By Alfred Branch, Jr.
TicketNews.com
A new music website, where musicians can hawk their tunes and other swag, has teamed up with Live Nation to give special concert privileges to select members.
BurnLounge.com is a digital download music store and social networking site that allows members to set up online stores to carry their own music or that of major label stars, such as Justin Timberlake, KISS, Kanye West and Good Charlotte. By setting up a store and stocking it with a mix of artists and items, like T-shirts, members in essence create profiles of themselves by selling what they dig.
Retailers receive a percentage of their sales. BurnLounge estimates total sales could reach $42 million in 2007, according to published reports….
The owners of the stores that generate significant sales are called VIP Retailers, and under the site’s Event Pass program they are given preferred access to dozens of the more than 160 venues that Live Nation services around the world. VIP Retailers will also have first crack at tickets to certain concerts presented by Live Nation, discounts on certain tickets, priority seating and access to some of the top music festivals.
Members could also conceivably offer tickets to Live Nation shows by including links in their stores. BurnLounge claims to have 60,000 retailers already signed up, which could Live Nation further penetration into the music scene. Currently, BurnLounge is an invitation only site, but will roll out to the general public within the next few weeks, officials said. It also carries an instant messaging feature.
The profile page/store concept is growing in popularity among social networking sites, and in the future goliath MySpace is expecting to launch a similar feature for its 170 million-plus members, according to published reports. For ticket brokers this could allow them to vastly expand their network of resellers by allowing member stores to offer links to broker websites. The possibilities are endless.
“We are dedicated to offering the BurnLounge community unprecedented access to the music industry,” said BurnLounge co-founder, president and COO Ryan Dadd in a prepared statement. “Through our partnership with Live Nation, Retailers have special access to venues and VIP rooms. This relationship also provides BurnLounge Retailers with incredible visibility to thousands of concertgoers in key markets.”
Songs on BurnLounge.com cost $.99 cents and albums $9.99, the same as on iTunes, but they are downloadable only with Windows. Mac users, who have newer computers with Intel chips, can run Windows separately on their machine to access the songs.
