A Busy Day on Capitol Hill
As we all know, President Obama addressed Congress last night. In case you missed it or want to review his speech in agonizing detail, the NY Times has an incredible feature online. You can watch the video (divided into categorized segments so you can dissect the stimulus package details but skip over the Intro) and…
Twitter on Capitol Hill
Twitter: noun. A social networking site that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Ex: "I'm following Barack Obama on twitter." At first glance of the top 100 most popular twitter users, it is not surprising…
Skeptics Question Election Day Registration
I was at a local NYC comedy club Monday night, where one of the comedians started talking about voter fraud. He started to explain how the people controlling election day polling places should be less 'community volunteer' and more 'NYC bouncer.' He then proceeded to cross his arms, beef up his shoulders and turn his mouth into a down-turned…
Phish Fans Caught Up in the Ticketing Perfect Storm
I was writing an email and one of those creepy Google ads popped up for the Phish page on TicketsNow, the Ticketmaster-owned secondary ticket site similar to StubHub. A few observations: – The market has ballooned to nearly $650 per ticket for the opening night Hampton show – nearly double where it stood a couple…
Interesting People Doing Interesting Things
Here at HeadCount, we are always excited to see people, especially youth, speak up. If you're in the mood for a little inspiration, check out a few of these incredible change makers. "You Voted, Now What?": Have you ever been stared down by a man draped in metallic, gold fabric with all exposed skin painted in gold?…
Independent Report Ranks HeadCount No. 1 (By Far)
Air Traffic Control, a non-profit that connects musicians to social action, put together a report summing up the various "music related political events" in 2008. The report found that 82% of that activity involved HeadCount. The next closest organization, Rock the Vote, was responsible for 7%. We knew we were staging the largest event-based voter…
A Guitar for the Ages
The following was written by Gregg Nevens, who made the highest bid on a guitar signed by members of The Dead as well as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to commemorate The Dead’s appearance at the Presidential Inauguration. While Gregg’s views are clearly his own and do not reflect HeadCount’s nonpartisan political stance, we…
Ticket Brokers Breaking Hearts
One of the many dirty secrets behind the secondary ticketing market (what some would call “legalized scalping)” is that the ticket brokers don’t always have the tickets they advertise. They “sell” the tickets, get the money in hand, and then try to buy the same tickets at a lower price. If they can’t, then they…
Merger Intentions Confirmed, Politicians Speak Up
As of Tuesday morning, Ticketmaster and Live Nation confirmed their intended merger. The new company, named Live Nation Entertainment, would be headed by Michael Rapino, Live Nation CEO. Ticketmaster Chairman, Barry Diller, spoke up immediately on behalf of the honest intentions of the company. Both companies claim the mixture of economic turmoil and everlasting music industry profit…
I’m Tired of Grammy Gripes
The 51st Annual Grammy Awards were on last night and, although every knowledgeable music lover I know has had more gripes than praises about the ceremony, I had more fun watching this event than any awards show I can remember (except maybe adolescently swooning over N*Sync at Nickelodeon's Kid's Choice Awards). Sure, The Jonas Brothers should never, ever…