ClayManiacs

    BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Firm, Hollywood's
most innovative management company, announced today it is launching a new
artist-friendly music company, with records to be distributed by EMI Music
in the U.S. and licensed for territories around the globe.
    The new music company will take the unprecedented step of splitting all
profits with the artists signed to the venture rather than the traditional
royalty structure. Multi-platinum recording artist and actress Mandy Moore
and rock group Army of Anyone, featuring former members of Filter and Stone
Temple Pilots, are the first to sign to the company.
    Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of The Firm and architect of the new music venture,
said, "This is an opportunity for The Firm to create a new music business
model that shifts power back to the artists and the focus back to the music
itself. While many in the music industry are pessimistic about the future,
we think the possibilities are limitless if we can find fresh ways to
support and nurture great art and the talent that creates it."
"The innovative work we have done with David Munns, Alain Levy and
their team at EMI on Korn, Ice Cube, 30 Seconds to Mars and others has been
lighting the way. They are forward thinkers whose artist-oriented approach
is empowering the creative community. Instead of whining about the
difficulties plaguing today's music business, they are planning for the
future," Kwatinetz added.
    The financial model created for the company is the latest in a series
of deals by The Firm that are reengineering entertainment industry
economics to strengthen common interests between artists and the companies
they work with.
    As a consequence of these deals, The Firm has been evolving into a
unique new kind of Hollywood company with the capacity not only to manage
the careers of film and music artists, but to produce, market and promote
their craft.
    A number of those groundbreaking deals have been supported by EMI
Music, the world's third largest recorded music company.
    "EMI is delighted to distribute The Firm's music company in the U.S.
and bring its artists to a global audience. The Firm's label roster will be
another strong American repertoire source for EMI worldwide," said David
Munns, Vice Chairman EMI Music worldwide. "Jeff shares my view that our
changing industry sometimes calls for breaking the mold and pursuing new
business models. As a result, we're already having success with the
groundbreaking deal we did with The Firm on Korn and we look forward to
this being another solid venture."
    Last year, The Firm engineered an innovative deal that put EMI and Live
Nation in partnership with the band Korn so that all parties benefit from
the rock group's overall success. Korn's first record under the agreement,
"See You on the Other Side," is fast approaching 2 million units sold
worldwide, and the band's touring numbers are exceeding expectations.
    In another recent deal with EMI, Firm client Ice Cube self-financed a
new album and The Firm handled such record company functions as A&R,
marketing, promotion and publicity for the newly created Lench Mob Records,
while EMI handled distribution. The album, "Laugh Now, Cry Later," debuted
top 5 in the U.S. three weeks ago.
    Mandy Moore said: "The current state of the industry challenges us to
conceive innovative approaches in music. It is, therefore, especially
exciting to be part of a venture in which artistic freedom is encouraged. I
am thrilled by the opportunity to join forces with The Firm, as well as
with those I've trusted throughout the years."
    Army of Anyone said: "We are so excited to be a part of the building of
a new business model. We have been looking for a way to regain some
artistic control, and we feel by partnering with The Firm, we are truly
betting on ourselves and our team. For the first time in our career, we are
in control of our own destiny."
    The Firm's music clients have excelled recently and currently are
responsible for 9 of the top 100 and 11 of the top 200 records on the
Billboard chart. Meanwhile, The Firm is aggressively signing new artists
including "American Idol" winner Taylor Hicks, and is successfully breaking
new acts including Flyleaf and 30 Seconds to Mars, who are signed to EMI's
Virgin Records.
    The new music company, which has not yet been named, will be housed
within the Firm's Beverly Hills management offices.

RHINO ENTERTAINMENT
May 6, 2006

BURBANK, CA -- Superstar Barry Manilow, who recently held the #1 album position on the charts, and Rhino Entertainment announce that "MANILOW: MUSIC AND PASSION" has just gone three-times platinum -- just one month after its release in late March. This represents the first triple-platinum DVD for Manilow.

"MANILOW: MUSIC AND PASSION" was the first title released under the new multi-year agreement with Rhino Entertainment, an industry leader in marketing and distribution of music and television on DVD, and STILETTO New Media. "MANILOW: MUSIC AND PASSION" had a street date of March 28. This two-disc DVD is priced at $24.99.

"This is a milestone for all of us and we are delighted that Barry's success transcends multiple platforms," Mark C. Grove, principal in STILETTO New Media, commented.

Legendary songwriter and performer Barry Manilow celebrated the 100th performance of his hit show, "MANILOW: MUSIC AND PASSION," at the Las Vegas Hilton, and PBS was there to capture all the excitement on stage and behind the scenes. Barry gives his audience the show of a lifetime, delivering favorites such as "Mandy," "Copacabana" and "I Write The Songs" in a high-energy party -- Vegas style! Plus, Barry sings songs from his new No. # 1 album "The Greatest Songs Of The Fifties," which has recently gone platinum, such as "Unchained Melody" and "Venus," as well as songs that have never been captured on film: "If I Can Dream," "The Best Seat In The House," "See The Show Again," "Do You Know Who's Livin' Next Door?," "Come Monday" and "Here's To Las Vegas."

Shot in high-definition, "MANILOW: MUSIC AND PASSION" is an exciting, multi-faceted production that features contemporary hi-tech music and effects mixed with the classic entertainment values of Las Vegas legends such as Sinatra, Presley, Davis and Martin. "MANILOW: MUSIC AND PASSION" is the latest masterpiece from the Showman of our Generation that has people from every generation on their feet, dancing and clapping along, as only he can do. Special features include exclusive, never-before-seen interviews with Barry.

The cameras never stopped rolling. They followed Barry everywhere -- before the show and after the show. This intimate look at Barry's work has been compiled into two compelling featurettes that not only give the fans an inside look at what goes into producing his live Vegas show and the PBS Special, but also the outtakes during the shoot -- like when Barry lost his voice singing "Unchained Melody" and didn't know if he could go on with the show.

Barry Manilow is the #1 Adult Contemporary Artist of all time. He has sold 75 million albums, has performed over 3000 concerts and has had 28 platinum records. Barry is a Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award winner, as well as an Academy Award nominee.

Reality TV now the vehicle of choice for many aspiring singers

BY RAFER GUZMÁN
Newsday Staff Writer
July 5, 2006

When Ryan Star heard he was chosen to be one of 15 contestants on the CBS show "Rock Star: Supernova," he weighed his options. Continue to struggle as an unsigned singer-songwriter? Or showcase his talents on a twice-weekly network television series in front of millions of viewers?

