Archive for January, 2010
The Very Bright Future of the Live Entertainment Business
This site, Live 2.0, is devoted to bringing about the future which I believe is not only possible, but likely: the ascendancy of live entertainment as the leader in the entertainment industry overall. How can such a thing be possible? Value comes from relative supply and demand. Over the last generation, the percentage of our [...]
Change is Only Dramatic to People Used to the Current Thing
…and if you’re not steeped in the way things are, rapid, dramatic change isn’t nearly as frightening or even surprising. The other day, I was asked to speak to a graduate school class at USC about entrepreneurship. Almost everyone in the class of about 50 aspires to be an entrepreneur, and all of them have [...]
What Live Entertainment Organizations Can Learn from the Leno Disaster
Jay Leno is moving back to late night, and that’s been the big news this week in TV land. He spent years, of course, as the host of the Tonight Show before moving to prime time at 10 o’clock five days a week starting back in fall. That’s a big move, giving one guy 25% [...]
Food IS Fun, not Food
Let me rephrase. In an era of plenty (and despite the sour economy, compared to almost any time or place in the history of humankind, our cup truly runneth over) food isn’t about eating. It’s about fun. And if you’re in the live entertainment business, it’s important to recognize that in the last generation or [...]
The Importance of Being Spiderman
You might have heard about the upcoming Spiderman musical on Broadway. I thought about it because, as you’ll see at the link, I read that it’s been delayed, but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about whether producing a Spiderman musical is audience-oriented or merely pandering. And first, let [...]
Seth Godin Unknowingly Backs Me Up
Yesterday, I talked about how you always need to build the show around the value placed on it by the audience, and not build the show and then figure out how much you need to charge. (Because price has nothing to do with cost, remember?) This, for me, is at the heart of running your [...]
Hear Me Now, Listen Later: Price Has Nothing to Do With Cost
Michael Kaiser, smart guy and big chief of the Kennedy Center, wrote an article in the Huffington Post a few days ago that reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to say on here for a while. There’s a lot of good stuff in it, but here’s the part I want to focus on: “The [...]
TM-Live Nation Merger Looks Close to 100%
According to subscription-only mergers and acquisitions site The Deal (and reported by mainjustice.com), the Department of Justice is “unenthused” about continuing the investigation into the TM-LN merger, so after about a year of work, they look prepared to give their thumbs-up to the merger. The only thing that surprises me about this is how long [...]
Audience-Oriented, It’s What’s For Dinner
A couple weeks ago, Trevor O’Donnell passed along an interesting tidbit from The Artful Manager blog. The tidbit that caught my eye was this: “Arts and cultural experiences are among the most personal and complex goods on offer. It might be time to embrace an upside-down view of the marketplace that begins with the person [...]
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Popular Articles
- Our Story, and We’re Sticking To It
- Several Non-Opinions about Ticket Pricing
- Group Sales is Dead
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- How Not To Discount, A Recap
- More Pie Now!
- Change is Only Dramatic to People Used to the Current Thing
- Audience-Oriented, It’s What’s For Dinner
- The Nutcracker is Bad for Ballet like Easter is Bad for Churches
- Awaiting the Great Pumpkin, er, Great Performance
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