Pandora Media Acquires Ticketfly

How does a powerhouse internet radio station compete with those powerhouse businesses that make money off of live music? Simple, get in on the same business and make a name for yourself.

On Wednesday (Oct. 7), it was confirmed that Pandora Media had acquired Ticketfly, a somewhat competitor to Live Nation and Ticketmaster. The acquisition of Ticketfly reportedly cost the media company $450 million in cash and stock. Though Ticketfly is not as popular or widely known as Ticketmaster or Live Nation (Live Nation and Ticketmaster sold 184 million ticket in 2014 while Ticketfly sold 16 million in the same year), the latter sells tickets to concerts and other types of events for about 1,200 different venues and festivals including the Pitchfork Music Festival and hipster paradise, Burning Man.>

“This is a game-changer for Pandora – and much more importantly – a game-changer for music,” said Brian McAndrews, chief executive officer at Pandora. “Over the past 10 years, we have amassed the largest, most engaged audience in streaming music history. With Ticketfly, we will thrill music lovers and lift ticket sales for artists as the most effective marketplace for connecting music makers and fans.”

“Pandora’s entry into live events is a watershed moment for the music industry and will forever change the landscape for artists, promoters and fans,” said Andrew Dreskin, co-founder and chief executive officer of Ticketfly. “Ticketfly and Pandora are a perfect fit: two companies that are extraordinarily passionate about music and improving the experience for the entire ecosystem. The combination of Ticketfly and Pandora will be a marketing and event discovery powerhouse, giving venues and promoters unprecedented access to a massive and targeted audience of nearly 80 million music fans.”

This isn’t Pandora’s first major purchase in 2015. Back in May, the company purchased Next Big Sound, a music data service that tracks the popularity of songs online and in social networks.

Ticketfly Performs Study About Phone Usage at Concerts

What’s worse than being surrounded by a bunch of people on their phones while you’re trying to enjoy a live show you paid a large chunk of cash for?

The fact that this is only the beginning and things will probably get worse in the near future.

Recently, Ticketfly performed a study on more than 2,000 concert-going adults aged 18 and older to see how audience members use their phones during a concert. Like you would probably guess, the results were a little depressing, showing that the social media generation is here to stay.

According to the results almost one-third (31 percent) of those surveyed admitted to being on their phones for at least half of the show or longer. In other words, for every three people in the crowd, one will be staring at a screen rather than the artist giving their soul on stage.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, in the Northeast region, five percent of those surveyed admitted to being on their phones for the entire show.

Yes, you read right; the ENTIRE show.

And they didn’t even survey tweens and teens.

Now, that’s really depressing.

The good thing, or at least our attempt at a silver-lining, is that not everyone on their phones are busy trying to keep up with the Joneses on Facebook (or any other social media account; we don’t discriminate).

The results show that 40 percent of females and 24 percent of males polled were using their phones to capture video and pictures of the show.

Understandable.

On the other hand, 60 percent of concert-goers were using their phones to look for deals on food and drinks and even artist merchandise. Twenty-three percent of audience members admitted to using their phones during a show to look up information about the artists performing right in front of them.

As Digital Music News pointed out, maybe it’s time for concert promoters to take advantage of this obsession with always being on phones.

The publication suggested that promoters could send out mass text messages to audience members informing them about merchandise deals and drink specials for the evening.

There was even a suggestion about allowing customers to purchase drinks and merchandise from their phones and have it delivered to them. Even though it sounds good in theory, I don’t think any bar employee or merch person would be willing to get punched and kicked in a pit to deliver a t-shirt to someone.

To see the complete results from the study, head on over to Ticketfly.

And remember, if you’re going to a concert and want to use your phone, exercise some concert etiquette.

All Time Low and Man Overboard to Tour Together?

Well guys, it looks like All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth just finished, discreetly, revealing that the rumors of All Time Low, Man Overboard, and Handguns going out on tour are in fact true. Take a gander at it here:

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Could another tour featuring two more pop-punk bands be on the horizon? If the evidence is true, then the answer might just be yes.

Rumors started to circulate that All Time Low might be heading out on tour with Man Overboard sometime this year. When the rumor had originally started, there was no evidence to prove that it was in fact true; all we had were the high hopes and wishes on behalf of both groups of fans.

According PopPunkWorld, Ticketfly had posted an Arizona tour date which featured not only All Time Low and Man Overboard, but Handguns too, giving those hoping for this tour, some kind of verification . While the page was quickly removed from Ticketfly (we tried to look for it to no avail), the music news site was able to quickly grab a screenshot of the webpage as proof.

Screenshot can be seen here:

As per the screenshot, tickets are scheduled to go on sale starting on January 24, so we might have to wait until then to get some answers. Since All Time Low currently has nothing scheduled past their European tour which ends on March 21, it seems like it can be highly likely.