He turned down the series.

"I was like, 'I don't have time for that,'" Star recalls. "I was in the middle of getting live recordings for my next show and talking to distributors. I was doing my work, and that was more important to me."

Star, a 28-year-old Dix Hills native born Ryan Stahr, eventually reconsidered; you'll see him tonight when "Rock Star: Supernova" makes its premiere at 8 p.m. on WCBS/2. But Star's clear-headed, career-oriented attitude points to a shift in the way everyone - from contestants to viewers to the music industry - is approaching reality TV. Gone are the days when Fox's "American Idol" was considered a fleeting fad. These days, television is beating the music industry at its own game, by finding talent, creating stars and, most importantly, selling records.

"As an artist, it's harder and harder to get your music out there," says Tamara Conniff, executive editor of Billboard. Radio stations are consolidating, record labels are merging and the music business generally has less money to spend on massive publicity campaigns, she says. "The vehicles with which to present artists to the consumer is what's at issue. And television is a great vehicle to do that."

The first season of "Rock Star," which followed the '80s-era band INXS as it searched for a new singer, became a modest hit last year. Despite a slow start, the series scored high among audiences in the coveted 18-to-49 range and finished the season with 7.9 million viewers. With winning singer J.D. Fortune, a re-invigorated INXS released the album "Switch" (Epic), its first in eight years, and scored a hit single with "Pretty Vegas." Suddenly, the once-moribund band was back in business and touring the world.

(snip)

Despite its successes, reality television still hasn't launched what the music business would call a "career artist," though the first "American Idol" winner, Kelly Clarkson, continues to release hit singles and albums.

Subsequent winners and top finishers such as Clay Aiken have yet to prove their longevity. And while INXS built on its former popularity to help sell a respectable 362,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, Supernova is essentially an unknown quantity.

Star says he'll take his chances. "This is 2006. Labels don't know what they're doing anymore, they can't break artists; radio's all over the place," he says. "TV is the new label. They know how to get you in front of people. And that's all anyone wants to do."

Elton Curating Fashion Rocks, Busy With New CD
by Jonathan Cohen, NY
July 6, 2006

Elton John will curate and perform at the third Fashion Rocks concert, to be held Sept. 7 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event will air the following evening on CBS. Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit John's own AIDS foundation.

The artist has selected a host of superstar artists to join him at the show, including Beyonce, Christina Aguilera, Kanye West, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Nelly Furtado, Jamie Foxx, the Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi, Scissor Sisters, Rihanna, the Pussycat Dolls and Daddy Yankee.

The evening's fashion segments will produced by KCD, known for its work with Versace and Calvin Klein.

John is currently hard at work on his next studio album, "The Captain and the Kid," and debuted a song from the project, "The Bridge," last week at his annual White Tie & Tiara Ball in England. Details of the album, due late this year, were first revealed by John to Billboard last September.

The artist will resume his ongoing Red Piano show at Las Vegas' Caesar Palace on Tuesday (July 11). He also appears on "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'," the first single from the upcoming Scissor Sisters album "Ta-Dah," due Sept. 26 via Universal Motown.

By RYAN UNDERWOOD
Staff Writer
Published: Saturday, 07/08/06

Music City lived up to its name as a midyear sales report issued Friday showed double-digit percentage gains for country and Christian albums.

The news was made all the sweeter for Nashville's music industry as the same set of Nielsen SoundScan numbers showed an industry-wide drop in album sales of 4.2 percent for the first six months of 2006.

Country album sales spiked 17.7 percent compared with the first half of 2005, while album sales in the Christian and gospel category increased by 11.6 percent. Both genres of music claim Nashville as their home.

And among the Top 10 selling albums across all formats, three were in the country category: Rascal Flatts' Me and My Gang; Carrie Underwood's Some Hearts; and the Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way.

"Obviously, this has been a very strong year so far for country," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst for Billboard magazine. "But you've got three albums in particular carrying the freight for the rest of the genre."

And on two of those albums, Mayfield said, you have to look at the circumstances surrounding them.

"You look at the Dixie Chicks and they sort of fall out of the genre now — in part by choice," he said. In addition to that, country has been able to ride the coattails of Carrie Underwood's "American Idol" popularity.

"You have to count that. If she was not the American Idol, she would not have sold as much," he said. "That's not to diminish at all what she's done because none of the other American Idol winners' albums have sold this much."

In the case of Rascal Flatts, which had the second-best album sales according to the data released Friday, that group has been gaining significant attention in the pop world on top of its appeal with country audiences.

They make music that appeals to the 25- to 54-year-old females who listen to country radio, and their music also works well with young women under 25, which is where the "passion buyers" are, said Randy Goodman, president of Nashville-based Lyric Street Records, the trio's record label.

Other top sellers included the surprise-hit soundtrack to the Disney made-for-TV movie "High School Musical," which finished No. 1 in midyear sales, and British rocker James Blunt's album, Back to Bedlam, which landed at No. 3.

Digital album sales climbed 126 percent for the first half of this year, while sales of single tracks increased 77 percent, according to the report. Included among the top digital album sellers were the Dixie Chicks and Rascal Flatts, as well as the album St. Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley, a work fueled largely by word-of-mouth over the Internet.

In the Christian and gospel genre, Alan Jackson's Precious Memories album accounted for a sizable piece of the format's gains, said John Styll, president of the Nashville-based Gospel Music Association.

"Having Alan Jackson in there was a nice addition," he said, adding that the genre still would have gained more than 6 percent without that album. "Overall, I think these numbers bode well for the year."

The midyear report was a good sign for Music Row after a down 2005.

For the 12 months of 2005, Christian and gospel sales dropped 8.1 percent and country declined 3.3 percent. Album sales overall fell 7.2 percent last year.

While Friday's midyear report puts both genres on a positive trajectory to end 2006 in the black, Lon Helton, Nashville bureau chief of the trade publication Radio & Records, said it's hard to predict from these numbers how the rest of the year will shake out because you don't know what else is in the pipeline.

"I think the statistic here that's most encouraging for country music is not the percentage gains, but the fact that three of the Top 10 selling albums were in country," Helton said.

Billboard's Mayfield said the numbers seem to be pointing to a good 2006 for both formats, however.

