A former employee of ticketing firm CrowdSurge (which later merged with Songkick) who had joined Live Nation shared URLs with Ticketmaster employees that provided access to draft ticketing web pages that Songkick had built in an attempt to “steal back” one of Songkick’s top artist clients, federal prosecutors said. The now-defunct competitor, Songkick, offered artist-direct ticket presales for concerts sold in advance of general ticket sales. “Though we won’t be selling tickets ourselves, we’ll always be your trusted home for live music online.According to the Justice Department’s settlement with Ticketmaster (available at this link), from August 2013 to December 2015, Ticketmaster employees “repeatedly” used stolen passwords to gain unauthorized access to non-public ticketing info from the rival firm. “You can still count on us to be the first to tell you about new concerts, and to point you to the fairest, safest places to buy tickets,” continued the blog post. The app no longer has ambitions to actually sell tickets though. “Together we’ll be doubling down on our mission to improve the live experience, bring fans and artists closer together and, of course, make sure you never ever miss your favourite artists live.” “First things first, we’re not going anywhere,” they said of the WMG acquisition.

To head off potential confusion for its users around the corporate-shutdown news, the app’s team published a blog post late last week to clear things up. Songkick the concert-recommendations app, however, is very much alive and kicking, having been sold to Warner Music Group earlier this year. Songkick the company is shutting down, ending its ticketing operations after a punishing legal battle with Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

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