SOLD OUT: Live Nation Acquires C3 Presents
Just about the worst thing that could happen to the independent live music consumer has just transpired, and the entire landscape of live music, and specifically the environment for live music in the “Live Music Capital of the World” of Austin, TX, will forever be changed for the worse.
I’m sure if you’re a music fan no matter what your stripes, you’ve probably heard of Live Nation. It’s the monolith, gargantuan ruler of live music in America, that now with their ownership of Ticketmaster and many of the big and mid-sized venues all across the United States, they pretty much constitute a monopoly of the live music dollar, at least when it comes to mainstream concerts and acts. It could be called the Wal-Mart of live music, but even this analogy would not do justice to the degree of Live Nation’s power over the live music dollar in America.
But you have probably not heard of C3, unless you live in Austin, TX where the company is based, or work deeply embedded in the music industry. To simplify it, consider C3 like the Live Nation of independent music, especially for the Austin music scene, but with a national and international reach. It is owned by three guys whose first names all start with ‘C’, and since it’s inception in 2007 it has become one of the fastest-growing live promoters in all of music, becoming the largest promoter of independent music in that time.
Some of C3”²s most recognizable accomplishments and conquests include the huge Austin City Limits Festival (ACL Fest) in Austin, and Lollapalooza in Chicago. They also own the Orion festival in Atlantic City, the CounterPoint festival in Georgia, LouFest in St. Louis, and the Big Day Out festival in Australia. C3 also has Lollapalooza fests in Chile, Argentina and Brazil, and is looking to expand to Canada and Europe soon. Yes, this is no mom and pop operation.
And C3 does so much more in the independent music space than throw festivals, especially around Austin. In Austin, the company owns many of the city’s most important venues, including La Zona Rosa, Emo’s, and Stubb’s. For many of Austin’s other important venues, they do a lot of the booking and promotion. C3 also engages in artist management and booking for many of the favorite artists of independent music fans through offices in Austin and New York. They help book the music for the historic Austin City Limits PBS program. C3 books the music at the House of Blues venues, which incidentally are owned by Live Nation. And like Live Nation, C3 has their own ticketing company called Front Gate Ticketing. All told, C3 pulled in $124 million dollars from more than 800 shows and sold 2,025,002 tickets in 2013. So yeah, C3 is massive in the independent music space, and has drawn criticism from some for using the same strong-armed tactics Live Nation does because of their size, only on a micro, independent scale.
Now consider the smarmy, unsettling idea of Live Nation coming in and gaining majority control of all of these C3 assets in one fell swoop. Well that is just what happened. A deal first rumored in October by The New York Times for Live Nation to acquire a majority 51% controlling stake in C3 Presents has gone through for an estimated $125 million. The deal was apparently finalized on Friday (12-19), despite one of the three C’s, Charlies Attal, saying in October that there was no deal in the works.
“The Charlies have proven they are amongst the most successful entrepreneurs in the concert industry. I have long admired what they built and now I look forward to working alongside them as they continue to build a world class festival company,” president and chief executive officer of Live Nation Entertainment Michael Rapino said in a statement. “Adding C3, the leading festival portfolio in North America, to our global portfolio of Insomniac, Festival Republic and Country Nation provides Live Nation with the world’s largest festival platform.”
The three C’s of C3 Presents also said, “We are excited to join Live Nation and become a part of their global family, while continuing to grow our festivals within a culture of entrepreneurship that will empower our team to keep improving these festivals and the fan experience.”
What does this all mean for live music? It means the already grotesquely large and ultra controlling corporate structure of Live Nation that presides over the live mainstream music space in America, now has majority control over the independent live music landscape as well. The cries and concerns of a monopoly when Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged has gone one level worse to impinge and subjugate what is supposed to be “independent” music, venues, and festivals.