"It would take something pretty disastrous to affect the second half of the year," he said.

By Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writer
July 8, 2006

The music industry received mixed news Friday: Declines in sales leveled off thanks to an increase in digital downloads, but consumers bought fewer new releases this year.

Sales of music albums in the U.S. declined by 4.2% in the first half of the year, to 270.6 million units, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to data released by Nielsen SoundScan.

The drop, however, was mostly offset by a 77% increase in digital sales of music tracks. The 280.9 million digital singles sold in the first six months of this year — the equivalent of 28 million albums — brings the effective number of albums sold to 298.7 million units, a 0.2% increase over last year.

"I think it might be too early to say this is good news," said Geoff Mayfield, a senior analyst at Billboard magazine. "But it definitely means that we can be optimistic about the digital marketplace."

The data also indicated that few musical blockbusters had captured the public's attention this year. The biggest seller so far — the "High School Musical" soundtrack — sold 2.6 million copies. In comparison, 50 Cent's "Massacre," the bestseller of the same period last year, had sold more than 4 million copies by the end of June.

In fact, only 22% of the albums sold this year were released in 2006. Last year, 39% of the first six months of sales were new releases.

Albums by Rascal Flatts, James Blunt, Mary J. Blige and Carrie Underwood are this year's other top-five sellers.

"When you make vast libraries of songs available online, people begin to buy forgotten albums," said analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media Inc. "People are buying older songs because they can. They're beginning to buy what they want, instead of what is just available in stores."

Reflecting the paucity of hits, sales in two of music's most popular genres — R&B and rap — were down a combined 20%, to about 83 million albums. Alternately, sales of country and Christian/gospel albums increased by a combined 15%.

The battle for market share among the four companies that dominate music sales remained relatively static. Warner Music Group had the biggest gain, increasing its share of album sales in the U.S. by 2.6 percentage points to 19.3%. EMI Group, which is locked in an acquisition battle with Warner Music, lost 0.4 of a percentage point of its market share, falling to 10%. Universal Music Group remained dominant, selling more than 1 in 3 current albums purchased in the U.S. The half-year's biggest loser was Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which lost 1.5 percentage points, falling to 26.3%.

Despite continued problems with music piracy and illegal peer-to-peer computer networks, overall sales of albums, singles, music videos and digital music totaled 564 million units, a 23% increase over the same six-month period last year.

U.S. Album Sales
Album (artist)..............Year to date(in millions)

High School Musical (various)..........2.62
Me and My Gang (Rascal Flatts).........2.00
Back to Bedlam (James Blunt)...........1.66
Breakthrough(Mary J. Blige)............1.50
Some Hearts(Carrie Underwood)..........1.48
Now 21 (various).......................1.36
King (T.I.)............................1.33
Taking the Long Way (Dixie Chicks).....1.27
Amore (Andrea Bocelli).................1.13

All the Right Reasons (Nickelback).....1.07

Industry total
Total album sales.....Change 
(in millions).........from 2005
270.6.................-4.2%

Digital album sales...Change 
(in millions).........from 2005
14.7..................+126%

Source: Nielsen SoundScan

Monday, Jul 10, 2006

Manager Simon Renshaw and his artist roster - Dixie Chicks, Clay Aiken, Miranda Lambert, Bo Bice and Anastacia - are affiliated with Front Line Management, Pollstar has learned.

Details were scarce at press time, but informed sources confirmed that Renshaw is involved with the management company run by Irving Azoff and Howard Kaufman.

SO this is an evening rush?

On a recent Monday, six people — soon enough four, then two — were browsing the bins of compact discs at Norman’s Sound and Vision, a music store on Cooper Square in Manhattan, around 6 p.m., a time that once constituted the daily rush hour. A decade ago, the number of shoppers might have been 20 or 30, said Norman Isaacs, the owner. Six people? He would have had that many working in the store.

“I used to make more in a day than I probably make in a week now,” said the shaven-headed Mr. Isaacs, 59, whose largely empty aisles brimming with punk, jazz, Latin music, and lots and lots of classic rock have left him, many afternoons, looking like a rock ’n’ roll version of the Maytag repairman. Just as troubling to Mr. Isaacs is the age of his clientele.

“It’s much grayer,” he said mournfully.

The neighborhood record store was once a clubhouse for teenagers, a place to escape parents, burn allowances and absorb the latest trends in fashion as well as music. But these days it is fast becoming a temple of nostalgia for shoppers old enough to remember “Frampton Comes Alive!’’

In the era of iTunes and MySpace, the customer base that still thinks of recorded music as a physical commodity (that is, a CD), as opposed to a digital file to be downloaded, is shrinking and aging, further imperiling record stores already under pressure from mass-market discounters like Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

The bite that downloading has taken out of CD sales is well known — the compact disc market fell about 25 percent between 1999 and 2005, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade organization. What that precipitous drop indicated by the figures doesn’t reveal is that this trend is turning many record stores into haunts for the gray-ponytail set. This is especially true of big-city stores that stock a wider range of music than the blockbuster acts.

“We don’t see the kids anymore,” said Thom Spennato, who owns Sound Track, a cozy store on busy Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “That 12-to-15-year-old market, that’s what’s missing the last couple of years.”

Without that generation of buyers, the future looks bleak. “My landlord asked me if I wanted another 10-year lease, and I said no,” Mr. Spennato said. “I have four years left, then I’m out.”

Since late 2003, about 900 independent record stores have closed nationwide, leaving about 2,700, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a marketing research company in Studio City, Calif. In 2004, Tower Records, one of the nation’s largest chains, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Greta Perr, an owner of Future Legends, a new and used CD store on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, said that young people never really came back to her store after the Napster file-sharing upheaval of the late 90’s; she has responded by filling her windows with artists like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. “People come in and say: ‘I remember when I was 20, Steve Miller’s second record came out. Can I get that?’ ” she said.

Industry statistics bear out the graying of the CD-buying public. Purchases by shoppers between ages 15 and 19 represented 12 percent of recorded music in 2005, a decline from about 17 percent in 1996, according to the Recording Industry Association. Purchases by those 20 to 24 represented less than 13 percent in 2005, down from about 15 percent. Over the same period, the share of recorded music bought by adults over 45 rose to 25.5 percent, from 15 percent.

(The figures include CD’s and downloaded songs, with CD’s still an overwhelming share of the market in recorded music, 87 percent, in 2005.)

