In case you were wondering (I’m looking at you Levine): Live Nation and sister company Ticketmaster have jointly announced that they’ll be the ones powering the concert listings feature on iTunes 10.
In addition, the company said it will deliver a “way for millions of iTunes users to purchase concert tickets at Livenation.com and Ticketmaster.com“.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think CEO Steve Jobs left that part out of his keynote, although the official press release does mention Live Nation briefly, indicating only that the company will be providing tour info for Concert pages.
Says Michael Rapino, President and CEO of Live Nation Entertainment:
“Our partnership with Apple is a key part of our strategy to empower fans with the greatest access to live entertainment.”
So there you have it. It’s not just a new logo and a feature-poor social network, folks.
For what it’s worth: Live Nation Entertainment is a logical partner if only because of its sheer size (for better or worse). In 2009, the company said it sold a grand total of 140 million tickets, promoted 21,000 concerts, partnered with 850 sponsors and averaged 25 million unique monthly users of its e-commerce sites.
Ticketmaster, obviously, is one of the largest e-commerce and ticketing sites on the Web, with operations in 18 markets worldwide.