Some of the things independent music fans may see at some of their favorite festivals and venues moving forward include: 1) More mainstream acts squeezing out independent artists at independent festivals and venues owned by C3. 2) Higher ticket prices and service fees, and tougher access to tickets in a more controlled, corporate environment. 3) More manipulation of the secondary ticket market by withholding blocks of tickets to increase prices as has been accused regularly of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
In other words, legacy independent festivals like ACL Fest and Lollapalooza are no longer independent. They are now corporate festivals, owned in a majority stake by Live Nation.
So like many of the festivals it owns and promotes, C3 Presents started out with an independent spirit looking to highlight and support talented bands the mainstream ignored. And now they have abandoned the model for the big names and the big payday. Independent music fans have just been sold down the river for the big corporate deal, and this should be marked as a dark day in independent music.
(portions of this report originally appeared on Saving Country Music in October when this deal was first rumored)
December 22, 2014 @ 1:41 pm
Just one word – Ugggggh!!!
December 22, 2014 @ 4:27 pm
I disagree.
December 24, 2014 @ 1:31 pm
I’ll bite Mark. Please explain?
December 27, 2014 @ 4:12 pm
Unfortunately I cannot due to my current position. But I do wholeheartedly disagree with Trigger’s comments. We agree on quite a bit, I just don’t agree with his summation of the deal and the future it holds.
December 22, 2014 @ 4:58 pm
Let’s see,
Emo’s has been doing national acts for ever, it’s a run down dump. Maybe they’ll remodel it.
Stubbs has a freaking huge outdoor stage for national acts, been doing it for as long as I can remember. I go to Stubbs for BBQ not the shows anyways.
LA Zona Rosa is were all the national acts went for years and years.
Now if you were to tell me this would affect The Spoke for example, I’d be worried but I’m not concerned about hipster, emo bars.
Big booking agents aren’t killing the Austin scene. Transplants are killing the Austin scene.
December 22, 2014 @ 5:18 pm
The Emo’s location you’re referring to where they benevolently poured ice in the urinal troughs to keep people from passing out has been shut down for 3 years. They have a brand new location on East Riverside that has been open for a couple of years now.
Never said any of these local Austin venues haven’t been featuring national acts. In fact that is the majority of what they’ve featured.
Just because an issue might not affect you personally doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. I think the issue of venue ownership and control, and the governance of Austin’s traditional entertainment corridors is definitely and issue, and it very well could affect a venue like The Broken Spoke in the near future.
December 22, 2014 @ 5:43 pm
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! I think we’ve overstayed our welcome as a species. Seriously. Just wipe us out and replace us with money.
December 22, 2014 @ 6:14 pm
Smarmy is the perfect adjective for Live Nation. Their venue control/security is awful – I’m forever done with them after problems I’ve had and seen at 4 of their venues this past year.
December 27, 2014 @ 4:18 pm
Security at venues is contracted out to a third-party company in nearly every venue in existence. And quite frankly, having been on the receiving end of complaints, I would be curious to know why exactly you have an issue with their security/control. I always found the ones who had an issue with security/control were either troublemakers themselves, were unfamiliar of the concept of going to a concert, or took their complaints home with them instead of expressing them to the venue. I can’t begin to tell you the number of tickets I’ve given out because someone wasn’t happy at a show.
December 29, 2014 @ 11:38 pm
With all due respect, the ACL Festival hasn’t much catered to Americana/Texas Country acts for a good ten years now. It started off as an extension of the TV show, sure, but quickly took over the booking priorities of even the long running show when it was proved that the Foo Fighters sold more tickets as a headliner than Emmylou Harris. For good or bad that’s just old news. Not that you mentioned anything about Old Settlers Festival or Kerrville going strong to this day, which is probably the reason ACL figured they had to differentiate themselves in the first place.
