*By Conor White*
During the bitter months of winter, music-lovers may dream of summer festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Governors Ball.
But actually planning trips to those festivals is another matter entirely ー and an expensive one, at that.
Enter LiveXLive, a platform that brings festivals and other live events to music enthusiasts who can't afford to attend in-person.
"We set out to take the playbook from ESPN, to create the next generation MTV," founder Robert Ellin told Cheddar Thursday. "And then add the community and social components of it to give the consumer the most immersive experience while they watch a live event."
LiveXLive has already streamed 20 events in 125 countries to the tune of more than 45 million views. The company's next event is iHeartRadio's ALTer Ego Festival through a new partnership with the entertainment giant.
Ellin said the possibilities for his company are immeasurable.
"We gave them an opportunity to partner and curate a brand new revenue stream for the entire music industry," he said.
The new partnership with iHeartMedia should only boost LiveXLive's ($LIVX) already-rapid growth. The company now has over 650,000 paying subscribers and more than 1.2 million active users, with almost 30,000 new subscribers a month.
While it might seem counterintuitive for festivals to partner with a platform that allows users to watch events from their couches, Ellin argues it's actually a mutually beneficial arrangement.
"You can watch it on TV but you'd still rather be at the live event," he said. "We're driving more people to these events."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/livexlive-partnering-with-iheartmedia-to-stream-festivals).
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
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At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
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