Just caught up with the All Things Digital interview with Irving Azoff. Kara Swisher is not an unformidable person, but the eight minutes of excerpts we get do not indicate that she was informed or knowledgeable enough about the issues involved to take advantage of a prime opportunity to question a guy who is poised to be the most powerful single person in the history of the music business.

Instead, using a decrepit journalist trope, she merely quotes the opposition, Bruce Springsteen:

AZOFF: We think that everything we do evolves first around what’s good for the artist and good for the fan; that’s our new business plan.

SWISHER: The criticism from Bruce Springsteen, who is not a small act, is that, I don’t want to go through this. I don’t want to be sucked though this..

AZOFF: [flash of irritation] I would basically just say that Bruce Springsteen is uninformed about what the potential of this could be for him.

SWISHER: The idea that you have all these levels, that have to come through you, could be frightening to people …

AZOFF: Everything that’s gone on in the music business has always been frightening … They were frightened of Napster, frightened of iTunes. This is just normal evolution of where the business is going. It’s a myth that there’s not competition out there.

Azoff artully deflects her question into an answer about the industry being frightened, rather than fans and artists. Then he makes a statement that any head of a potential massive combine might make … and Swisher didn’t follow up.

Here’s what else she didn’t ask:

One: Isn’t there a conflict of interest between being a manager and booking a concert tour? What’s good for Live Nation might not be good for a particular artist. It’s like having a real estate agent selling you houses he already owns. Two: Auction pricing. The easiest way for Live Nation to get around scalping is to scalp the tickets themselves, by auctioning them off to the highest bidder. The company’s term for this is “dynamic pricing.” It’s coming.

Three: Both of these companies are in precarious financial shape; shouldn’t a Wall Street Journal reporter ask whether both shouldn’t be allowed to let their respective stockholders take it out on their misguided managements? Specifically, Live Nation used to be called Clear Chanel; that company bought up the U.S. concert industry, and now can’t make it work. (Case study here.)