The dominance of older buyers is especially evident at smaller independent stores in metropolitan areas, where younger consumers tend to be more tech-oriented and older music fans tend to be more esoteric in their tastes, said Russ Crupnick, an analyst with the NPD Group, a market research firm.

At Norman’s, which is 15 years old and just around the corner from New York’s epicenter of punk, St. Marks Place, shoppers with nose rings and dewy cheeks are not unknown. But they may only be looking to use the automatic teller machine. A pair of teenagers — he with ink-black dyed hair, and she in ragged camouflage shorts — wandered in one evening recently and promptly froze in the doorway, stopped in their tracks by an Isaac Hayes cut from the 70’s.

They had the confused looks of would-be congregants who had stumbled into a church of the wrong denomination; they quickly shuffled off. Most of Norman’s other customers were old enough to remember eight-track tapes. Steven Russo, 53, for instance, was looking for jazz CD’s. Mr. Russo, a high school teacher in Valley Stream, N.Y., said that he values the store for its sense of camaraderie among cognoscenti as much as its selection. “It’s the ability of people to talk to people about the music, to talk to personnel who are knowledgeable,” he said.

Richard Antone, a freelance writer from Newark whose hair was flecked with silver curls, said his weekly trip to the store is a visual experience as well as an auditory one. “I remember how people admired the artwork on an album like ‘Electric Ladyland’ or ‘Sgt. Pepper’ as much as the music,” he said.

The lost generation of young shoppers — for whom a CD is a silvery disc on which you burn your own songs and then label with a black marker — will probably spell doom for Norman’s within the next five years, said Mr. Isaacs, the owner. Several of his downtown competitors have already disappeared, he said.

Some independent owners are resisting the demographic challenges. Eric Levin, 36, who owns three Criminal Records stores in Atlanta and oversees a trade group called the Alliance of Independent Media Stores, representing 30 shops nationally, said that businesses losing young customers are “dinosaurs” that have done nothing to cater to the new generation. Around the country, he said, shops like Grimey’s in Nashville, Shake It Records in Cincinnati and Other Music in New York are hanging on to young customers by evolving into one-stop hipster emporiums. Besides selling obscure CD’s and even vinyl records, many have diversified into comic books, Japanese robot toys and clothing. Some have opened adjoining nightclubs or, in Mr. Levin’s case, coffee shops.

“Kids don’t have to go to the record store like earlier generations,” Mr. Levin said. “You have to make them want to. You have to make it an event.”

But diversification is not always an option for smaller stores with little extra space, like Norman’s. Mr. Isaacs’s continued survival is due in part to a side business he runs selling used CD’s on Amazon and eBay. He buys them from walk-in customers who are often dumping entire collections.

Unlike the threatened independent bookstore, with its tattered rugs, dusty shelves and shedding cats, indie record stores in danger of disappearing do not inspire much hand-wringing, perhaps because they are not as celebrated in popular imagination as the quaint bookshop. (Record geeks can claim only “High Fidelity,’’ the book and movie, as a nostalgic touchstone.)

Still, the passing of such places would be mourned.

Danny Fields, the Ramones’ first manager, points out that visiting Bleecker Bob’s on West Third Street in the late 70’s was “like experiencing the New York music scene” in miniature — it was a cultural locus, a trading post for all the latest punk trends. “Dropping into Bleecker Bob’s was like dropping into CBGB’s,” he said. (You can still drop into Bleecker Bob’s.)

Dave Marsh, the rock critic and author of books on popular music, noted that rockers like Jonathan Richman and Iggy Pop honed their edgy musical tastes working as record store clerks.

“It’s part of the transmission of music,” said Mr. Marsh, who recalls being turned on to cult bands like the Fugs and the Mothers of Invention by the clerks at his local record store in his hometown, Waterford, Mich. “It seems like you can’t have a neighborhood without them.”

Madonna is in the midst of a sold-out North American trek that may end up being the top-grossing tour ever by a female artist. But this on-the-road success is not carrying over to American radio airwaves. In the United States, the three singles from Madonna's latest Warner Bros. album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," have not been embraced by mainstream top 40 radio.

"Hung Up" got middling airplay, "Sorry" was barely played, and "Get Together" has been all but ignored by pop stations. Naturally, this state of affairs has left executives at her Warner Bros. label -- and more than a few fans -- wondering, what gives?

More than 3,300 fans have signed an appeal at petitiononline.com. The "End the Madonna on U.S. Radio Boycott" petition is addressed to Clear Channel Communications CEO Mark P. Mays. Message boards at Entertainment Weekly and VH1, among others, are rife with everything from support for Madonna to conspiracy theories about why she can't crack the radio dial.

Warner Bros. was aware that the songs on "Confessions" could present challenges at mainstream top 40 radio, acknowledges Tom Biery, senior VP of promotions at Warner Bros. "Top 40 radio is so hip-hop-driven," he says. "We were coming in with a global pop star who made a dance record."

Guy Zapoleon, president of radio consulting firm Zapoleon Media Strategies, calls it an "interesting dilemma for the woman who certainly held the 'Queen of Pop' title for almost 15 years." Madonna's ability to redefine herself is well-documented, and Zapoleon says that this has helped her keep a "leading edge" to the new group of pop music fans that comes along every three to five years.

 
But this time, Madonna may have turned left while the pop climate was turning right. Other pop chameleons such as Nelly Furtado and Mariah Carey reinvented themselves with recent rhythmic/hip-hop-leaning singles. Madonna opted instead to return to her dance-pop roots.

According to Dom Theodore, regional VP of programming for Clear Channel and PD of top 40 WKQI Detroit, today's programmers consider each Madonna song on a case-by-case basis to determine if it fits mainstream top 40, adult top 40 or both. Or neither.

For Theodore, the sound of "Confessions on a Dance Floor" skews more retro-adult top 40 than mainstream top 40, while recent club tracks like Rihanna's "SOS" have "more hip-hop credibility." The Rihanna track may reference an early-'80s dance hit (Soft Cell's "Tainted Love") but Theodore believes it does not have the same "retro '70s feel" as the Madonna tracks.

Madonna has had no such airplay problems internationally. Since its release last November, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" has topped the charts in 29 countries and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, according to Warner Bros. For the week ending July 15, the album's third single, "Get Together," had a radio audience of fewer than 1 million listeners in the United States (aggregate, based on market size and station share). Conversely, in the United Kingdom, where all three singles have been A-listed by BBC Radio 1, the single had 38.4 million listeners.

