During a recent appearance at D7, the Wall Street Journal’s annual technology conference, Ticketmaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff said that without the company’s proposed merger with Live Nation it may not survive.

Azoff made the assessment during a casual discussion with the Journal’s Kara Swisher, and he believes that companies will need to take chances and continue to embrace new technologies. Click on the video below.

“We believe that everything right now revolves around the need and the desire to go see live music,” Azoff said.

He scoffed at the notion that linking Live Nation’s concert promoting and marketing prowess with Ticketmaster’s ticketing dominance will be a bad thing for the industry, even though Swisher referred to the merger as potentially “frightening” to many people. Azoff said Ticketmaster’s new business model is do whatever is good for artists and fans.

TFL and ATBS for ticketing professionals

“I would say that Bruce [Springsteen, an opponent of the merger] is uninformed about what the potential of this could be for him,” Azoff said. “Everything that’s gone on in the music business has been frightening. They were frightened of Napster, they were frightened of iTunes. The business traditionally resists change, but this is just the normal evolution of where the business is going.”