Also old news: La Zona Rosa hasn’t been open for a minute now, y’all. Likewise, I struggle to remember the day when Stubbs (still open) wasn’t a fairly flashy mid-size venue catering to slick mid-tier actsof all genres, and sure, some of them might have been Americana-friiendly, but let’s not act like just because they served mediocre Texas style brisket in the restaurant side that the music venue was particularly committed to country or roots acts.
I don’t even know why you would mention Emo’s in a SCM article in the first place, but either way it’s not like their relocation/rebranding has created any kind of vacuum in the punk//metal scene. Basically they had a venue that was too big for the majority of bands they could attract on a nightly basis, and several other venues along the same street opened up slightly smaller stages that could fit all the needed fans without the extra real estate, so the owner of Emo’s saw the writing on the wall and decided to go bigger. Shit happens, but unless you’re just a diehard brand loyalist we actually ended up coming up with that many more nightly shows on Red River than we had when Emo’s was the only game in town, so what’s been lost aside from a beloved, acrid pisser?
I share your posts fairly frequently but this won’t be one of those times. Label me a homer if you like but I think you’re guilty of peddling alarmist propaganda here. For instance, at no point have you made any kind of argument that ACL or Lollapalooza either one have been relevant in recent years. In both cases I’d argue that they were only relevant for the first couple, but you seem to be trading off that name value to convince people that a viable brand circa 2014 is being sullied, which is horseshit and we both know it. Your idea of what constitutes “independent” could use a bit of an update.
December 30, 2014 @ 12:15 am
Man, I don’t even know where to start here. If you disagree with my assessment that Live Nation’s majority stake in C3 will have adverse effects on the overall live music landscape of America, then we can respectfully disagree. But please don’t paint it as being none of my business as the proprietor of a website called “Saving Country Music” to be concerned about the health of festivals or venues, even if their calendars don’t regularly cater to country or roots bands, or even to independent bands. If you are a music fan, then this deal should be of concern to you, and all genre affiliations should be put aside for the concerns of the greater good of music.
Having said that, I almost fell out of my chair when I read, “I don”™t even know why you would mention Emo”™s in a SCM article in the first place.”
Are you absolutely kidding me? Just in the last four years, I’ve seen at Emo’s Hank3 (twice) JB Beverley & The Wayward Drifters, Austin Lucas, Wayne Hancock, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, The Goddamn Gallows, Justin Townes Earle, A Johnny Cash tribute featuring Earl Poole Ball and W.S. Holland (held at Emo’s because that was the last venue Johnny Cash ever played in Austin, with the stool he used hanging above the inside bar), and probably half a dozen more bands I can’t think of right now that define the very nucleus of Saving Country Music and its coverage map.
Yes, I am concerned that this partnership could have adverse effects on local Austin venues, and big national festivals, which by the way, have quite a healthy allotment of core SCM bands in their lineups as well. But you are zooming way too far in with your perspective. The underlying concern here is now one big corporation who has a well-documented history of malfeasance in the marketplace and that it already commanded a virtual monopoly over the live music dollar, is not growing even bigger, and not just encroaching, but engulfing the live independent world.
Is there an element of alarmist hand wringing here? Possibly, but I’d rather be overly-concerned about this deal than scoffing it off as “Eh, mergers happen” like some others and act like it will have no impact on the independent music world. Nobody knows what the future holds, and I hope that in a few years from now you can revisit this article and laugh at me from the minimal effects the deal has had on the live music landscape. But I spent too much time covering all the problems with Live Nation events in 2014 to not at least show concern of where this deal might lead us.
December 30, 2014 @ 12:27 am
Here’s some reviews I’ve written from Emo’s over the years.
https://savingcountrymusic.com/jb-beverley-wayne-hancock-emos-in-austin-a-review
https://savingcountrymusic.com/live-review-hank3-in-austin-celebrating-diversity
https://savingcountrymusic.com/review-hank-iii-at-emos-in-austin-tx
https://savingcountrymusic.com/review-johnny-cash-bash-2010
December 30, 2014 @ 12:41 am
Literally one million visits to Emo’s will not prove me wrong. Re-read my comments, as you’ve someone come to the conclusion that my entire argument rests on Emo’s having been in the past a irreplaceable institution for country music. To use your own analogy, I’m falling out of my chair trying to understand how you reached that conclusion. Cites seem to be in order.
