Live Nation: Understanding The Jay-Z Deal

New York, NY (May 27, 2008) – The Live Nation folks were on a conference call about their First Quarter the other day and gave some interesting insight on their business model/approach. Click here to read from the Q&A portion; click back through the first page to read the entire conversation. Below, Michael Rapino, CEO/President/Director of Live Nation, explains Live Nation’s relationship with the artist:
Mark Wienkes - Goldman Sachs
Just wondering, today on Warner Music Group’s call they talked about moving away from 360-degree deals. Have you seen that in the marketplace? What are you noticing when you’re talking to the artists about these deals?
Michael Rapino
There’s a lot of talk on what is a 360 deal. We don’t really use that terminology.
We’re in a very different business model than the records’ 360 model. We business model is because we have the infrastructure, we have a merchandise company, we have a fan club company, we have a ticket company, a sponsorship division, a fan club, a VIP division, our goal is just to acquire all of those rights that we have infrastructure for to maximize our revenues.
So as we said, we’re going to sign over 1,000 rights this year, whether that’s a T-shirt, that fan club rate or a merchandise right. That’s our core strategy. Every now and then the Madonna’s and the U2’s will look to us and say, "We’d like to do all of that, and let’s do it for a long-term period." And if the economics work for our pipe, then we’ll look at that model.
As much press as we’ve received, all of my intelligence tells me if you added up right now the record labels that I talk to, we have three what you would call 360 deals. I think they have somewhere in the 100 range on 360 deals because they’re doing them with every young artist that’s out there.
So from what I hear there’s more and more attention every day to a longer, deeper relationship with the record label or ourselves, and we have a lot of artists who are asking us daily about is there a new way to be a business partner long term since we’re probably going to be their touring partner.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Big Ups to Michael Rapino, Live Nation, & JiGGa-Man Y’HEARd! Can’t wait to hear who the 4th major artist is to embark on this grand opportunity. Sounds like tha "New-Music-Order" so to speak, a break from the normal flawed model, sounds great! Drop co-signs!
And for those of yall who r not up on this history in the making, here’s a youtube video of an NYU Media Professor droppin some knowledge on the latest .. 100
http://youtube.com/watch?v=te0Ew1QKXEI
May 28th, 2008 at 2:51 am
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May 29th, 2008 at 3:02 am
That’s whats up
all new artist pay attention to this one
May 29th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
thats whats popping