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Twitter is now the stage for Irving Azoff, the “Executive Chairman of Live Nation Entertainment and Chairman and CEO of the Front Line Management Group, the world’s largest music management firm” to show he is not all serious and that he has a funny side to him.

After all, his very first tweet was to slam his customers, every one of them for stealing music  “so if you want ticket prices to go down stop stealing music”.

Never mind that there are only a small percentage of music fans stealing music, mostly youngsters. And for his acts such as The Eagles, very few are stealing the music that has been out for decades. Have you heard a recent Eagles song you wanted to steal? Yet Azoff holds this as the reason he has jacked up the prices of all concert tickets, including the Eagles.

But back to the comedy because his tweets must be a joke. The head of a company trying to get your business just wouldn’t come out and call his customers crooks unless he was trying to be funny, right? But this isn’t the first time he has called his customers crooks .

Irving goes on to explain that touring is the only way artists can pay their bills these days as he tweets again to Perez Hilton  ”_not blaming. Justpointing out that it’s theonly way an artist can pay their bills anymore”

 Well why don’t the artists downgrade their livestyles like most of their fans have had to? Don’t theygive a damn about their fans? Cut down to just a couple of mansions instead of 4 or 5 maybe?

Azoff goes on to Tweet about Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks “ what a class act. need people like him in the music business” . This is after Mark Cuban just jacked up the Nolan Ryan group by jumping into the bidding for the Texas Rangers and jacking up the price by $100 million before backing out. Now the Texas Rangers fans will have to pay for Cuban’s bidding when the ticket prices go up to pay the bill.

Does the music industry need an NBA owner like Mark Cuban? After his attempts to build an NBA winner by throwing money at top players and never getting far in the playoffs? Azoff admires Mark Cuban for his ability to make money for shareholders, not for runnning a buisness for the fans. These guys are great examples of corporate America today that can be summed up in one word.

Greed!

Irving Azoff of Live Nation Ticketmaster appeared on CNNMoney.com video for Fortune and showed how far out of touch he was with the fans that he wants to sell tickets to. He talks about concert ticket prices still being too low and basically blames low prices and the fans for all the problems his company is going through selling tickets this summer.

As Azoff talks about the reason ticket sales are down in the US he says something about the economy and then goes on to say about ticket buyers, “If they could figure out a way to steal tickets, they would. Just like they steal movies and music, but so far they haven’t figured out a way to do that”.

It reminds me of the same things BP’s Tony Haword said in the press that got the American public against him and BP. How can you sit there and call your customers theives, as you explain that they are bitching because of he economy and not the high ticket prices.

Azoff goes no to explain that he considers the Live Nation Ticketmaster company as an ecommerce opportunity more than a concert ticket promoter or ticket seller. That explains his line of  thinking. Live Nation and Ticketmaster are not there for the fans, the customers, they are there to make money for shareholders.

It’s that type of thinking and greed that got this country in the situation we have been in the last few years, screw the customer for the profits of the shareholder. Can we now hope to see Irving Azoff sent to Russia and work his magic there instead of here?

Live Nation stock dropped dramatically as CEO Michael Rapino explained the downturn in concert business to shareholders during a presentation Thursday. While admitting that the ticket business has been slow the first half of the year, Rapino is preparing for an even slower second half which promted the sell off.

As we posted last September “Ticketmaster’s Irving Azoff Reports on “dynamic pricing”, Concert Goers Better Prepare for the Worst“, the plan by Irving Azoff and Ticketmaster would not work because the fans will not stand for the higher prices. It is crazy that Rapino and Azoff would quote the airline industry as a model to raise concert ticket prices when everyone hates the airlines for that very reason.

And Live Nation and Ticketmaster are already feeling the heat when they’ve discounted tickets for concerts such as the Lilith Fair and fans find themselves next to fans that paid half of what they did. With Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social media sites you cannot hide anything any more and fans will not accept the new method of extracting the most $$ from the fans.

The concert industry seems to be imploding this year and neither Live Nation or Ticketmaster has a clue on how to please the fans and send boatloads of money to the stockholders. The concert business has not exactly been the cash cow Irving and Azoff said it would be when they took all that money to merge Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.