America's Department Of Justice yesterday gave the all clear to the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger after the merging live music giants agreed to some specific competition enhancing terms. This means the music industry now has a brand new skyscraper on its block, another major major which owns 140 venues worldwide, promotes 22,000 concerts each year, annually sells 140 million tickets and manages the careers of over 200 artists, including several a-listers.

As much previously reported, the proposed merger has garnered much criticism and press attention, especially in the US, with many artists, managers and booking agents fearing the unstoppable growth of Live Nation, while consumer groups venting more vitriol towards Ticketmaster, who some said were already abusing their market dominance even without controlling half the US's major venues and concert tours.

The merging parties argued that while they'll be very big within the live music space, in the context of the wider music and entertainment industry they'd be on par with a number of their competitors. They also countered that some of Live Nation's big competitors may go elsewhere for their ticketing as a result of the deal, making the ticketing market more competitive.

Some positioned the merger as the first real test of Barack Obama's government to stand up to big business. There were rumours that the US Department Of Justice was preparing for a court battle to block the deal when they couldn't reach a deal with the two merging companies regard the divestment of some of their assets late last year. Though others pointed out that such preparation was par for the course, and not necessarily a sign regulatory approval was now unlikely.

The merging parties made two main concessions to satisfy the US regulator's anti-trust concerns.

First, Ticketmaster will be required to licence its primary ticketing software to Live Nation's biggest competitor AEG Live, currently a customer of the ticketing firm. This will enable AEG to basically bring their ticketing in-house with minimum disruption, so that they won't end up sharing any of their consumer data with their chief rivals. Over the next five years AEG will have to option to buy the software outright, create its own, or move to another ticketing partner.

Second, Ticketmaster will sell off its ticketing systems unit Paciolan Inc, the ticketing giant's acquisition of which, in 2008, led to anti-trust objections in itself. A division of cable TV giant Comcast has already formally expressed an interest in buying Paciolan, though if that deal fails LiveMaster will be able to sell the company to any Department Of Justice approved buyer.

Wall Street types seem to be of the opinion LiveMaster got off lightly in terms of forced divestment of assets, though Department Of Justice anti-trust chief Christine Varney told Reuters she was happy the merger would not now result in a dangerous reduction of competition in the live entertainment market, and that, in fact, it could result in a fall in ticket prices.

Varney: "I was prepared to litigate at any and all points, until a settlement was achieved that efficiently dealt with all our anti-competitive concerns. You can probably expect to see three competitors and generally when you see robust competition you see prices coming down. I will be keeping a very close eye on this settlement as we go forward".

The people behind the Ticketdisaster.org website, who opposed the merger, said they were still unhappy about the deal, and that they would be watching the operations of the merged LiveMaster closely moving forward, on the look out for any anti-competitive behaviour.

As previously reported, the UK Competition Commission OKed the merger last month despite initially expressing reservations about the proposals. The merged company will be known as Live Nation Entertainment.