The ink is only just drying on Live Nation's 360-degree deal with Madonna, and they're already looking to bolster it up with the acquisition of another part of the live-music machine: Signatures Network.

Signatures Network are the merchandising company who hold the rights license and market Madonna merchandise, as well as more than 125 other artists - big names such as Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Kanye West. The deal brings the end result of Live Nation becoming an entertainment behemoth, handling artists from the figurative cradle to the grave.

Combine this with the fact that Live Nation have recently consolidated their stakes to total ownership in Trunk (T-shirt merchandising), Ultrastar (website company that runs official sites for The Police, RHCP and others), as well as acquiring Musictoday (fan club ticketing) and Ant Hill Trading (yet another merchandiser), it looks as if Live Nation's ambitions to have a finger in the pie at every level of the industry could be realised sooner than we thought.