Author: JD

Irving Azoff Steps Down from Live Nation December 31, 2012 | By Billboard staff and Ray Waddell Irving Azoff, chairman of Live Nation Entertainment and no. 1 on Billboard’s Power 100 list earlier this year, will leave the company effective immediately, Billboard.biz has confirmed. In conjunction with this change, Liberty Media Corporation has purchased 1.7 million shares of Live Nation stock from Azoff, increasing its stake to 26.4%, according to a press release. According to the Wall Street Journal, Azoff is expected soon to join the board of Starz, the cable-television company owned by Liberty Media Corp., which also is Live Nation’s biggest shareholder; this news was not confirmed at press time. Liberty is expected to spin Starz off in early 2013, the paper says. Azoff’s contract hadn’t been due to expire until mid-2014. Live Nation Chief Executive Michael Rapino’s contract, also due to expire in 2014, was renewed for a new five-year term last week. “After successfully overseeing the integration of Live Nation and Ticketmaster over the past two years, my job here is done. We put together the leading company across concert promotion, ticketing, sponsorship and artist management and delivered the great results promised by the merger,” Azoff said in a statement released today. “I especially enjoyed my time with my partner Michael Rapino, and he has demonstrated the ability to lead this company from now on. I’m looking forward to returning to the entrepreneurial world and continuing to work with all my friends and colleagues at Live Nation.” “Irving has been a valuable partner and friend for the past few years,” Rapino said in the statement. “We will certainly miss him and we thank him for his many contributions in building Live Nation to the global company it is today, entertaining 50 million fans and selling 200 million tickets in more than 40 countries around the world. I look forward to continuing to work with Irving on his artists’ tours for years to come.” Azoff certainly gave no obvious indication that he might be leaving Live Nation during his keynote Q&A with Billboard editorial director at our Touring Conference last month. Though he headed the world’s largest concert promoter in Live Nation and ticketing company in Ticketmaster — and has been a strong advocate that live music rules in the current music marketplace — to consider Azoff as anything other than an artist manager is shocking, especially for his longtime clients the Eagles. In consolidating management companies to create the unparalleled leverage of Front Line Management Group (before Ticketmaster and Live Nation were ever in the equation), Azoff was at the forefront of the shift in the balance of power from labels to managers. Front Line Management Group bills itself as “the world’s largest music management firm,” but the number of artists affiliated with Front Line seems a bit of a moving target. Approximately 200 is a figure that’s often used, and a large portion of those artists are arena-level headliners: artists affiliated with Front Line companies, in addition to the Eagles, include Christina Aguilera, Van Halen, Journey, Kenny Chesney, Fleetwood Mac and scores of other big names, developing acts and established superstars. However many they number, it is an incredibly powerful list in the aggregate. And the managers themselves are powerful and independent, so the question as to whom other than Azoff might lead Front Line is an intriguing one.