That’s the possibility floated, albeit in an offhand way, via Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay in a note published this morning: “We would likely expect further divestments of non-core businesses, possibly including StubHub.”

I understand why the auction site dropped StumbleUpon, a Web 2.0 publishing business with a novel and unproven revenue model. And it makes sense to stop carrying Skype, a telecom business that requires a lot of time, money and maintenance.

But Stubhub, which eBay bought for $307 million a little more than two years ago, seemed like a bona fide fit: The ticket resale business mirrors eBay’s (EBAY) core auction in pretty obvious ways. I’ve asked Lindsay to tease out his thinking for us, and will update if he does.

UPDATE: Here’s Lindsay, via email: “It seems that eBay is going right back to basics, and is dispensing with the ‘we are an auction company’ ethos that got them into so much trouble. We see StubHub as coming out of that era. We think the market in tickets is changing rapidly and there is a chance to sell StubHub at the very top. They might well take it and pursue a much more pure play retail/second hand portfolio and go back to geographic expansion of the marketplaces/PayPal core.”

Meanwhile, if eBay does decide to jettison StubHub, now would be a very interesting time to do so. TicketsNow, its primary competitor, is likely to go on the block in the near future: Parent company Ticketmaster (TKTM), which acquired the business for $265 million a year ago, has said it would dump the business in order to mollify antitrust critics (and Bruce Springsteen fans) who want to stop the company’s proposed merger with Live Nation (LYV).

Anyone want to corner the market on the ticket-scalping industry?

[Image credit: Hyrck]

Well, that’s all resolved now. In a convoluted way. But it’s resolved. Via New Jersey’s Star-Ledger:

Ticket giant Ticketmaster has reached a national settlement with the New Jersey Attorney General in which it agrees to stop linking customers to TicketsNow, a subsidiary agency that sells tickets at scalper’s prices.

Attorney General Anne Milgram said Ticketmaster has agreed to run a lottery that will make 2,000 tickets available at face value to customers who complained about the way Ticketmaster handled the Feb. 2 sale of tickets to Bruce Springsteen’s shows May 21 and 23 at the Izod Center at the Meadlowlands….

Fans–more than 1,000–who don’t win a pair of tickets in the lottery will be given $100 gift certificates, Milgram said, and the ability to purchase tickets for an upcoming Springsteen concert in New Jersey.”

Ticketmaster (TKTM) will also pay a $350,000 fine, and has agreed to stop using Google (GOOG) keywords to direct Ticketmaster searchers to TicketsNow.

Given that Ticketmaster and Live Nation are trying to pull off a politically tricky deal, this seems like a great settlement for Barry Diller, Irving Azoff and company–no use going before the Department of Justice while you’ve got state investigations into your ticketing practices.

And what does Springsteen himself think about the deal? There’s no comment from him or his management team on his site. But tellingly, his previous comments about the Ticketmaster/Live Nation deal–the ones where he described the proposed merger as a “near monopoly” and asked his fans to complain to their representatives about it–have vanished from his site.

I’ve spent way too much time trying to wrap this one up with a Springsteen lyric pun. Too hard! So here’s your YouTube, instead. Apologies for the subpar video/audio: Sony Music Entertainment, Springsteen’s label, won’t allow me to embed the higher-quality versions.

Ticketmaster (TKTM) and Live Nation (LYV) formally rolled out their merger agreement today, which calls for Live Nation to buy out Ticketmaster shareholders for $575 million in stock. But the financials here are less important than the public relations: To get this deal done, the two companies are going to have to convince regulators that they come in peace and mean no harm–no matter how loudly their constituents disagree.

So far, we’ve only heard the carping about the deal, but it’s been loud, and prominent: Bruce Springsteen has weighed in. So has the New York Times. And now Congress is getting warmed up, too.

Today, argues Ticketmaster chairman Barry Diller, the companies get to start making their case, which they couldn’t do until the deal was formally announced. Now “we are going to really explain and explain and explain and make all of this clear to all our constituencies.”

Diller gave a preview of his talking points during this morning’s conference call:

Argument 1: Don’t blame us for high ticket prices–blame Madonna, or U2, or Phish.

“Ticketmaster does not set prices,” Diller said. “Live Nation does not set ticket prices. Artists set ticket prices.”

That’s true. And then Ticketmaster and Live Nation add supplementary charges, which can jack up the price by 30 percent or more. That’s standard operating procedure for all sorts of transactions–check the invoice for your last plane ticket or give your hotel bill a once-over–but it doesn’t seem to inspire the same rage as it does in concert ticket buyers.

The other problem with this argument: Live Nation is run by Irving Azoff, who is one of the sharpest dealmakers in the music business and who also runs one of the biggest management companies in the business. And since managers are now the most powerful players in the business, they’ve got a great deal to say about how their clients price concert tickets. See the problem here?

Argument 2: Don’t blame us if you can’t get tickets for that Hannah Montana show your kids are demanding. But if you do want a ticket for a sold-out show, we can help you–at a price.

This is what Bruce Springsteen was complaining about. In addition to its core business, Ticketmaster also runs “TicketsNow,” a “secondary marketplace” for tickets. The other word for that is scalping, which is now a legal and booming business on the Web.

