Live Nation Concert Series Adds Lower East Side Venues

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Two of the Lower East Side's most legendary indie clubs are joining with the music venue monolith Live Nation, the companies announced on Monday.

The Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge are joining with Live Nation to create a new venture, Mercury East Presents. The new promotions and booking group will include the Bowery Ballroom, the Mercury Lounge plus three other New York City music clubs.

Michael Swier, the co-owner of both the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge, announced the new venture on Monday with Live Nation Entertainment.

The 550-seat Bowery Ballroom is famously known as an intimate concert space where indie stars can connect with their most ardent fans. Lorde played in the space on the launch day of her sophomore album "Melodrama." In 2013, the venue, located at 6 Delancey St., was named the best club in America by "Rolling Stone" magazine. The Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St., is even smaller, seating just 250.

Mercury East will also include Gramercy Theatre and Irving Plaza in Manhattan plus the Warsaw venue in Brooklyn. The newly-created group said it would "continue to expand this portfolio" and also work to book shows at Madison Square Garden, Barclay's Center, the Beacon Theater and Radio City Music Hall.

The new venture shows an increasingly consolidated landscape of music concert venues, an area originally dominated by independently owned spaces. Mercury East Presents comes after Swier split from the concert promoter Bowery Presents, which was bought earlier this year by AEG. AEG, a giant sports and entertainment group, also purchased Webster Hall in the East Village.

"The way the landscape has changed these days, with consolidation, this is the counterbalance one would need to exist and compete with the formidable Bowery Presents-AEG alliance," Swier told the New York Times. "Going it alone was not an option."

Image credit: Scott Gries / Getty Images / Getty Images Entertainment. Image caption: British rock band Blur lead singer Damon Albarn performs at the Bowery Ballroom in 2003.