Except for dance radio outlets like KNGY San Francisco, KNRJ Phoenix and KNHC Seattle, Madonna is missing from the terrestrial radio landscape in the United States. John Peake, PD at KNGY, believes that mainstream top 40 radio programmers have completely missed the boat on this project. "When 'Hung Up' didn't get instant callout, the stations gave up on it," he says. "If they had given it more time, the callout would've come home."

"Confessions" has been healthy at retail: It has moved 1.5 million copies, already double that of its predecessor, 2003's "American Life," which has sold 666,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. File-sharing stats from BigChampagne and support from MTV's "TRL" are also solid. But, Biery says, "Radio still looks at callout research."

As Warner Bros. gears up for the release of the album's fourth single, "Jump," Biery remains optimistic, especially since the song was heard in TV and radio spots for the film "The Devil Wears Prada." The label will take a different strategy with this single, Biery says. "We'll begin with AC and hot AC formats," he notes. "Our goal is to have a true hit record with callout and then bring it back to the mainstream top 40 world."

LOS ANGELES, July 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Universal Music Publishing Group
(UMPG) announced today the signing of legendary, Academy Award winning
composer, Carole Bayer Sager, to an exclusive, worldwide administration
agreement. Sager was previously signed to Warner Chappell.
    Carole Bayer Sager has enjoyed one of the longest hit streaks in
contemporary pop, with her chart success spanning across several decades.
Carole Bayer Sager's lyrics can be found in scores of the most popular and
successful songs for more than 25 years. From the universal lyrics of the
Grammy winning, "That's What Friends Are For," the personal message of
"Don't Cry Out Loud," the fun Academy Awarding-winning, "Arthur's Theme,"
to the emotional message of "On My Own" and the spiritual message of the
Golden Globe winning and Oscar-nominated song "The Prayer," Carole's lyrics
have become part of the American vocabulary and her songs have become
standards. Honors for her work include an Academy Award (seven
nominations), A Grammy (nine nominations), two Golden Globe Awards (seven
nominations), A Tony award (2 nominations), an induction into the
Songwriters Hall of Fame, the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Whitney Houston Foundation, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
    David Renzer, Chairman & CEO, Universal Music Publishing Group said of
the signing, "Carole Bayer Sager is one of the true modern legends of the
songwriting community. We at UMPG are deeply honored to have entered into
this new deal and are already enjoying working closely with Carole as she
continues to write more amazing songs and future hits."
    Born in New York City, Carole began writing poems as a child and began
songwriting while still a student at the High School of Music and Art. In
1966, still in her teens, Carole co-wrote her first No.1 hit, "A Groovy
Kind of Love," for the English group The Mindbenders, popularizing a new
word in the process. This song which Phil Collins reintroduced to listeners
23 years later, again climbed to No. 1, this time becoming the most
performed radio hit of 1990. Neil Diamond also included it on his 1993
album, "Up On The Roof."
    "That's What Friends Are For" recorded by Stevie Wonder, Elton John,
Dionne Warwick and Gladys Knight, co-written with Burt Bacharach, Carole's
former writing partner/husband, was the No. 1 song of 1986 and won the
Grammy Award for "Song of the Year." Carole and Burt donated their
publishing moneys from the song to the American Foundation for AIDS
Research. The song has continued to heighten awareness of this critical
disease as well as raising over two million dollars for research and care.
    That same year, "On My Own," (recorded by Patti LaBelle and Michael
McDonald) was not only a Grammy nominee, but also the No. 1 song on three
different Billboard chart lists simultaneously. There had never been a time
when two songwriter-producers topped two lists with two different No. 1
songs in the same year. Carole and Burt shattered that mark and more.
"That's What Friends Are For," and "On My Own" topped three lists. Ten
years later in 1996 "On My Own" topped the country charts when Reba
McEntire with Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride and Linda Davis re-recorded
it and received a Grammy nomination for best Country Collaborations With
Vocals.
    Bayer Sager has always credited Carole King with having a major impact
on her career and was thrilled to have recently worked with her. King
performed "Anyone At All," co-written with King for the Nora Ephrom film
"You've Got Mail." The three also collaborated on "My One True Friend"
performed by Bette Midler for Universal's film "One True Thing" with Meryl
Streep. Most importantly to Bayer Sager, she has gotten the opportunity to
co-write along with King for King's long-awaited forthcoming LP.
    Her collaborations with Marvin Hamlisch resulted in two Oscar
nominations, "Looking Through The Eyes Of Love" from "Ice Castles" and
"Nobody Does It Better" from "The Spy Who Loved Me." Lyrics which Carole
co-wrote with Hamlisch and Neil Simon can be heard in the Tony Award
winning musical, "They're Playing Our Song." She also wrote songs for Bob
Fosses' Broadway musicals, "All That Jazz" and "Dancin."
    Her creative songwriting collaborations in 1994 and 1995 earned her
back to back Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for "Look What Love Has
Done" from the feature film, "Junior and "The Day I Fall In Love" from the
film "Beethoven." Two of her songs were nominated for Grammy's in 1996 --
"When You Love Someone" recorded by James Ingram and Anita Baker and
previously mentioned, "On My Own." Other Bayer Sager collaborators have
included Albert Hammond, Bette Midler, James Ingram, Neil Diamond, Dave
Stewart, The M&M Girls, Rodney Jerkins and The Corrs' latest LP, Talk
Around Corners, which has sold over four million copies.
    Most recently, Carole's efforts have resulted in an Oscar nomination
and a Golden Globe Award for Celine Dion/Andrea Bocelli's duet of "The
Prayer" co-written with David Foster for the Warner Bros. Motion picture,
"The Quest For Camelot." "The Prayer" duet with Andrea Bocelli is featured
on Celine Dion's new Sony LP, These are Special Times and was performed by
them on Celine's CBS holiday TV special, the 41st Annual Grammy Awards and
the 67th Annual Academy Awards.
    Carole's songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as Barbara
Streisand, The Doobie Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson,
Dolly Parton, Robert Flack, Peabo Bryson, Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers,
Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Natalie Cole, Carly Simon, Leo Sayer,
Dionne Warwick, Phil Collins and even Carole herself. Her first album,
"Carole Bayer Sager," spawned a No. 1 international single "You're Moving
Out Today" and was a platinum LP in England, Germany, Japan and Australia.
Two more albums followed with another hit single, "Stronger Than Before"
from the Burt Bacharach produced album, "Sometimes Late At Night."
    About Universal Music Publishing Group
    With 47 offices in 41 countries worldwide, Universal Music Publishing
Group (UMPG) is part of the Universal Music Group and one of the industry's
largest global music publishing operations. Owning or administering more
than 1 million copyrights, UMPG's writers and catalogs include: U2, Elton
John, 50 Cent, Dave Grohl, Prince, Diana Krall, Ludacris, Godsmack, Ice
Cube, Vanessa Carlton, Mary J. Blige, The Corrs, Eve, Musiq, Jill Scott,
Brian McKnight, No Doubt, Blink-182, 3 Doors Down, Beastie Boys, Anastacia,
Fatboy Slim, DMX, Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Paul Simon, the catalog of
Henry Mancini, among many others.

