Live Nation Prepares for Ticketing Venture with New Hire

Live Nation moved a step closer to becoming its own ticketing entity when their contract ends with Ticketmaster at year's end by hiring a chief executive to oversee the ticketing unit. Nathan Hubbard was hired as CEO of the new division after serving in the same position at Musictoday, another ticketing company Live Nation purchased in 2006. Hubbard is expected to build a platform that will enable Live Nation to handle the expected 20 million tickets it intends on selling. The launch of the ticketing unit would be the final phase Live Nation plotted out when signing artists like Madonna and Jay-Z to all-encompassing 360 deals, as well as give Ticketmaster its first true competitor.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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