live Nation is the worlds biggest Event Company followed by AEG and Eventim
What I have always hated about Ticketmaster was that you can't get around them. So I get taxed to pay for a stadium, then if I want to pay to get in to it to see something, I am required to give money to a private third party. I really hope the politicians that approve this crap get paid well for it.
AXS is another one, but they're also owned by the company that owns AEG
so when I am looking at that list, I see only three companies in Germany (being Live Nation and two Ticketmaster companies). So apparently CTS Eventim is not owned by Live Nation? Because they are (I think) a serious competitor to Live Nation in Germany and a viable alternative in other countries too. They own for example ticketing companies all over Europe.
Question is... are they any better than Live Nation or are they just the same with a different label..? If you have any insight on that, I think your german audience would appreciate that 😉
@Nicegram_Tank_the_tech yeah yeah nice try scammer.... 🤦♂️🤦♂️
Fan of the channel, but your stuff about Delaware incorporation is way off base. I'm a former corporate lawyer. It isn't a tax dodge to incorporate in Delaware. In the USA, you pay state income tax based on where you generate revenue, where your operations are located, and where you employees are located. It is based on a formula. The location of your state of incorporation has nothing to do how much state income tax you pay.
The franchise tax is where states charge a fee to use their states for incorporation and it is not based on income. Delaware actually has a moderate fee. The low franchise tax state is actually Nevada, a popular place for tiny companies to form.
Anyways, the reason why businesses choose Delaware is that they have a very flexible corporate law that allows the business structure their business in many ways, but offers some bright line protections to deter scammers. It is a good balance. But then it offers a lot of gap fillers of how corporate law works if the corporate charter is silent on issues that can resolve a lot of potential future disputes. And then it has a very strong corporation judiciary that can handle disputes related to control of the company. These are hard core judges that know a lot about corporate law and aren't judges that do gun or drug possession cases and then a corporate takeover challenge the next.
That certainty as to how the corporate law works and disputes will be resolved in a objective manner makes investors more comfortable.
I see it all the time, as an investor, if I saw a corporation incorporated in a place like Kentucky, it would make me nervous because he don't know how those judges would act and if they would protect the rights of the shareholders. Anyways, boring legal stuff, not a big conspiracy to avoid taxes.
That is another issue and doesn't have to do with Delaware. Just saying Delaware corporations are usually a good thing for both investors and corporate management and the public at large.
The reason it’s mostly incorporated in Delaware is the laws are more corporate-friendly there.
he said that in the video
When we getting more sabaton or new Metallica song 👀👀