While digital track sales continue to grow (much to the delight of the labels) the decline of the CD is accelerating to the chagrin of brick-and-mortar merchants.

For the 26 weeks ended July 2, unit sales of digital tracks outpaced albums—physical and digital—by 3.8%, with track transactions totaling nearly 281 million units versus album sales of 270.6 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Overall, U.S. sales for the first half were up 23.7% to 564 million units, versus the 456 million units tallied in the first half of 2005.

Digital tracks are the primary reason for cheer, leaping 77% from 158.8 million transactions in the first half of 2005. But album sales are down 4.2% from the 282.6 million units the U.S. industry garnered in the first half of 2005. The rate of decline for the half increased from the 3.3% drop in album sales for this year's first quarter.

The album sales decline can be attributed to CD albums, which were down about 19 million units, a 7% dip that was only partially offset by the 126.4% growth of digital-album transactions to 14.7 million units.

Universal Music Group widened its U.S. market-share lead over Sony BMG Music Entertainment even though its share was down slightly to 31.7% from the 32% it had in the first half of 2005.

UMG, including titles handled by Universal Music Group Distribution and Fontana, also landed at No. 1 for R&B, rap, Latin and alternative rock albums as well as current albums.

At midyear, the UMGD-distributed Buena Vista Music Group was riding high with the two biggest sellers: the "High School Musical" soundtrack with 2.6 million copies scanned, and Rascal Flatts' "Me and My Gang" with almost 2 million.

In the year's first half, 16 albums scanned more than 1 million units versus 17 last year. So far three downloaded songs have passed the million mark. Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" leads the way with 1.5 million scans, followed by Sean Paul's "Temperature" with 1.2 million units and Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" with 1 million.

UMGD was tops in digital tracks, capturing a 32.6% share, up from the 32.1% the company posted in the first half of 2005. Second-ranked Sony BMG's digital track share dropped to 25.2% from 27.8%. WEA's share grew to 20.6%, up from 16.4% for the half.

EMI Music Marketing had a slight uptick in digital-track market share, going to 7.8% from 7.6% in the first half of 2005. The independent sector saw its collective market share drop to 13.7% from 16.1%.

Other highlights from Nielsen SoundScan's midyear results:

• Country was the fastest-growing genre with a 17.7% jump in album sales. Other gainers: Christian/gospel (up 11.6%), Latin (7.9%) and soundtracks (12.6%). Classical, new age and metal also enjoyed sales gains.

• R&B suffered the biggest genre decline, a 22.4% drop to 53.8 million units. Alternative was down 9 million units to 50.9 million copies.

• Sony BMG was No. 2 to UMG in the album market with a 26.3% share, or 71 million units, down from 27.8%, or 78.5 million units. Still, Sony BMG was the top album distributor in country, classical, hard rock and gospel and on the Heatseekers chart.

• Warner Music Group was the only major to gain market share in the first half, growing to a 19.3% share from 16.7%. SoundScan credited WMG with all of Ryko Distribution's sales for the half even though WMG did not acquire the indie distributor until the end of May. If only Ryko's scans for June are included, WMG still shows an 18.8% share.

• The independent sector—excluding the major-owned indie distributors RED, Caroline, Fontana, Ryko and Alternative Distribution Alliance—tallied a 12.8% share of the albums market in the first half of the year. The fourth major, EMI, stood at 10%.

• Nontraditional retail outlets such as CD sales on the Internet, album sales at concerts and mail-order houses accounted for 11% of total album sales, the first time such outlets reached double figures. Mass merchants were slightly off pace, while chain stores and independent accounts continued to steadily lose market share.

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Bob Dylan has teamed with Apple's iTunes Music Store to offer fans who pre-order his new album through the retailer first crack at tickets for shows on his fall tour.

"Modern Times," his first release in almost five years, is due August 29 via Columbia. Pre-order participants will receive a ticket presale code the following day, giving them a week-plus jump on the September 9 general public onsale. Tour dates have yet to be announced.

The iTunes version of "Modern Times" will feature five bonus Dylan videos: "Cold Irons Bound" (shot during the filming of the feature "Masked & Anonymous"), "Blood in My Eyes," "Things Have Changed," "Love Sick" (from the 1998 Grammys) and "Jokerman."

In addition, Apple has created the mammoth Dylan digital boxed set "The Collection," featuring every song from his studio albums as well as 42 rarities and an exclusive digital booklet. The box will sell for $199 and will also be available August 29.

Dylan will begin his third annual summer tour of U.S. minor league baseball stadiums Saturday in Comstock Park, Mich.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (Aug. 7) - A sluggish release schedule during the past three months has led to a major crash in album sales, according to data released during the annual convention of music retailers.

From May to July, album sales plummeted 10% from the year-ago period, executives at tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan told attendees at the National Assn. of Music Retailers confab Friday.

Only seven albums debuted with sales of more than 200,000 units, compared with 14 titles that performed at that level during the same period in 2005.

"There was definitely something going on with releases during this time period," said Chris Muratore, director of retail relations and research services for Nielsen Entertainment. "The top of the chart is really hurting."

Two weeks ago, Nielsen SoundScan reported the lowest week for total album sales (8.9 million) since January 1994 and the second-worst total since the firm began tracking sales in 1991. By contrast, album sales declined just 1.7% during the first four months of this year.

This year's biggest debut was metal band Tool's "10,000 Days," which bowed in May with 563,000 units sold. Last year's top debut, English rock band Coldplay 's "X&Y," entered with 737,000 units in June.

