Monday, May 09, 2011

Live Nation And GroupOn: That Offline Component

Madonna at her 'Confessions' Tour at Wembley A...Image via WikipediaTo my understanding, the Live Nation proposition is that you might listen to all the digital music you want, pirated, bought, shared, what not, but when it comes time to pay, you will pay to see those artists perform. And so if the big chunk of the artists' money is coming from live performances, then it makes perfect business sense for that artist to give out her music for free. You want to steal? Steal.

That business model of Live Nation has long fascinated me. And their tickets are pricey. At one point they were giving rise to monopoly accusations. But people are paying.

GroupOn reminds me of Live Nation. GroupOn has not come up with code that has confounded the minds of the Mark Zuckerbergs and Sergey Brins of the world. Their technology is quite simple. You could argue their business model is also equally simple, and hence the hundreds of copycats. But what I notice most is they took that step to go offline. They employ thousands of salespeople who go knock on the doors of local merchants. I find that proposition exciting.

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Instead of the Internet stealing away jobs from the old economy, it will rejuvenate many of those old jobs. And GroupOn is leading the way. The Internet does not kill the industry of old. It simply adds layers of intelligence where non existed before. We will need those physical appliances. Factories are still needed.

And GroupOn is leading the way.
ReadWriteWeb: Live Nation & Groupon Partner on Ticketing Deals Site: Disruptive discount provider Groupon and live events company Live Nation have teamed up to launch GrouponLive, a new site for ticketing deals. Live Nation Entertainment, formed by the combination of concert promoter Live Nation and ticket seller Ticketmaster, currently promotes over 20,000 shows per year. ...... The daily deals site, launched in November 2008 in Chicago, now delivers over 900 deals per day in over 500 markets around the world. ....... this partnership will help the struggling concert industry, which has seen attendance drop 9.4% from 2009 to 2010. "You have to look at different ways and price points to sell those final 10 rows" ...... deals will arrive as emails to customers' inboxes
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GroupOn was launched in Chicago, not in Silicon Valley, and I would like to propose there is a method to the madness. I have lost count of how many times people have suggested I move to the Bay Area if I want to do my tech startup thing. The polite ones hint. My point is New York City is absolutely the best place to be if you are trying to launch a High Touch company. Tech is an element, an important element, a fundamental element, but the real action of my tech startup is going to be offline.

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