Alicia Keys is taking to the stage tonight in an effort to stand up against AIDS.  Her World AIDS Day concert is set to take place at the Nokia Theater in New York City on Tuesday December 1 and all of the show’s proceeds will be donated directly to Keep A Child Alive, where Keys is co-founder and Global Ambassador.  The organization is committed to “providing life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, care and support services to children and families whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India by directly engaging the global public in the fight against AIDS.”  The concert will be broadcast on Keys’s YouTube channel at 8pm EST.

Keys isn’t the only industry big-name to donate a passion and much-needed funds to the global fight against AIDS and HIV.  LiveNation will be supporting the music industry’s HIV/AIDS prevention charity, LIFEbeat, with a portion of proceeds from every concert ticket sold in the United States on December 1, 2009.  LiveNation, who stood behind Jay Z’s September 11th tribute concert is “proud to stand alongside LIFEbeat on World AIDS Day to help educate music fans about prevention of this deadly disease.”  LIFEbeat is a national non-profit organization dedicated to reaching America’s youth with the message of HIV/AIDS prevention.  LIFEbeat mobilizes the talents and resources of the music industry to raise awareness and to provide support to the AIDS community.  Visit LiveNation.com to purchase tickets before midnight.

The Sdia music project will be releasing an iTunes exclusive track called “Going All the Way.”  Through the month of December a percentage of all downloads of the track will support AVERT, an international AIDS charity organization.

Want to stand up in the fight against AIDS?  You can take the first step by getting tested. 

If you’d like to do more, donate to any of the charities above.  Or if funds are low this year, consider donating your time to AIDS Walk 2010.  The Walks take place in 4 cities across the country, round up a team and join the fight.

For AIDS statistics, information on federal resources and how you can stop this disease that infects 1 in 70 New Yorkers every day, visit http://aids.gov/.

Live Nation the world’s largest live concert producer, is stepping out on this World AIDS Day to lend support to fight for a cure.

The company has agreed to donate a portion of their proceeds from every ticket sold to its concerts in the United States to fight HIV/AIDS.  All proceeds will benefit the music industry’s premier HIV/AIDS prevention charity in America, LIFEbeat.

The company, who was responsible for Jay-Z’s 9/11 benefit concert, is especially excited to stand alongside the music industry’s most prevalent prevention charity.

President and CEO of Live Nation, Michael Rapino, expressed the sentiments of himself and his company in a statement saying.

“We are proud to stand alongside LIFEbeat on World AIDS Day to help educate music fans about prevention of this deadly disease.”

You can purchase concert tickets at LiveNation.com to Live Nation events beginning at 12:01 a.m. December 1^st when a portion of every ticket sold will benefit LIFEbeat.

HIV/AIDS is most prevalent in the Black community with Blacks making up 51% of new HIV/AIDS cases. The best way to protect yourself against the virus is abstinence, but if you are sexually active, through the use of latex and polyurethane barrier methods such as male and female condoms .

Washington D.C. currently has the highest HIV rate in the country with 3 percent of individuals in the city testing positive for the virus. For every 100,000 people tested in D.C. 3,000 of them are infected, a rate higher than that of West Africa.

We’ve all seen firsthand the effects of the virus. In the 90s, the Hip-Hop world was stunned when the late Eazy E died from the disease just ten days after being admitted to the hospital.

AIDS is real and it’s not going away anytime soon. Do yourself and your partners a favor and get tested, AIDS is no joke.

Tickets are something that everyone has probably sought out at some point in their life.  Concerts, sports events, movies, shows, etc.  I never realized how hard it was to get tickets to a concert until I was 17 and I really wanted to go see the Backstreet Boys.  I know, kind of sad to admit.  But I did love them (along with other boy bands).  The concert was at this concert hall that’s now and OTB.  It was a standing-room only show and I don’t think the place (or Long Island concert venues) realized just how popular this group was at the time.  My mother called the morning the tickets went on sale.  In four minutes, the show sold out.  I don’t even think she spoke to an operator.

Over the months, years, we tried various ways to get tickets to events.  This was before my family got high-speed internet, so we had to call.  We usually called an out-0f-state Ticketmaster number to get the tickets.  And it worked.  For a while.

