Kelly Clarkson Fans To Give Ticketmaster Even More Money

The Tennessean is reporting that Ticketmaster will purchase a stake in echomusic, the Tennessee-based company that designs and produces Web sites and other direct-to-fan marketing for artists like Kelly Clarkson and Keith Urban:

For artists who use Echomusic’s services, the immediate upside of the deal is that it offers more avenues through which to market their fan Web sites and ultimately sell more tickets. Also, an artist’s most ardent fans probably will benefit from exclusive access to tickets.

For example, Ticketmaster partnered with Apple’s iTunes service to offer customers who pre-ordered recent albums from Bob Dylan and the Red Hot Chili Peppers the first crack at buying concert tickets. Moriarty said it’s possible to imagine similar deals with Echomusic’s artist clients.

“We’ll look for any and all opportunities to leverage Echo’s (technology) platform,” he said.

This deal makes absolute sense, especially since Echo participates a lot in ticketing presales for fans; a closer relationship between Echo and Ticketmaster will make the presale process for its clients a lot smoother. (The only surprise, really, is that Ticketmaster didn’t move on this deal, or one like it with a company like Musictoday, sooner.) But don’t think the integration will go entirely smoothly; Echo’s mission statement says that, among other things, the company believes in “respecting the end user–it is the only right thing to do,” which makes us foresee a lot of corporate clashes between it and the company that charges its users $2 for the “privilege” of printing out a PDF at home.

Ticketmaster to buy Nashville marketer behind music stars’ Web sites [Tennessean.com, via The Velvet Rope]