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It has been 10 years since the consolidation of concert promoters started to take place and today the two main companies that dominate the market are Live Nation and AEG. Live Nation has grown into a company that does more than just promoting. They have added ticketing, branding, licensing, and made deals with top artist to name a few. As for the launch of AEG Live, it is acting as a very strong competitor to Live Nation and is heavily involved in promoting not only in the United States, but also worldwide. To some the consolidation has come with negative side effects that they feel have effected the industry, but to others they see it as something that was inevitably going to happen and would be natural in the industry’s development. There are a few areas that can be looked at to see how having two dominate companies in the industry effect things. The first area is ticketing. Ticket prices have gone up tremendously in the past ten years, and one of the reasons that it could be is because the large promoting companies are competing for the best talent, which cost a lot of money for them to secure a tour under their name. Another area is other independent promoter competition. Promoters who are still independent at first were very concerned with not being able to stand up against the two large companies, but most have realized their niche in the market and have diversified themselves to be able to be successful. When you look at the concert promoting as a whole, some believe that the spirit has been lost in this area of the industry and you don’t have those great well known players anymore that used to make promoting exciting. Others would argue that because of the Internet and new marketing tactics, shows are promoted better. As for the future, Live Nation believes that new artist need to be developed, it is hard to find the acts that can fill and sell out arenas, but they are up for the challenge.