Give credit to Jim DeRogatis for being a relentless pain-in-the-ass to Bono in the middle of a glad-handing radio event last night in Chicago. While I imagine Bono would have preferred to discuss whether the new U2 album is just a great 2009 album or the greatest, DeRogatis decided to ask a series o...

Obama has appointed Julius Genachowski to head the FCC, which I think is pretty good. Genachowski is on the record as supporting network neutrality. Also, there’s a fair amount of eco-friendliness and tech-savviness in his background — he headed up the Obama team’s internet campaig...

That TicketMaster has a monopoly on the sale of event tickets in North America is not in dispute.  Now that they have achieved that monopoly, however, how should they behave?  Case in point, my own attempts to buy tickets for Leonard Cohen’s Ottawa show on May 25 / 26.  After advertising all la...

This may be a bad time to try and stir up sympathy for concert-promoting behemoth Live Nation, what with its impending merger with Tickemtaster and Congressional hearings and all, but if ever there was a way to do it, well, this would be it: Suggest that it could stand to take some tips from the air...

A few weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen fans were up in arms after tickets to his hotly anticipated homecoming shows appeared on Ticketmaster's "secondary market" site TicketsNow suspiciously close to their onsale time. But somehow, the ticketing behemoth managed to top itself, faux pas-wise, with the No...

Bill Wyman's in-depth coverage of the Congressional hearings on the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger continued today, as he live-blogged the House hearings on the merger. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said that he doesn't hear complaints about high ticket prices (man, those upper-management bubbles ...

The proposals to merge Ticketmaster and LiveNation into a single focus of hatred and disgust have come before the wise lawmakers on Capitol Hill, with attempts to save the entire US economy taking back seat to hearings on the plan: The subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer right...

:: A dude from Activision had something to say about the new Metallica edition of Guitar Hero. Probably that it sucks. But that’s just my guess. :: Josh Fiedler and Chad Alan (formerly of The Juliana Theory, currently of Vesta) had a nice long talk with fans over at Absolute Punk yesterday. It...

With the proposed $2.5 billion merger between TicketMaster and Live Nation looming large, many venue owners and promoters are up in arms, deeming the deal anti-competitive and monopolistic (they may be right - the deal is being examined for possible anti-trust violations). Now ShowClix, a TicketMast...

Lazy weekend links?? The Guardian music blog on the dilemma of Animal Collective. Seriously, their music page is better than most music-dedicated websites. The end of hip-hop magazines? I (still) blame the Benzino/Source scandal from way back. Obama might not be so thrilled at the proposed Ticketmas...