I outgrew my boy band phase.  Tickets were soon bought through my job, instead of trying to buy them online or over the phone.  And if I did go the old-fashioned way, I usually went online.  About 10 years later, I was trying to get tickets to see Phish.  It was their first comeback show in four/five years.  I got to use LiveNation for the first time.  Their entire system crashed, not realizing the high-volume of traffic the site would receive.  That was the company’s explanation.  It’s a Web site, and you’re system can’t handle it?  You can’t handle the influx of callers?  I never wanted to use LiveNation again.  A few months later, TicketMaster and LiveNation merged.  I tried again to get Phish tickets (as more shows were added).  I found a loophole, I kept two windows open.  Score!  Finally got tickets.  Probably helped that the company fixed their system and several shows were on sale, instead of just one.  But I digress.

A few months later, TicketMaster and LiveNation merged.

Fast forward eight months later, tried to get Lady Gaga tickets online.  First two shows were sold out.  Two more went on sale.  Sit at my computer at 9:59, get my windows open.  Search at 10am, can’t get past the CAPTCHA words.  Finally do, and am put in a ‘waiting room.’  A minute later, show is sold out.  On top of which, it tells me I can only have one window open at a time.

I know all these ‘rules,’ are to prevent scalpers from buying up all the tickets an selling them for a huge profit.  But what about people who genuinely want to go to these shows?  The tickets were listed between $50 and $70.  About an hour after the show sold out, I found tickets on StubHub for $1,000.  If I wanted really good seats, right in front of the stage, $4,000.  Yea.  Guess the rules didn’t work out so well and the regular customer got screwed once again.  Good job TicketMaster/LiveNation.  And now that you’re one company, please stop sending me separate concert update emails.  If you’re only selling them on one site, then just make once gigantic monopoly site and be done with it.  Stop trying to sell some tickets on one site and some on the other.  It’s annoying and confusing.

So I rocked out with Jay during the EMA’s and just announced you can rock out wit him too! The second leg of the Blueprint3 tour has been announced..here are the dates
JAY-Z BP3 TOUR 2010

Previously announced dates:
Nov 07 Fresno, CA Fresno State University/Save Mart Center
Nov 08 Los Angeles, CA UCLA/Pauley Pavilion
Nov 10 Austin, TX University of Texas at Austin/Frank Erwin Center
Nov 12 Champaign, IL University of Illinois/Assembly Hall

Newly announced dates:
Feb 22 Houston, TX Toyota Center
Feb 23 Dallas, TX American Airlines Center
Feb 25 New Orleans, LA New Orleans Arena
Feb 27 Atlanta, GA Philips Arena
Feb 28 Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum Complex
Mar 03 Washington, DC Verizon Center
Mar 07 Norfolk, VA Scope Arena
Mar 11 Boston, MA TD Garden
Mar 16 Pittsburgh, PA Mellon Arena
Mar 19 St. Louis, MO Scottrade Center
Mar 20 Indianapolis, IN Conseco Fieldhouse
Mar 22 Denver, CO Pepsi Center
Mar 24 San Jose, CA HP Pavilion
Mar 26 Los Angeles, CA Staples Center

*** More cities and dates to be announced soon.- source livenation.com
Tickets go on sale Nov 13 @ www.livenation.com and Citi bank card holders can get pre sale tickets on www.citiprivatepass.com starting Nov 10th. Citi® cardmembers will have access to VIP Ticket Packages that include VIP Lounge seats, personal concierge, a private pre-show VIP party and more. Nice.
Young Jeezy will be opening up for Jay-Z in all cities..in related Young Jeezy news there is a beef brewing between him and Jody Breeze one of his former bandmates from Boys in The Hood. We spoke with Jody and that interview will air this Wednesday on AllHipHopCom Radio at 3pm listen here..
http://bit.ly/3p8MRb

In related news Alicia Keys new album Element of Freedom dropping in Dec will have a remix of Empire State of Mind with a new Jay-Z verse!!

Don’t forget that today is Fee Free Wednesday at LiveNation: No service fees (for participating shows and venues).

You can also enter to win an “Ultimate Access Pass” for All-Show Access to a Live Nation Club
The Ultimate Access Pass gives you ALL-Shows access for you and a guest at a participating Live Nation Venue in 2010.

You guys, it’s almost November and tours are wrapping soon for the year.

What bands are you hoping to see in 2010? How many shows do you think you’ll catch next year?

