A few minutes before I saw news that Ticketmaster had acquired a majority of Front Line Management, somebody on MSNBC said M&A is virtually dead in the current economic climate. The deal will pay Warner Music Group $123 million for the approximately 30% stake in Front Line it acquired last year. More than that, the deal puts Live Nation and the rest of the industry on notice.

The newly created company, Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc, will have Front Line's Irving Azoff as its CEO. And it puts some of the most successful artists in the world (The Eagles, Jimmy Buffet, Guns N' Roses, Christina Aguilera) into Ticketmaster's growing network of services -- ticketing (including secondary ticketing), e-commerce and online fan clubs.

And, in one acquisition, the music industry just got a lot more exciting. Ticketmaster has launched a plan to capture some of the ticketing revenue that could be lost to Live Nation's budding ticketing service. It's new business puts live music, not recorded music, at the centerpiece for the "360," multi-rights deals that are transforming the music industry. That point is driven home by Warner Music Group's sale of its interest in Front Line. Ticketmaster Entertainment is in an enviable position for the future. It has direct relationships with millions of music fans, it has some of the most popular artists and it has in Azoff an aggressive leader to guide its course.