Category Archives: Ticketmaster

Adam Wilkes (re)joins AEG

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Ten years is a long time in the music industry. A decade is almost unimaginable as a foreigner in China’s forbidding musical landscape. Adam Wilkes can point to being one of the only, if not the only Westerner to have done this kind of time here in China’s live music arena, and he has an impressive CV.

From hip-hop impresario pushing forward the talents of Andrew Ballen at Club Pegasus, to senior VP of AEG Live responsible for Asia, where he will be in charge of creating a viable Asian touring circuit for AEG’s roster of live entertainment, Adam has been intimately involved with almost every big company this site has admired from afar: a founding partner in China West (James Brown, Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce), Emma Entertainment (Linkin Park), Ticketmaster (Linkin Park #2, Celine Dion) and most recently 8th Round (the recent NBA game, Usher) he brings the maximum amount of big live event experience to AEG Live, who in our humble opinion are lucky to have him.

Big companies have never been the future

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Catching up on some industry news this morning, we were relatively shocked to read this little nugget:

Social & Shopping: The company’s e-commerce and online music hub LiveNation.com will add connections to Facebook and MySpace later this week and the Ticketmaster site will follow later this month. It’s the first step in efforts to make concert ticket buying more social.  The move mirrors recent studies that show that Facebook and Twitter are the top ways that people learn  about concerts after friends and broadcast radio.

Rapino also said that the company would soon add a shopping cart to their site. “Upselling works,” said Rapino, “if at the moment of ticket purchase we also give then 5 or 6 additional choices of things to buy.”

Livenation, Ticketmaster, Facebook, social media, connectivity

(Collective intake of breath). We always knew that big companies turn slower than the Titanic, but honestly, the biggest promoter of live music and the biggest ticketer in the world NOT having Facebook and Myspace connections (no mention of Twitter – perhaps next millennium for that :-) ) is incredible to us.

Who leads LNE’s digital strategy? Seriously…

Emma -> Ticketmaster China -> Dust

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Ticketmaster’s China’s operations were officially shelved last week. The news was lost amongst the furore surrounding the Department of Justice approval of a Livenation/ Ticketmaster merger. Ticketmaster’s foray into the China market was one of the most entertaining corporate soap operas that we’ve ever been lucky enough to witness. This tale is best told via the history of the man who erected the house of cards. Who says China isn’t the wild East?

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Posting Lite…

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Sorry people.  On an Asian tour with Andrew Bird.  We have lots to post, but no time to do so.  Please bear with us.

In other news, the Ticketmaster/ Livenation deal seems to have been ratified by America’s Department of Justice.  You can read more about the merger HERE.  What does this mean for China? Well, we have plans to talk to some of the key players – we will have our thoughts up at the beginning of next week…

Until then!

Linkin Park do Shanghai – proper!

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[You can read our review of Linkin Park’s 2007 show HERE.]

Linkin Park’s unique blend of rap, rock & electronica ignited the hot Shanghai Saturday night. Complete this time with a massive (and working!!) rig, their non-stop (but relatively short – 90mins), show of testosterone fuelled angst was one of the best shows Shanghai has ever witnessed. How Chester Bennington doesn’t kill his vocal cords during every show is nothing short of a miracle.

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JZ’s wife…

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We were chatting to a marketing dude today, and he mentioned in passing that he’d been offered the possibility of sponsoring a big Beyonce show in Beijing in October.  Apparently the numbers being bandied about were sorta frightening, but that’s to be expected at this point.

This ties in with some other information we received recently that AEG were bringing her to re-open the Wukesong Arena, which (apart from Avril last October) has been closed since the Olympics last year.  We thought that we’d seen the back of big stars being offered silly money to play China with the demise of the old Emma, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.  Why are AEG falling so squarely into the hole recently vacated by Emma, Ticketmaster, China West and the rest?

Linkin Park China to be cancelled?

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According to the Linkin Park website, their October 6th show in Vegas is cancelled dueto an injured back sustained by lead singer Chester Bennington.  We don’t know yetwhat this means for the China tour that is slated to start this week, but we imagine it won’t be good.

UPDATE

We’ve just got off the phone to Emma and they have confirmed that the show won’t begoing ahead. A big sorry to all the people who were hoping to ROCK!