U2's Beautiful Days On The Road

The GAME should have a chat with U2. While The GAME is "in prison" on the road. U2 is having the time of their lives, even after 20 years of the grind. According to a recent tour diary post:

Touring is hell...

‘Touring is hell, or it used to be. These days it's an amazing
privilege, and it gets better each time we go out.

We fly around the world getting applause from our fans for just showing up, and we get to do the thing we most love: playing our music. On days off we get to see some of the most beautiful areas of the country we’re in.


Maybe The GAME should consider making watered down feelgood music instead???

Full blissful tour diary post here.

BRIEF: The Game Is Not Having Fun

According to a recent MTV report, rapper, The Game, is having a horrible time on the road. He was quoted as saying:

"Being on (the) bus is like being in a prison on wheels, man....you start getting claustrophobic and when I start getting mad I just start pulling people out of their bunk and kicking them in the face and s***."

Sounds like they need to add a request for post-show tranquilizers to the rider. In the meantime, someone please at least get the tour manager a whistle and some pepper spray.

Yikes!

Full article here.

Live Nation Makes New Friends

This just in! In a further move away from their murky Clear Channel roots, Live Nation has added two big names to their Board of Directors, Harvey Weinstein and Robert "Ted" Enloe. As many of you know, Weinstein was a founder of groundbreaking movie house Miramax Films. Enloe has made a big name for himself in securities and real estate, and sits on a number of corporate boards.
More info here.

Live Nation's Big Idea

Here are my notes from last week's Live Nation Credit Suisse presentation.

What They Said:

• The goal this year was to narrow down and focus on music and trim away the fat. To that end they've developed a vertical integration strategy.
• Though this industry has existed for a long time it was the last to get professionalized (and is still dragging behind if you ask me). Live Nation is working to develop a "clarity of mission."
• Part of this strategy included seeling off non-strategic assets like the sports division and acquiring Trunk Ltd. and House of Blues
• Artists are now (and for the last few years) making more money on the road than selling records.
• Live Nation spends over a billion dollars a year in talent costs and don't expect that to change.
• They would however like to stretch that dollar to includes such things are more performance s and more rights to broadcast said performances since they are "providing the strategic capital" (read: yo dude! we have speakers installed!)
• Next year there will also be an increased focus on getting out of non-optimum venus in wrong markets.
• They have too many ampitheatres that they can't sell out. One thousand to five thousand seaters
• The number of European properties surpassed United States this year.
• They have developed a new top market strategy in N. America as they currently do in Europe whereby they will have the best venues (at the large and mid-sized level) in the first tier markets (major cities) and pull out of less profitable second tier markets.
• Internation expansion is a high priority. They have their lasers set on Spain, Germany, Australia, and Japan among others.
• House of Blues has immeasurable brand value and name recognition for Live Nation, however I didn't get a sense that they were particularly clear on how the rest of their properties could capitalise from it.
• This year was about investing in the company more than anything else.
• They will be rolling out an online store powered by MusicToday very soon.
• They are aggressively looking to expand in the music festival market, as they already have the rights to the largest festivals in Europe and have found them to be immensely profitable (Boonnarroo, Coachella this means you. Name your price).
• They need to sort out a better food and beverage deal.
• They may sort a deal out with Ticketmaster to work together on a Live Nation ticketing system but they will no longer farm their ticketing out to Ticketmaster.

What They Didn't Say/ What sounded fishy:

• They didn't say anything about artist development. They seem to be content with the idea that the artists that fill the arenas and clubs might not be the same from year to year, rather than trying to work on developing staying power and using that to form the basis of their (sorely needed) customer relationship/ audience development strategy.
• They want to figure out how to sell fans more "artist stuff". But there was not much talk about the quality of said "stuff".
• They talked about having an email list of 25 million "avid concertgoers", but didn't explain what that meant. We all know most people rarely/never go to concerts, so what does it mean to have an email list of which a sizable chunk are people who just want to see Barbara Streisand?

Off The Road Again: No One Coming Out To Play

With the weather getting colder and the roads getting slicker it seems the end of year show cancellations are starting to pile up, I just got word that the Coup and Mr. Lif got into a car crash that put a screeching halt to their current tour and David Berman and The Silver Jews cancelled their last two shows of their year. According to the website, they are going through "winterization" according to popular opinion, Berman is going through a major case of stage fright. More on that (via Tinymixtapes) here.

Taking their cancellations and raising them, Robert Pollard has announced he will no longer be touring.

"This is not to say I'll never play another show again, but this touring thing is too much," the ex-Guided By Voices frontman tells Billboard.com. "It's too hard to psychologically re-energize yourself each night."

Rest of the article (via Billboard) here.