Delivery Agent Buying Live Nation’s Musictoday
Two interesting companies who do a lot of different things are merging. Delivery Agent does things like facilitate shopping from smart tv screens and enable online shopping synced to tv content. Musictoday, owned by Live Nation, does marketing, merchandising, ticketing and fan clubs. They are said to serve the "commerce needs of more than 500 leading recording artists including Pitbull, Lady Gaga, U2, Dave Matthews, Toby Keith, and Tim McGraw." Delivery Agent is acquiring Musictoday to expand their services into music.
Today Delivery Agent announced the acquisition-in-progress of Live Nation's Musictoday.
Delivery Agent is self-described in their announcement as having
"proprietary technology [that] allows viewers to engage with and transact directly from advertisements and television shows through web, mobile, and advanced television applications."
They state in the acquisition announcement:
"To date, the company’s platform has enabled over 10 million media related commerce transactions via desktop, mobile, tablet, and directly via the television (t-commerce)."
Musictoday says their "specialty" is:
"full-service marketing, product fulfillment, and cross-platform customer service for…Merchandising, Ticketing, Fan Clubs"
The announcement narrows that down to:
"merchandise distribution company that fulfills merchandise orders for hundreds of recording artists"
Though Musictoday does have other clients, music-related clients dominate their roster.
Delivery Agent works in both sports and entertainment serving major brands from networks to sports franchises to advertisers. They really seem to be linking parties together so acquiring Musictoday will both connect them to new clients and possibly extend their services.
From the official announcement:
"Delivery Agent’s capabilities will be extended to Musictoday’s roster of clients providing a unique opportunity to redefine legacy monetization models for the music business. The new offering will include upgraded online and mobile storefronts for Musictoday’s clients as well as leverage Delivery Agent’s proprietary t-commerce platform to enable purchases directly from live tweets, music videos and live streamed concerts."
Given that Delivery Agent emphasizes merch fulfillment in describing Musictoday and that Musictoday has also been involved with ticketing and fan clubs, it's unclear if all of Musictoday's capabilities will be put to use. Everything Delivery Agent is saying seems to emphasize getting new clients and what they can do for them.
The one thing, shared in an email, that Delivery Agent says they'll do with Musictoday beyond take over their client base:
"Delivery Agent will deploy Musictoday’s proprietary 'Sell Anywhere' application that enables direct transactions from online video across digital video for its existing roster of television clients."
Sounds like a potentially good match though I imagine a bit unsettling for Musictoday employees not working in areas that seem to have caught Delivery Agent's interest.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) also blogs at DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