But when a concert ticket company also sells “aftermarket” tickets, it makes people feel queasy in a way that they don’t about eBay’s (EBAY) Stubhub, which only does resale.

That feeling is exacerbated when people suspect that Ticketmaster is directing buyers away from its regular tickets and toward its marked-up TicketsNow inventory, which is what happened to Springsteen ticket buyers this month.

Diller says the Springsteen incident was a “technological glitch.” Which may well be true. But you’re going to hear about that one a lot in the coming months.

Argument 3: Whaddaya gonna do? We sell tickets. People are never going to send us thank you cards.

Diller: “This is such a sexy issue. Ticketmaster is never perceived to be on the side of the angels.”

Remember when Pearl Jam testified against Ticketmaster in Congress in the ’90s, convinced the Department of Justice to investigate the company and led a boycott against any venue that did business with them? Those were the days.

Except that Pearl Jam ended up playing small venues, the DOJ (that’s the Clinton-era DOJ, mind you) gave Ticketmaster a pass, and by the end of the decade Eddie Vedder and crew were working with Ticketmaster again.

So maybe this one goes through, too. I’ve heard from plenty of folks who hate the proposed merger (”These two companies SHOULD NEVER be allowed to merge and reproduce,” a former Live Nation employee tells me via email), but I’d love to hear someone who knows both the music business and antitrust law make a cogent defense: You can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com and I’ll give you an open forum.

Until then, here’s the slideshow Live Nation is using to explain the deal:

live nation dek – Get more Business Documents

[Eddie Vedder image credit: sick of goodbyes]

We’ll find out once the reported deal becomes official, which could happen as early as Friday. In the meantime, you can consider the varied opinions of antitrust attorneys and experts quoted in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Or you can just ask the Boss, who gives the deal an unqualified thumbs down.

The story: Bruce Springsteen happens to be embarking on yet another megatour (perhaps you caught him on TV the other day). Said tour, which is using Ticketmaster (TKTM) to sell tickets (again, like just about everyone else in the concert business) has already run into a snafu involving TicketsNow, the “secondary marketplace” (i.e., legal aftermarket/scalping) company Ticketmaster bought last year.

If you want the details, you can consult Springsteen’s Web site, where the musician and manager Jon Landau have posted a long apology. Or you can cut to the chase:

The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. Several newspapers are reporting on this story right now. If you, like us, oppose that idea, you should make it known to your representatives.

The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you. We will continue to do our utmost now and in the future to make sure that these practices are permanently curtailed on our tours.”

And that’s the thing: There are plenty of companies Americans enjoy disliking, but most of them have some kind of lobby and political clout to help shrug off that animus. But just about anyone who’s bought a concert ticket has at some point cursed Ticketmaster for some kind of perceived slight or insult. And unlike banks, oil, health care or any of our favorite bugaboos, it’s hard to argue that ticket brokers perform some crucial function in our economy, so we have to put up with it.

Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff is one shrewd dude. But he’s going to have to be awfully persuasive to find people in Washington willing to back this one when it gets to Washington.

It’s conceivable that iLike, led by brothers Hadi and Ali Partovi, is simultaneously pursuing funding options. But my understanding is that much like competitive music service iMeem, which is also on the block, iLike’s executives and investors are worried about keeping the company afloat as a standalone entity. Delivering free music on the Web has so far proven to be a high-cost, low-revenue endeavor, and that’s a difficult path to choose in this environment.

My sources couldn’t tell me what sale price iLike is hoping to get. It has raised about $16 million in two years. Most of that came from Ticketmaster (TKTM), which has now split off from Barry Diller’s IAC and trades as standalone company. A smaller slug came from Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group, which has taken a stab at other Web music start-ups, including a recent investment in Project Playlist. I’ve asked the Partovis and their PR rep for comment, but haven’t heard back.

Ticketmaster’s existing ownership makes it an obvious buyer. The company also has a relationship with RealNetworks (RNWK), which began powering a free music service for iLike this summer. And while I don’t have confirmation that the two companies have actually talked, the third very obvious buyer would be Facebook, which is responsible for the company’s success to date.

iLike originally started out as a music discovery service that promoted the homegrown music found on Garageband.com, another Partovi brother music start-up. But it really hit its stride with the launch of Facebook’s open developer platform in the spring of 2007. Since then it’s become one Facebook’s most popular apps, with more than 5.4 million active monthly users.

That hasn’t translated into huge revenue: The company hasn’t expended much effort trying to sell advertising on Facebook, which is a challenging environment to begin with. And while it generates referral fees when it sends concertgoers to Ticketmaster, those sales haven’t been significant enough to register on the company’s SEC filings so far.

Now Facebook is looking to create its own music service, and it’s conceivable that iLike could step in and take on that role for the company. One big problem: Facebook wants to provide users with a service that gives them the ability to listen to songs in their entirety, à la MySpace Music. But Facebook doesn’t actually have licenses with the big labels that allow it do that. Instead, it provides users with 30-second clips.

All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher visited with Hadi Partovi this summer; below the two talk about iLike’s history and ambitions.