You gotta understand something there. This music is the glue of the world. It holds it all together.

Without this, life would be meaningless. What are you getting so crazy about? It's just music.

Welcome to sound opinions from Chicago Public Radio and American Public Media.

I'm Jim De Regattis, the pop music critic at the Chicago Sun Times.

And I'm Greg Kot.

I write about Rock and Roll for the Chicago Tribune.

Today on the world's only rock and roll talk show,

Jim and I are going to interview the co-founders

of the great independent label Merge Records

as they celebrate their 20th anniversary.

Plus, we'll review the new albums from the Decemberists and Mastinon and I'll pop a quarter in the

Desert Island jukebox.

You're listening to sound opinions and now it's time for some music news. dancing can't walk long as I can have you here with me not much travel be

forever in blue jeans babe Greg you and I have been talking about the proposed merger between Ticketmaster and

Live Nation to create an unprecedented behemoth to basically control live music in America.

Biggest story we've concluded that either of us have ever covered on this beat.

Ethan Smith, who's been reporting on it for the Wall Street Journal agrees.

He had a heck of a scoop not long ago about the so-called secondary ticket market,

better known as scalpers and how artists and ticket master seem to be in collusion to be holding back

tickets for scalpers. We wanted to have him on the show to talk to him about this

story. Ethan, welcome to sound opinions. Thanks, good to be here. We want to focus on this story you wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal on the way that the secondary ticket market has become a huge factor in the music industry. We've known this for decades.

But an interesting twist in that artists now

...