Noting that 70% of album sales in 2005 were produced by albums released before the fourth quarter, Nielsen Music president Rob Sisco added, "The release schedule seems to be fairly backloaded this year."

Product glut continues apace, with current figures indicating that the music industry is well on the way to a record-busting release year. Last year, an all-time high of 60,000 titles were issued in the United States. So far in 2006, nearly 37,000 titles have been released. That number includes 13,000 albums released solely in digital form.

A small number of releases continue to drive the vast majority of sales. In 2005, just 1% of the released titles -- 700 releases -- accounted for 80% of total sales, while 86% of the albums sold fewer than 1,000 units. A mere 100 titles made up 43% of the business.

Nonetheless, digital sales continue to be the major growth segment of the business. Sales of all digital albums to date this year already have surpassed the 16.2 million-unit total for all of 2005.

For the same period, sales of digital tracks are up 75% compared with 2005; an average of 45 million tracks have been sold every week this year. The all-time best-selling digital track, Daniel Powter's "American Idol"-driven hit "Bad Day," came out this year, moving 1.7 million units.

The rise of digital sales -- which has spiked dramatic growth in the nontraditional retail column, as sales at chains, independents and even mass merchants have declined -- comes as cold comfort to beleaguered brick-and-mortar retailers, who heard more less-than-encouraging statistics from Russ Crupnick, president of NPD Music, the music information division of research firm the NPD Group.

Leading off his presentation of a new consumer study based on input from 4,000 respondents, Crupnick pointed out that shoppers are "overstored, overstimulated and overoptioned."

He said, "Consumers are not becoming less loyal . . . (but) once I get into my car, I've got so many more choices."

Crupnick said that even though sales and shipments of physical product have declined, overall consumption of music -- through such media as satellite radio, online radio and burned discs -- actually was up 12% in 2005.

"There's an awful lot of sharing that's driving consumption," he said, "but the paid part of it is very small."

Shoppers are, in Crupnick's words, "committed, distracted and seeking core retail values" -- stock, selection, organization and ease of transaction. Price, he continued, isn't the issue, since 54% of the respondents said they considered music an excellent or very good value.

The chilling news presented in the NPD study is that consumers aren't that interested in exploring the digital music experience in a retail environment. Crupnick said nine out of 10 respondents were unaware of digital kiosks in brick-and-mortar stores, while a mere third of those surveyed expressed interest in buying in-store digital downloads. (However, 75% of online music purchasers were intrigued by the digital store concept.)

Among a variety of other bundled value-added options posed by researchers, consumers favored packaged discount coupons ("America loves a deal," Crupnick said) and DVDs with exclusive content. "If you can give them an interesting bundle, they're very interested in purchasing it," Crupnick said.

One option just didn't fly with shoppers: a vinyl LP with a download card for a digital version of the same title. Crupnick said, "Everybody under 25 said the same thing: Nobody knew what a turntable was."

Stars like Madonna, Alicia Keys and Sheryl Crow have lent covers to an AIDS research benefit compilation, due Sept. 12 via Sony BMG in the United States and Nettwerk in Canada.

"Between the Covers" rounds up famous remakes of songs like Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman" and Crow's "The First Cut Is the Deepest," with proceeds to benefit the T.J. Martell Foundation. Eric Clapton's "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," U2's "Everlasting Love," Tori Amos' "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the Dixie Chicks' "Landslide" are also included.

In conjunction, VH1, VH1 Classic and Logo will air a Sept. 12 half-hour special on the project, hosted by the Bacon Brothers, whose cover of the Beatles' "If I Needed Someone" can be found on the album.

Here is the track list for "Between the Covers":

"American Woman," Lenny Kravitz
"Everlasting Love," U2
 
"American Pie," Madonna
"Downtown Train," Rod Stewart
"Ol'55," Sarah McLachlan
"Smells Like Teen Spirit," Tori Amos
"Landslide," Dixie Chicks
"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," Eric Clapton
"Cold Cold Heart," Norah Jones
"This Woman's Work," Maxwell
"The First Cut Is the Deepest," Sheryl Crow
"If I Was Your Woman/Walk on By," Alicia Keys
"If I Needed Someone," the Bacon Brothers
"Dancing in the Streets," David Bowie and Mick Jagger

The competitors preparing to take the field today (Aug. 8) at the Rose Bowl had "American Idol" fame in mind, not football. Producers of Fox TV's talent show braced for an onslaught of would-be contestants as auditions for the sixth season were scheduled to begin. The search was to continue in six other cities through September.

The series has demonstrated its prowess as a starmaker by turning unknowns including Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood into overnight sensations. As the top-rated TV show last season, it has shattered expectations that it couldn't sustain its popularity.

"American Idol" also continues to deepen its pop culture imprint. Taylor Hicks, the latest winner, and finalists from last season are on tour, other contestants are pursuing solo careers and Lifetime is airing a movie about and starring past winner Fantasia this month.

On the new season that begins airing in January, "American Idol" will up the ante with a songwriting contest in which professionals and amateurs will have the chance to compose tunes for the finalists.

Upcoming auditions for singers will be held at the Alamodome, San Antonio, on Friday; Continental Air Arena, East Rutherford, N.J., Aug. 14; Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex, Birmingham, Ala., Aug. 21; FedExForum, Memphis, Tenn., Sep. 3; Target Center, Minneapolis, Sep. 8; Key Arena, Seattle, Sept. 19.

Those intending to try out were asked to register up to two days before an audition, but that offered no guarantee of being seen and heard on the big day. "If our time is running short the producers may walk around the venue to pick out people to audition ... based on performing ability, look, style, personality and other factors," according to guidelines posted on the show's Web site.

Passing the initial scrutiny is just the beginning, with follow-up auditions to winnow the pack even more. Those rejected in one city can jump to another and try again.

Elton John has set a Sept. 19 release date for his new studio album, "The Captain and the Kid." As first revealed here last September, the Rocket/Island set is a sequel to the artist's 1975 album "Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy." First single "The Bridge" will be available Aug. 22 from Apple's iTunes Music Store.

"It was [Sanctuary Group CEO Merck Mercuriadis'] idea, because he said, 'You're always saying how [songwriting partner] Bernie [Taupin] has become the Brown Dirt Cowboy' -- he lives on a ranch in Santa Ynez [Calif.] -- and I'm this guy who plays concert after concert, buying art, buying photographs, living a very lavish lifestyle," John told Billboard. "I've become Captain Fantastic."