I’ll post my list when I have time to focus on it

Well, The Monster Ball turned out to be A MONSTER BUST… at least in Beantown.

For at least 40 minutes the services for buying tickets to Lady Gaga’s much hyped tour weren’t functioning at full capacity in the Boston area. Ticketing for the two-night event was routed through concert promoter Live Nation’s website.

When servers finally allowed purchasing, all that was left for the most part were balcony seats in rows X, Y and Z ..W, T and F.

LiveNation & Co. has some serious ’splainin’ to do!

How about you? Did anyone else experience error messages and lagging load times? Comment away or respond to us on Twitter.

Ticketmaster E-Business Strategy

Q10

The threat of Substitute products

Many companies sell products in the same way for example over the internet, via phone or through catalogues as Ticketmaster can only be used via the internet this makes it slightly more unique although against other ticket providers it must be able to stand out therefore Ticketmaster’s standout quality would be the lower prices and more of a range of varied tickets than its main competitor Livenation.com.

The threat of the new entry of new competitors

More customers are choosing to purchase products online although Ticketmaster shall not lose out on any of their business even though tickets can be purchased from box offices and through other websites, Ticketmaster is used worldwide and would be the largest ticket provider therefore making it standout against any other ticket provider new or current.

The intensity of competitive rivalry
Ticketmaster would only be in competition with companies such as Live nation, Ticket city and Tickets.com although Ticketmaster offers the best deal as they provide tickets through the world whereas these other companies focus mainly on selling tickets within America therefore dropping more of Ticketmaster’s competitive rivalry, This mainly occurs if customers use Ticketmaster in the UK etc they are more likely to use the same provider if they are planning to view a concert in another country.

The bargaining power of customers

Anyone who enjoys going to events will find this website very user friendly and very simple to use, as all the different events within this website are separated e.g. Music, Sports etc therefore making tickets easier to be found, You can also set the region of which you live in making the search smaller and more detailed to suit your own needs. Also if you are a member of Ticketmaster promotional offers are sent out to you via email which once clicked on takes you back to Ticketmaster’s site and onto the tickets of which they believe you would be interested in purchasing, These are based on your interests and due to cookies Ticketmaster knows which events you have previously purchased or click on.

The bargaining power of suppliers

Ticketmaster receives the right to sell tickets to different events through management of the event although some specific bands give only Ticketmaster the permission to sell tickets for their events meaning they are not available anywhere else, therefore it depends very much so on the events management as to how many tickets for each event Ticketmaster are allowed to sell.

Ticketmaster

Q7

I believe that the terms and conditions for Ticketmaster are reasonable and I have not found any of these to be outstanding, all the terms and conditions are stated clearly and if they are not adhered to Ticketmaster can cancel your account or cancel your tickets without notice.

I found that Ticketmaster have a very bad policy on refunding tickets as they are unavailable under any circumstance whether it has been lost, stolen, damaged, destroyed etc therefore I felt that as a customer you wouldn’t receive much support if any problems occurred prior to your event.

Although I felt that their competition provided a lot more customer support as refunds are given by www.livenation.com and www.ticketcity.com when events are cancelled or postponed, Therefore I felt that Ticketmaster have let themselves down as this is a very appealing factor for potential buyers.

Q8

Definition: The process of encoding a message so that it can be read only by the sender and intended recipient.

Yes, Ticketmaster uses data encryption as this allows them to protect customer’s credit card numbers and personal information from hackers or competitors, when data encryption takes place the information becomes scrambled and only specific people will know how to unscramble it therefore making your personal information a lot safer. Though the use of data encryption this also allows you to create members and as all information is protected it can be saved within the computer therefore once you become a member on Ticketmaster a padlock appears at the bottom of the screen once you are logged into your own account.

Q9

Yes, Ticketmaster does use cookies within their website as cookies are used mainly to enable the website to remember specific information such as personal details, banking information and items in your shopping basket, this all depends on if you choose to store your details within the website, If the choice is made to create an account all of your information becomes stored therefore allowing you to shop much quicker on Ticketmaster’s website. Once you have entered your username and password it opens your account where due to previous event tickets you have purchased a suggested selection of events appear on your screen, and once you have made the selection of the next event you would like to view and decide to buy tickets for it your banking details will come up as an option of which you can select which card you would like to use for your transaction.

