By By Eric Allen, News Staff

Behind every successful musician, there’s talent, of course, but there’s also a team of professionals taking care of the details. And behind every good concert, there are weeks, sometimes months of planning.
Here at Northeastern, a lot of that planning goes on in the Council for University Programs’ (CUP) office. This year’s Springfest concert featuring Jimmy Eat World, Guster and DJ Diplo, for instance, took months to coordinate, said Nani Stoick, Springfest concert chair. CUP goes through a middle agent to coordinate shows for the school instead of working with Live Nation, a concert production and marketing company based in Los Angeles, Calif.
‘[Live Nation] has a monopoly over live music,’ said Stoick, a junior music industry major. ‘It’s bigger than anybody realizes it is.’
Although Northeastern isn’t affiliated with Live Nation, there are plenty of venues that are. The company’s website describes it as ‘the largest producer of live shows in the world,’ operating over 80 venues, including Boston’s House of Blues. It does not act as a liaison between venues and artists ‘- it owns venues, like Boston University’s Agganis Arena, and negotiates the cost of bringing in performers by leveraging its control on the live music business.
If CUP were to try to book rock band Kings of Leon, playing at Agganis Arena April 18 and April 19, they would have to pay substantially more than Live Nation, Stoick said. A university working with a booking agent doesn’t have the same pull as the national concert conglomerate, and therefore isn’t in the position to negotiate competitive prices.
‘For us it would be like 90 grand ‘- for Live Nation it would be like 40 grand,’ Stoick said. ‘When we book bands, we, meaning colleges, normally pay 4 to 5 times more than what the bands are used to getting at a normal venues.’
Senior computer science major Ken Mazaika said concerts are not that important to him, but that so far, he’s been happy with those held at Northeastern.
‘It would be great if they could have better concerts and bigger names,’ Mazaika said. ‘But they probably have a lot on their plate right now. They’re doing an alright job.’
Stoick said Live Nation also operates Paradise Rock Club on Commonwealth Avenue, but doesn’t advertise it because ‘people think Paradise is Paradise ‘- they don’t want people to think it’s part of a conglomerate.’
When reached for comment, an employee of Live Nation, Paul, who refused to give his last name, would only say that for schools, ‘It would certainly be easier to book with us.’
On Feb. 10, Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster, arguably the nation’s largest entertainment ticketing service, to form Live Nation Entertainment. The company is now being investigated by the US Justice Department for potentially violating antitrust law, which prohibits companies that monopolize a particular industry, according to media reports.
If Northeastern were to work with Live Nation to book concerts, Stoick said, Matthews Arena would no longer belong to the university and concerts wouldn’t be exclusive to Northeastern students. She said it would never happen, however, because Live Nation wouldn’t want to purchase a venue in the already-saturated Boston music market, and the university wouldn’t relinquish control of the space.
Because CUP books concerts through a middle agent, the Waltham-based Pretty Polly Productions, and not Live Nation, it prohibits the types of acts they can get, Stoick said. Because of limited funds and a tight time frame, she said it’s a lot more difficult to book a band in Matthews than most people realize.
Lyndsie Mannix, a junior biology major, said she commended CUP’s effort to put together a crowd-pleasing show at Northeastern.
‘It’s hard because there are so many students here,’ she said. ‘It’s not like at state schools where you’re going to have the big acts coming. But it’s good ‘- I know a couple people in CUP and they work really hard.’