Azoff: 'e's off

Irving Azoff, who has been guiding the unholy marriage of Ticketmaster and LiveNation, stepped down on New Years Eve. Azoff suggests that he's just not cut out for life in a public company. He's planning to set up another management company to farm his increasingly long-in-the-tooth clients.

Axl Rose instructs his lawyers

Axl Rose has launched a lawsuit which, besides much else, seems to construct a conspiracy theory claiming his ex-manager has tried to force Guns N Roses to reunite. How would that work?

What [Irving] Azoff wanted, the rocker says, was the reunion of Guns N' Roses. To execute this, he would sabotage Rose and his new band so that Rose would have no option but to reunite.

According to the filing, "Upon realizing that he couldn't bully Rose and accomplish his scheme, Azoff resigned and abandoned Guns N' Roses on the eve of a major tour, filing suit for commissions he didn't earn and had no right to receive."

Further, Axl says the botched tour cost him money in production startup and rehearsal expenses. Claiming breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud and breach of contract, the singer wants at least $5 million in damages.

The Rose lawsuit is a riposte to Irving's good-luck-with-that attempt to claim a large slice of the earnings from a tour - Irving claims Axl violated an oral agreement to shovel over 15% of the take from it.

You'd have to wonder at the business skillz of a man who hangs his potential two million dollar payday on an oral agreement, wouldn't you?

Rose brings the Ticketmaster merger into the expensively-staffed row as well:

Azoff, is CEO, director and majority shareholder of Front Line, whose roster of artists include the Eagles, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Buffett, Christina Aguilera and John Mayer. In 2008, Front Line was acquired by Ticketmaster.

You've got to love the way people will now throw Ticketmaster into the mix as there's just an aura of evil clinging to them.

The good news for lawyers is that both sides have so much money they can probably keep this battle going for years.

[Thanks to Mike E for the story]

Damn - I had drawn 'consumer-facing synergetic value release' in the sweepstake

Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff can't contain his excitement at the new, merged Live Nation-Ticketmaster hybrid:

"This merger will create a pipeline for all rights holders to reach their consumers, whether it is our team, an artist or a record company.

It is time that our business delivered forward thinking marketing solutions and we intend to do just that."

Let's just hope when they put tickets for forward thinking marketing pipelines on sale, they don't screw up, tell people they're sold out and try and offer them the same thing with a seventy-thousand per cent mark-up, eh?

Still, let's be fair - the man is honest. He didn't create a piece of meaningless, impenetrable marketing crapola to try and pretend there's anything in it for the consumers.

To be really fair, I should point out that Azoff wasn't using a clunking metaphor when he spoke of a pipeline; LiveNation Ticketmaster Don't Mention Ticketmaster are actually developing a pipeline to deliver musicians to customers. Early tests have been a bit buggy; the beta service was suspended when Jordan Knight was delivered at a dangerously high pressure and took out two family homes and a small dairy in Missouri.