December 30, 2014 @ 12:54 am
I think where we’re misreading each other is that your’e focusing on my asserting even the old Emo’s as “punk/metal” institution, which it very much was, but in these part of the woods certain types of alternative or “outlaw” type of country are regularly booked in those same venues, so basically the implication was that in spite of the changing of booking tactics at the new Emo’s they are still booking an equal amount of underground country, although those same shows are now more likely to be booked at Red 7 or Mohawk or one of the other venues on Red River.
In hindsight I probably could have made that point a little more precisely, but I still maintain that in the grand scheme of things you’ve not only failed to address the lack of alternative venues (ie. Continental Club. Saxon Pub, ALL of the newer places in the Red River corridor) as well as ignoring all the alternate festivals that exist, at least one of which (FFF) is a direct retalation to ACL, which I again asserrt hasn’t been inherently friendly to American since the first few years, if you account for the early bird homerism vs the decline in Americana popularly to begin with).
Not trying to make a battle out of this but I’m willing to further the conversation if it proves fruitful. Just don’t treat me like some on-the-ropes victim that you’ve got cornered. You’ve got points but you’re not as bulletproof on this as you think
December 30, 2014 @ 3:46 pm
Jeremy,
First of all, I’m not patting myself on the back for slaying yet another commenter. I enjoy and encourage robust criticism of my opinions, and I am glad you have shared your perspective. I understand what you are saying, and to an extent I agree. Yes, independent music venues and festivals are not in crisis after this deal, and the way C3 properties had been going, there’s a good chance people in Austin won’t see any material difference, at least in the short term. But it is still troubling that so much of the live music space is being consolidated under one company. There’s a chance regulators won’t even let this deal go through because of this concern. There was a huge concern when Live Nation purchased Ticketmaster. Is it going to affect my live music habits? It may not. But it doesn’t affect me what they play on mainstream corporate country radio either, but I make it my business because I believe all people have a right to good music.
Though I have grave concern about where this deal might lead, nobody knows what the eventual outcome will be. Maybe its effects will be nominal. But I think it is imperative for us as conscientious music fans to be aware, and at least discuss these matters and how it might affect the music moving forward.
December 30, 2014 @ 12:38 am
There are _literally_ none of the acts that you mention having seen at Emo’s/C3 Events that can’t be seen at dozens if not hundreds of events in the Central Texas area alone up to and including the present year, hence what I call the alarmist tone (and how many of those country revues were held at the old Emos as opposed to the new one? Probably most. You’ll find the same acts at Red 7 or the Mohawk these days). In fact I made it extremely clear that there have been more alternate venues arise to replace the extraordinarily few venues that you opine the loss of. so hopefully a re-reading of my original post should go a long way toward righting that chari.
Ultimately, you’ve simply made no point whatsoever that the scope of the biggest festivals of the circuit are going to trickle down to the bookings of the smaller venues that make the scene what it is to begin with, at least not regard with the Austin scene per se, which is a lynchpin of your argument here, so “agree to disagree” it will have to be.
Obviously this C3 acquisition will not be completely inconsequential, but I stand by my initial assertion: it’s less that C3 have sold out than that they’ve been fairly corporate to begin with. I think in that regard you misread my comments: I’m not saying it doesn’t matter when smaller companies sell out, I just think you vastly underestimate how Wall Street C3 was to begin with. Then again, I’m right here in the heart of Clear Channel territory, so yeah: born to be jaded. Even Austin has shit radio stations these days, including the once vaunted KGSR. But until you’ve weighed the remaining good against the encroaching bad I guess you could make anyplace out to be a shitshow.