Revenue is down, the music business is a mess and the scalpers just won't let up

by Laura Rich, contributor

Irving Azoff has his back up against a wall. The Live Nation (LYV) CEO faces declining ticket sales at the concerts his company produces and his company's 2009 revenue was down well below expectations at $365 million from $450 million the year before.

What's more, he doesn't trust the numbers about concert tours and he seems to have had it up to here with scalpers and the so-called secondary ticket business.

"There's always going to be ticket brokers, secondary ticket business," he said. "But they have no skin in the game, they're not the guys putting tens of millions in."

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