He may not yet make the pantheon of Detroit business innovators that includes Henry Ford and Mike Ilitch of Little Caesars Pizza fame, but local music icon Kid Rock is making his concert tour this summer as much about the economics of the music business as the music itself.

Kid Rock is working with promoter Live Nation Entertainment to price most tickets for his summer concerts at just $20 and make them available for purchase at Walmart. He hopes the good old-fashioned price discount will spur buying and, so far, he told the Wall Street Journal, that is exactly what has happened at his concerts.

Instead of taking a big upfront fee from Live Nation, Kid Rock has shouldered more risk by sharing ticket sales but also should benefit from an unusual arrangement with Live Nation in which he gets a cut of revenue from food, drinks and other "house earnings."Continue reading...

American Express announced an innovative social media integration with Twitter this week, enabling US cardmembers to turn customized Twitter hashtags into savings via sync.americanexpress.com. Promoted with the tagline “Sync. Tweet. Save.” the social marketing promotion is the most direct use of Twitter to date by a brand that creates a real utility for customers: couponless savings loaded directly to their synced cards and automatically delivered in a credit statement.

“With Twitter, we’ve really hit the trifecta. We have a great platform in Twitter,” said Ed Gilligan, Vice Chairman, American Express. “We know our cardmembers are engaged in Twitter. We’ve been working with them to think about how can we help them move from conversations to commerce. To turn a tweet into a transaction.”

Brands trying out Amex Sync include Best Buy, McDonald’s, Whole Foods Market, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Century 21, The Cheesecake Factory, Dell, FedEx Office, FTD, Gulf, H&M, Seamless.com, Sports Authority, Ticketmaster, Virgin America and Zappos. They'll be closely watching the analytics on this test, with the Amex Synch API offering also supplying reports to merchants about customer spending, online and offline.

And if they're in Austin for SXSW on March 12th, they can celebrate at a concert featuring Jay-Z.Continue reading...

Analysts stick up for beleaguered Bank of America.

Lawsuit accuses ComScore of violating the privacy of consumers it tracks.

Facebook concedes to Foursquare in the location wars, phases out Facebook Places.

Google pays $500 million to settle Justice Department charges it advertised illegal pharmacies. Continue reading...

AEG Live sets to rival Ticketmaster.

American Express rewards small-business members for marketing.

Boeing taxis toward major deal with Delta.

Burger King faces post mortems on the death of the King.

Facebook seeks acquisitions to fend off Google.

Foster's moves to thwart SABMiller bid.Continue reading...

American Apparel seeks rescue financing to avert bankruptcy.

Apple revamps MobileMe, sues Samsung over Galaxy phone; Samsung vows to fight back.

McDonald's launches US hiring blitz today.

Asos could be forced to rebrand in Germany.

BMW's DesignworksUSA expands to China with Shanghai office.

Burger King settles with franchisees over Value Menu.

Dish Network will keep 600 Blockbuster locations open.Continue reading...

That Dora-esque complaint could be the battle cry from merchants fed up with paying a substantial fee to the credit card companies in return for carrying their card-swiping and transactional business.

The mobile payments market could reach $618 billion by 2016, according to consulting firm Edgar, Dunn & Co., and the battle is heating up. 

Google has partnered with MasterCard and Citigroup to have the Nexus S Android smartphone, developed with Samsung, embedded with near-field communication (NFC) technology to enable purchases with a wave of the device across readers at the point-of-sale or check-out.

It’s the next territorial imperative for m-commerce as the financial-services, technology and telecom industries craft strategies and devices to get more of consumer spending via smartphones which are virtually transforming into electronic wallets.Continue reading...

Apple tightens reins with iTunes store.

Dow Chemical profit nearly triples on rising economic tides. 

Estee Lauder hails the return of the aspirational shopper. 

Mastercard profits from uptick in consumer spending and e-payments.

News Corp. unveils healthy profits despite MySpace woes.

Google opens Android web store.

Groupon snags last-minute Super Bowl ad time as big game ad slots shift players. (Don't miss our sneak peek at this year's ads.)Continue reading...

Discounts are a delicate balance for any brand, and event organizations such as concert promoters and sports teams have long resisted heavy discounting even as ticket prices have risen steeply in recent years.

Now a new service aims to tip that balance in favour of fans − while striving to help ticket sellers as well.

ScoreBig, which plans to launch tomorrow, is a new ticket distributor that has been testing a system to sell unsold event seats at a minimum discount of 10%.Continue reading...