Scalped Tickets on Ticket Exchange Sold by Artists
Between the public scrutiny concerning Ticketmaster's relationship with TicketsNow and Ticket Exhchange, and the Congressional investigation regarding the proposed merger with Live Nation, Ticketmaster's PR department has had their hands full. As the inquiries continue, the media seems to find more skeletons hanging in those Ticketmaster closests. This week's skeleton: Scalped tickets on Ticket Exchange are sold by the artists….
Radiohead’s FAC Meets in London
The Featured Arts Coalition, an organization recently created by innovative music industry case study Radiohead, had its first meeting yesterday in London. The Coalition aims to "give musicians and artists more control of their music" and a "much fairer share" of their profits. At first glance, the difference between this organization and the Future of…
Reunited and It Feels So Good
Some of the HeadCount team was in Hampton, VA this weekend, enjoying the reunited sounds of Phish. In addition to registering people to vote, we decided it would be cool to allow fellow fans to make their voice heard everyday, not just on election day by writing letters to their congressmen. If you're wishing you were there (and believe…
“Just As Radio Promotes Music, Music Promotes Radio”?
Billy Corgan was in Washington DC yesterday speaking up to Congress (in a suit!) on behalf of the right for musicians to receive royalties from traditional radio. This legislation, the Performance Rights Act [H.R 848] (check pg 3), first introduced then rejected by Congress in December of last year, would make the US the last of the…
It seems to be that time again
Yesterday was a mayoral election in Los Angeles, California. I know, it snuck up on me too. With 55% of the vote, Mayor Villaraigosa easily won his second term in office. Although it seems like we just had a pretty big election (because we did), there are still more local issues that need to be tackled…
(Very) Young Republican Wows Conference
A 13-year old conservative author upstaged Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week. Jonathan Krohn's brief remarks, captured here on video, laid out a definition of conservatism that wowed the VIP audience. He said he was inspired to write his book "Define Conservatism" because during the Presidential campaign "too…
Musicians encouraged to follow the DIY route
Record labels are going the way of dinosaurs as creative entrepreneurs develop less costly methods of development, recording, promotion and distribution. Although the transition from physical to digital distribution caused the recent lawsuit between rapper Eminem's former publishing company and Universal Music Group, further digital innovation could actually prevent future legal issues between powerful record labels and their artists (…because the…
A Busy Day on Capitol Hill
As we all know, President Obama addressed Congress last night. In case you missed it or want to review his speech in agonizing detail, the NY Times has an incredible feature online. You can watch the video (divided into categorized segments so you can dissect the stimulus package details but skip over the Intro) and…
Twitter on Capitol Hill
Twitter: noun. A social networking site that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Ex: "I'm following Barack Obama on twitter." At first glance of the top 100 most popular twitter users, it is not surprising…
Skeptics Question Election Day Registration
I was at a local NYC comedy club Monday night, where one of the comedians started talking about voter fraud. He started to explain how the people controlling election day polling places should be less 'community volunteer' and more 'NYC bouncer.' He then proceeded to cross his arms, beef up his shoulders and turn his mouth into a down-turned…