Australia's media declares war on Live Nation.

A no-holds-barred fight has erupted with one promoter alleging the touring giant is causing "an extinction event".

Over the past year, as I’ve sent out regular weekly newsletters documenting Aotearoa’s music industry, I’ve heard the same phrases uttered again and again: I don’t like them; They’re doing terrible things; A monopoly is never good.

They’re talking about Live Nation, the touring behemoth that owns many facets of the industry: ticketing agency Ticketmaster, many venues, and the acts. One local figure told me everything they did was “a middle finger” aimed towards them. But they wouldn’t go on the record. No one will. Our industry is too small to take pot shots at a corporate giant, especially when livelihoods are at stake.

So, if you regularly buy tickets to live events, follow touring trends, or have just a passing interest in how the music industry works, I thoroughly recommend you set aside 45 minutes today to watch a YouTube video.

That video, put together by ABC News’ In-depth team, is the kind of deep-dive investigative journalism New Zealand media used to do, before newsrooms got shredded and Sunday aired its last show. Its focus is Australia’s music industry, in particular, the effect Live Nation’s dominance has on touring, festivals and venues.

If I was going to use one word to sum up those 45 minutes, it would be “scathing”. For the first time, Australia’s music industry is saying the quiet part out loud…

I sat watching that documentary with my eyes wide and my jaw open (watch closely for a quick cameo by Pōneke band Dartz). I follow the industry closely, but I still didn’t know just how many fingers Live Nation has in just how many pies, and just how truly dominant it has become.

The documentary alleges many things: that Live Nation’s monopoly on touring acts, venues, ticketing and merchandise makes it harder than ever for smaller acts to break through or to make money doing what they love; that it took millions of dollars in government festival grants then cancelled those events; that it rips fans off with a complex web of ticket fees (here’s ABC’s breakdown of those fees); and that it has helped spur the widespread cancellation of festivals and the closure of small venues – 1300 of them in the past two years.

Perhaps what’s worse is just how angry industry veterans are about this.

Here’s what Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett has to say:

“Spotify, TikTok, Live Nation, these are global entities, they are not accountable in our country, they are hardly regulated, they are quite often unethical. They have no loyalty to Australia or Australian artists at all, and they’re basically calling the shots … I don’t think Live Nation cares at all about Australian artists … they use and misuse their market power.”

Here’s Bluesfest director Peter Noble, who will recently end his festival after 25 years:

“We’re in an extinction event right now. People are leaving this industry … That is what we’re facing.”

And here’s veteran promoter Michael Chugg:

“They fucked it up, basically.”

That documentary has kicked off a huge war of words across the Tasman.

The ABC claims Live Nation chose not to participate with the documentary, or provide comment about its allegations, but that hasn’t stopped Live Nation from hitting back.

In a hefty statement, Australasia CEO Michael Coppel denied pretty much all of it.

Here’s just a very small chunk of his rebuttal:

“I feel disappointed, I feel shabbily done by. I thought it was lazy journalism. It was a lot of disaffected industry competitors given a platform to whinge. I think it picked us out as the cause of everything that’s wrong with the industry. As if we’ve got some aberrational business model when in fact, our two major competitors with similar market shares have got the same business model, vertically integrated companies with interests in different areas, agency, venues, merchandising, everything else.”

Then he went on The Project and claimed the documentary was an attempt at an “execution” without a trial or jury.

Here’s that full interview. Coppel seems nervous…

This, clearly, is a topic that is going to keep making headlines. Up next, the US Department of Justice is taking Ticketmaster and Live Nation to court in a high-profile anti-trust lawsuit that will attempt to break up its monopoly. (Rolling Stone $$ has a great backgrounder on this.)

The band aid’s been ripped off the wound, the injury is far worse than anyone thought, and now it’s exposed for all to see. The question we need answering is this: exactly how much of what’s happening in Australia is happening here too?

Hello and welcome to all of the new subscribers who’ve signed up over the past week. It’s lovely to have you on board! I wish we still had newsrooms capable of producing content like that ABC documentary, but sadly that’s no longer the case. You do have me, and this, a reader-supported newsletter. If you can afford to do so, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The more that do, the more I can do.

Everything you need to know.

• One more word about Live Nation: Dynamic pricing may have been turned off for Oasis tickets in Australia, but that hasn’t stopped The Cure’s Robert Smith hitting out at the company again. In a new interview with the Sunday Times ($$), the only one he says he’ll do as his band gears up to release a new album, Smith calls the practice a “scam”. “We didn’t allow dynamic pricing because it’s a scam that would disappear if every artist said, ‘I don’t want that!’ But most artists hide behind management. ‘Oh, we didn’t know,’ they say. They all know. If they say they do not, they’re either fucking stupid or lying. It’s just driven by greed.”

• He was your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper, a wordsmith who carved scripture into stone then delivered it from a pulpit, a “quiet sage” and a “lone soldier of the underground”. He made my favourite record this year, The Thief Next to Jesus. I always imagined that one day I would visit New York and stand in a queue for one of his infamous pop-up street corner vinyl sales, to meet the man and thank him myself. Sadly, that will never happen. Ka, the rapper who delivered incredible albums in his spare time from his day job firefighting, has died. Here’s The New York Times ($$) obituary and his seven top songs, while Pitchfork ranks 10 of his albums. My heart feels heavy that we won’t hear from him anymore.

• More acts are skipping Aotearoa and playing Australian-only shows instead: Slipknot has confirmed it will headline three Knotfest festival dates; meanwhile, Fatboy Slim is returning for a major run of outdoor summer shows (he was just in our part of the world last summer); KoRn will play a standalone Adelaide show alongside headlining the Good Things festival; and Banks is performing in Melbourne. None of those acts are coming here. (Compiling these lists makes me sad, so I may stop doing it soon.)

• Someone who is coming here is Cliff Richard, the balladeer who will play four dates around the country in November next year. By then he’ll be 85 years old, and while the tour is called Can’t Stop Me Now, the tour’s promo image shows a man who looks like he could be stopped very, very easily.

• I thoroughly recommend you read this New Yorker ($$) profile on Bon Iver, who releases a three-song EP this week. In it, Justin Vernon asks if he’s “pressing on the bruise” too often. “I was getting a lot of positive feedback for being heartbroken. And I wondered, maybe I’m … unknowingly steering this ship into the rocks over and over again … there have been a lot of accolades for me and my heartache. So it’s me asking the question: Am I repeating this cycle of sorrow?”

• Finally, ‘Defence’ is a super-cute new song from Panda Bear, the Animal Collective front man who has delivered a dose of gentle guitar wooze just in time for summer. It’s from a new album called Sinister Grift, due out in 2025, and after putting together this newsletter, that’s a title that resonates with me…

Bonus beat.