With cookies being used this means that you can store many event tickets that you would be interested in viewing therefore cookies are used quite widely in Ticketmaster to add to your overall shopping experience.

You need a night out – and what better way to pump up your spirits than with some live music or live comedy!?!

TODAY ONLY, LiveNation.com has concert tickets at 2-for-1 pricing! Go ahead and pick a show coming to a venue near you. Just be sure to select tickets in multiples of 2 to get this sweet discount. (The 50% off will appear at checkout.)

Tickets at this price make great gifts. Don’t forget that your babysitter deserves a holiday gift too!

Expires: Today! October 7, 2009

N.E.R.D., Wale and J. Cole are going back to school via Jay-Z’s forthcoming North American tour. Revealed as opening acts for Jay-Z Thursday, NERD, Wale and J. Cole will join Jay-Z for a twenty-four date tour that kicks off October 9 at Penn State University. (see dates below) Touring in support of their respective efforts, including ‘The Blueprint 3,’ each artist will perform at stops in Seattle, Columbus, Toronto and Philadelphia before wrapping up in Austin, TX November 22. Ticket and tour information for JAY-Z, N.E.R.D, Wale, and J.Cole is available at LiveNation.com.

Tour Itinerary (*Subject to Change):

Oct 09 State College, PA Penn State/Bryce Jordan Center

Oct 10 Cincinnati, OH N Kentucky U/Bank of Kentucky Center

Oct 13 Edmonton, AB Rexall Place

Oct 14 Calgary, AB Pengrowth Saddledome

Oct 15 Kelowna, BC Prospera Place

Oct 16 Vancouver, BC General Motors Place

Oct 17 Seattle, WA KeyArena

Oct 21 Ypsilanti, MI Eastern Michigan U/Convocation Center

Oct 23 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Center (Powerhouse)

Oct 24 Providence, RI Dunkin Donuts Center

Oct 25 Amherst, MA U of Mass/Mullins Center

Oct 27 Baltimore, MD 1st Mariner Arena

Oct 28 Columbus, OH Ohio State/ Value City Arena the Schottenstein Center

Oct 29 London, ON John Labatt Centre

Oct 30 Montreal, QC Bell Centre

Oct 31 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre

Nov 01 Ottawa, ON Scotiabank Place

Nov 07 Fresno, CA Fresno State/Save Mart Center

Nov 12 Champaign, IL University of Illinois/Assembly Hall

Nov 19 Albuquerque, NM Tingley Coliseum

Nov 20 El Paso, TX U of Texas at El Paso/Don Haskins Ctr

Nov 21 Lubbock, TX United Spirit Arena

Nov 22 Austin, TX U of Texas at Austin/Frank Erwin Center

Big announcement today – at least for those who make the Bridge School Benefit concert a mandatory event on the annual calendar.

Neil Young, co-founder of the Bridge School and event organizer, rolled out the official lineup on The Bridge School’s website to bring increased attention to the mission of the Bridge School.

As always, all proceeds from the acoustic shows at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA. will go to the school in Hillsborough, CA., chartered specifically for children with severe physical and speech impediments.

Event dates are October 24-25 and tickets go on sale this Sunday through LiveNation.

Neil Young

So who’s on the bill this year?  Take your pick of first-time performers Jimmy Buffett, No Doubt, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Fleet Foxes, Wolfmother, Gavin Rossdale, or Adam Sandler, or enjoy repeat performances from Sheryl Crow, Conor Oberst & Jim James (who return as part of “supergroup” Monsters of Folk), and (of course) Neil Young himself.

Not entirely my dream lineup, but there are always enough surprises on a cool Bay Area evening to make the event a worthwhile ticket, with the added bonus of contributing to a cause. 

And, as Jim Harrington of the Oakland Tribune points out, the lineup is seen by some as “a breath of fresh air” by those who have been hoping for the addition of artists to the bill who have not been part of the Bridge School rotation since the creation of the benefit concert in 1986.

Me, I’ll hold out hope that Pearl Jam finds its way to Northern California that weekend, but will be there nonetheless. 

I’ll enjoy what are certain to be some magical performances from Fleet Foxes and Monsters of Folk in the outdoor, acoustic setting.  And honestly, Neil alone is worth the price of admission. 

Roll the dice on this show some year before it’s too late to see the man onstage at his most important concert of the year.  Every year.  Last weekend in October – artists subject to change but always a great time for a great cause.