If you, the reader, is unfamiliar with the Live Nation and Songkick lawsuit, let us break down what happened.
In 2015, Songkick claimed that Live Nation and Ticketmaster allegedly committed antitrust and anti-competitive violations as well as international interference. However, Songkick later amended their claim in California United States District Court, stating that a former executive on CrowdSurge (originally acquired by Songkick in 2015) who has since joined the ranks of Ticketmaster allegedly hacked the CrowdSurge computers so as to acquire Songkick trade secrets that were then used to help Ticketmaster in order to better their company. This lawsuit was filed in December of 2015.
However, the claims did not stop there. Songkick, in a new claim, said that the CrowdSurge ex-executive, Stephen Mead, walked out with a large 85,000 documents which included “a suite of proprietary service offerings; financial information, such as ticket sales, merchandise revenues, quarterly profitability, and forecasts of various kinds; cost and pricing data; customer information; and other non-public information of economic value.”
Now, however, it seems that the lawsuit has now been settled. According to Pitchfork, Live Nation has acquired an amount of assets from Songkick, now known as CERG. In a Live Nation press release, Live Nation has written that they have bought Songkick’s “ticketing commerce platform, anti-scalping algorithm, API applications and patent portfolio.” The sum, though, is undisclosed. Alongside this acquisition, Live Nation has also settle the ongoing antitrust suit with SERG for a whopping 110 million dollars.
This past October, CERG/Songkick shut down its ticketing operations in its entirety and also sold its website and brand to Warner Music Group prior to their shutdown.
Leave a Comment