Here we are, in what should, by all rights, be Spring, but as I look out my window, I’m reminded that well, Spring will come when it will. So, I guess we might as well be surfing the web for new and interesting things to share with our students.

The first thing I would like to share with you is a little something new I learned in doing research about 360 degree contracts. If you are lucky enough to have access to Lexis-Nexis, you can search for “Earnings Conference Call” and “Live Nation” in the same search box (or the publicly traded company of your choice) to gain access to the transcripts of all the quarterly conference calls made between CEO’s and their investors. You can get some quite interesting insights as to corporate strategy (with a positive spin, of course) by reading these. You can also listen to some of these calls on line, but I have found the companies don’t archive them for long, and so you can’t dig back too far for background through the recordings. The transcripts, however, can take you back to the beginning of such companies as Ticketmaster, Live Nation, or Warner Music Group just to name a few that might be on your radar screen these days.

Speaking of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, you can now access a webcast of the Senate hearing – featuring testimony by Rapino and Azoff promoting the deal as the way to save the music industry, as well as some detractors. I don’t know how long this will stay posted where it is, but it is really interesting, and a good chance for students to see our representatives in action. Right now you can see the hearing at this webcast address. It is interesting to note that the committee establishes early on in the proceedings that the burden of proof is on Live Nation and Ticketmaster to argue that they will not be creating unfair competition – I will leave it to you to determine if they met that standard in their testimony! Also, if you are following this proposal, you might want to look at the investor presentation . I’d draw your attention in this presentation to slide #5, which clearly shows the plan for their “vertical integration on steroids” (a quote from a dissenter at the Senate hearings). You might want to read through this and see how their presentation to stockholders differs from their strategy presented at the hearing!

Thanks to reaching out to my students, I was introduced to www.coolfer.com this past week. This is a blog by a young person in the music industry in Nashville. Looking today, there is a list of interesting articles about things happening in the here and now. Is everyone up on the “Darknet?” I am now, thanks to this site. I also followed through the “jobs” link to look at internships, and there were some interesting listings, so you might find this helpful for your students if you need some new ideas. I’ll check it a few more times before we go to print, but it looks promising for keeping up to date on somewhat random topics.

Finally, the last link I will mention for this post is on the ever popular YouTube (yes, I do go there upon occasion – you can find some interesting stuff there…really!). I first saw this“5 Minute University" clip at a presentation on teaching I went to a couple of weeks ago, and I fear there may be some truth to it.

You may not agree with Professor Sarducci, but you do have to ask yourself why his comments seem to resonate so clearly with the audience. It helped me remind myself that less is more, and that it is more important for me to focus on thinking, than on fact distribution. Check it out and let me know at the conference what you think! On that note, my five minutes are up – happy spring, and happy (Internet) surfing!