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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Remember, Square has a stake in Eventbrite. They now have a stake in the full ecosystem of music artists: Streaming, performances, and soon merch, of course.

It's a side ecosystem just like restaurants (Square has had a stake in Doordash after selling Caviar to them). Today, Square for Restaurants also released in Canada.

As a SQ investor I'm not crazy about this play but I see the long term reasoning. I also think JAY-Z might help with Cash App although its booming on its own and very much has the rapper demographic already (there are no shortage of songs and albums named Cash App for a reason).

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Curious why does square want a stake in the ecosystem of music artists?

Even eventbrite didn’t need square readers, people mostly buy their tickets in advance. Maybe it’s for event organizers to upsell at the event to attendees?

Maybe this is a play to demonstrate investment in black community, as someone else mentioned?

Everyone would be elated if they decided to take on ticketmaster, though I believe TM has exclusive deals with most venues.

Ticketmaster has worked themselves into a bad position. There is a subset of people who hate them. If square could get the sort of after purchase fees that that Ticketmaster charges legislated so they have to be shown up front and named in non deceiving ways it would go a long way to weakening my Ticketmaster and LiveNation’s position.

> There is a subset of people who hate them.

I'm curious about that, because everyone I know that has had to pay the Ticketmaster tax hates them. Many artists are vocal about their hate as well.

I assume there's a reason venues continue to use them exclusively, which makes me think Ticketmaster's grasp on the industry is fragile enough that it'll break once there's enough momentum behind an alternative.

The reason: Live Nation, owner/operator of many large venues in the US, owns Ticketmaster since 2010

Ticketmaster acts as a flak shield for the venues and artists.

Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, had operating income of $325M on $11.5B in revenue in 2019[1]. That’s less than 3% margin.

Most of the “Ticketmaster Tax” is going to the artist or venue, who get to offload any displeasure onto a convenient third party for a small fee.

[1] https://www.livenationentertainment.com/2020/02/live-nation-...

plot twist: livenation _ARE_ the venue

And they’re still only making 3%!

Interestingly, when they moved to change that model and reduce extra fees a number of years ago, they lost market share to competitors.

If you add up all the merch and ticket sales of the music industry (in non-covid times of course) it's quite a bit. 1% processing fees on that is a good revenue stream.

I think Square organizes around how people gather and transact, and focus on the under-banked. They have good data to inform where that happens, in what quantities, and when. Clearly food places, craft fairs, and music festivals have been crucial marketplaces for them, and now they are establishing themselves as a promotional platform to those markets. They now have a lot of surfaces to do so, and will probably always now be after more ad inventory.

They are positioned to own not only how people transact in person, but who will be doing those transactions, where, and when.

Imagine they roll out a data product to their merchants that shows an Uber Hot-Spots style dataset of sales, demand, and trends in both merchandise and the wild psychographics you can learn from a music service.

It all seemed rather incoherent without this knowledge.

Thank you for clarifying this. I'm an investor in SQ also, and bought more yesterday. I saw this and now I'm kinda shaking my head wondering if they're spreading themselves too thin.

But having a "stake" in eventbrite, may not really be enough to justify paying this price for an also ran in the music streaming business. What makes Tidal worth anywhere near $300m?

Interesting! I wonder whether the outcome of this play will be more efficiencies and better pay for artists, or just Square taking a cut along with the record labels, managers, etc., leaving the artist out in the cold as usual.

Interesting! Didn't know that and it makes a lot more sense from that angle.

> there are no shortage of songs and albums named Cash App for a reason).

Product placement in movies, tv shows, songs, books, news,....exhausting to keep track.

That's just rap (and other pop music). I feel like a "product placement" vs a "product reference" is a key distinction. Rappers reference Cash App because of what it represents, not because they're being paid to endorse it.

Like when YG Nipsey dropped "FDT "it wasn't a campaign ad, and Smith and Wesson wasn't funding "Nickname" by Qadir. Way different from Coke paying to have a bottle on the table during Modern Family or whatever.

It may also allow them to easily offer music for play in their Square PoS locations. Today most places that are legit are licensing from others.

i dont think eventbrite is in the music business at all. that space is dominated by ticketmaster. i dont think ive ever seen a concert on eventbrite.

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