Ticketmaster to buy Nashville marketer behind music stars' Web sites
Echomusic represents Kelly Clarkson, Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban

By RYAN UNDERWOOD
Staff Writer
Monday 3/19/07

Ticketmaster is announcing a deal today to purchase Echomusic, a Nashville-based entertainment marketing company that powers fan Web sites for more than 300 clients, including Kelly Clarkson, Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban.

The two companies said they plan to keep Echomusic's management in place, including CEO Mark Montgomery and Chief Operating Officer Neil Einstman, who together co-founded the company in 1999, as well as add about 13 or 14 staff positions over the next nine months.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"At Ticketmaster, we've been very interested in expanding the offerings we provide to our clients," said Sean Moriarty, president and CEO of West Hollywood, Calif.-based Ticketmaster, part of Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, which also owns online services such as Match.com and Citysearch.

"There's no question that there will be a broad application of what Echomusic does within Ticketmaster and across the rest of InterActiveCorp," Moriarty said, explaining that Ticketmaster as a whole is actively seeking ways to foster more direct relationships with ticket consumers.

In addition to offering fans a more "seamless" experience of buying concert tickets directly from a performer's Web site, the two companies also hope to incorporate richer online content developed under Echomusic in other promotional outlets. For example, Moriarty said he envisions drawing on Echomusic for things like the artist descrïption pages listed on Ticketmaster.com.

Montgomery said the Ticketmaster purchase resulted from an effort Echomusic initiated eight months ago to examine a wide range of options for raising additional capital to grow the company.

"We talked to a lot of different people. And the further into the conversations we got, the more it appeared that we were in many ways aligned philosophically" with Ticketmaster, Montgomery said.

Artists, fans to benefit

For artists who use Echomusic's services, the immediate upside of the deal is that it offers more avenues through which to market their fan Web sites and ultimately sell more tickets. Also, an artist's most ardent fans probably will benefit from exclusive access to tickets.

For example, Ticketmaster partnered with Apple's iTunes service to offer customers who pre-ordered recent albums from Bob Dylan and the Red Hot Chili Peppers the first crack at buying concert tickets. Moriarty said it's possible to imagine similar deals with Echomusic's artist clients.

"We'll look for any and all opportunities to leverage Echo's (technology) platform," he said.

But asked whether any of Echomusic's customers thought the deal tied their fan sites perhaps too closely with Ticketmaster, Montgomery said, "Some of our key relationships were tested and asked what they thought. And at the end of the day, they trust me and my judgment."

The companies also are hoping that the deal expands Echomusic's customer list far beyond Music Row into other genres such as rock, rap and pop, as well as sports. Ticketmaster signed an exclusive contract last month with the National Basketball Association to become the league's official ticket reseller in hopes of going deeper into sales with that market.

"Anywhere in entertainment where someone is trying to engage deeply with their audience, Echo's got a great application," Moriarty said. "We've got 9,000 clients in 20 countries, and that's a very big pond to fish in for Mark (Montgomery) and his team here."

One bonus in Montgomery's view is the deal gives another dimension to Nashville's entertainment industry and the local economy as a whole.

"We really worked hard to build a Google-like company in the South," he said. "Our goal here is to attract more people to this community and make it a beacon for folks who want to come here and have a different quality of life."