John will premiere the material at an intimate Sept. 6 show at Rose Hall in New York. Members of John's Rocket club have first crack at tickets starting today (Aug. 11) via EltonJohn.com.

The artist will kick off a North American tour in support of "The Captain and the Kid" Sept. 15 in Sacramento, Calif.

Here is the track list for "The Captain and the Kid":

 
"Postcards From Richard Nixon"
"Just Like Noah's Ark"
"Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way (NYC)"
"Tinderbox"
"...And The House Fell Down"
"Blues Never Fade Away"
"The Bridge"
"I Must Have Lost It on the Wind"
"Old '67"
"The Captain and the Kid"

Written by Steve Andrews   
Friday, 11 August 2006
Singer Barry Manilow needs surgery for torn hip cartilage
Singer Barry Manilow's publicist says the star is going to have surgery to repair torn cartilage in both hips.

Barry Manilow, 63, will continue performing at the Las Vegas Hilton where he has a four-year contract, before having the operation in California at the end of the month, however, he will miss 16 concerts which will be rescheduled for next year.

"The doctors have promised I'll come back even better than before," Barry Manilow said. "I can't wait to hit the stage again," he added, and is scheduled to perform at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on 27 August.

Barry Manilow plans to return in mid-October for the launch of his new album, The Greatest Songs of the Sixties, which features cover versions of the Righteous Brothers's You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling and the Beatles' And I Love Her.

Earlier on this year the veteran singer topped the American album charts for the first time in nearly 29 years but he is best known for hits like Mandy, Copacabana and Looks Like We Made It.

August 11, 2006, 4:25 PM ET
Phyllis Stark, Nashville

In the mid-'90s, Joe Diffie earned the nickname "Ditty Diffie" thanks to a string of fun but lightweight hits that included "John Deere Green," "Pickup Man" and "Bigger Than the Beatles." Now such tunes are back in a big way on country radio, with Capitol Nashville artist Trace Adkins leading the charge.

Many of these uptempo songs have quickly zoomed up the airplay chart, indicating that they are striking a chord with listeners.

Adkins had a huge hit earlier this year with "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" (sample lyric: "Got it goin' on, like Donkey Kong/And ooh wee, shut my mouth, slap your grandma"). On its heels, Capitol released "Swing" from Adkins (sample lyric: "Swing batter batter/Swing batter batter/Swing batter batter/Swing").

"Swing" has been joined on the chart in recent months by such titles as Steve Holy's "Brand New Girlfriend" ("Playing kissy kissy, smoochy smoochy, talking mushy mushy about nothin' ") Jake Owen's "Yee Haw" ("If you know what I'm talkin' about y'all/How 'bout a yee haw") and Rascal Flatts' "Me and My Gang" ("We live to rock/We rock to live"), among others.

Adkins says such songs, which he calls "fluff," are "just for fun ... People just want to be able to take a mental time-out these days and just listen to something that will put a smile on their face and is not going to bring them down."

Radio programmers like WYRK Buffalo, N.Y., PD Wendy Lynn agree. "My listeners have had a more positive reaction to the upbeat and light message songs," she says. "With the current tone and state of the world right now, I tend to enjoy the lighter side myself."

But KIIM Tucson, Ariz., PD Buzz Jackson has some concerns about the ditties' lasting impact on the format. "Novelty songs sell records," Jackson says, "but they don't make long-term radio hits." He worries that such songs may be "preventing a better record from getting heard."

While plentiful right now, ditties have not entirely taken the place of more meaningful songs. Such titles as Big & Rich's "8th of November," Gary Allan's "Life Ain't Always Beautiful" and Rodney Atkins' "If You're Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)," all of which carry a message, are becoming hits.

It's that mix of "fluff" and substance that has always been a hallmark of the country format. Even Adkins has tried to balance his output, interspersing hit ditties like "Hot Mama," "Chrome" and "Rough & Ready" with more lyric-driven offerings like "Then They Do" and "Arlington."

Still, XM Satellite Radio PD Jon Anthony says programmers are still sometimes surprised by what the audience likes. "Many times programmers will make some rational decision on a song's 'IQ' value without putting it to their audience to find out," he says. "Sometimes it's just entertaining, and that's as simple as it needs to be to be a hit."

BARRY ISN'T 63 LIKE THE ARTICLE SAYS...HE TURNED 60 A FEW MONTHS AGO. I DON'T KNOW IF FRANCE IS SET 3 YEARS AHEAD OF AMERICA OR NOT!? IF SO, THAT's A MAJOR TIME ZONE DIFFERENCE.

NPR plans to do for music what it's already done for radio programs and podcasts. Ken Stern, executive vice president, said a "supersite" is planned to give one-stop access to National Public Radio's 35 years of music-related programming, concerts, and artist interviews gathered by member stations and network programmers. "The network and station program producers are recognized as important music presenters and curators for the public," he said.
Stern did not rule out the possibility some material would have a price tag, saying it's too early to know what shape the service will take. That's one reason to announce it well in advance of what he hopes will be a first quarter 2007 launch. "We want to encourage our listeners to contribute to discussions about this and we'll probably do message boards online to help that along," he said.
NPR Music Online is already a rich source of music audio and multimedia content. Stern said the supersite's features, "Will address the growing audience interest in on-demand and non-traditional settings to find music content and to maximize the enormous music assets of local and national radio." He said emerging and independent artists will be included. There will be forums and chats to encourage community-building around artists and music genres, he added.

So far none of the companies that sell music online have emerged as serious competitors to the iTunes Music Store of Apple Computer. But not one of them has an audience like MySpace, which millions of teenage and twentysomething music fans visit every day.

For the music industry, which worries about Apple’s dominance of the online market, a MySpace music store could present difficulties of a different sort.

MySpace, the online community site owned by the News Corporation, said on Friday that it would sell music through a partnership with Snocap, a technology company started by the creator of Napster, Shawn Fanning. When the online store opens this fall, it will allow bands and labels of any size to sell songs online for whatever price they want.

For the independent-label bands and unsigned artists who have found MySpace to be an effective and inexpensive way to spread the word about their recordings and concerts, a store on the site will be an important outlet.

With more than three million pages devoted to a variety of performers, from unknown garage bands to Bob Dylan, MySpace is already an important online venue for musicians.

“Instead of going to iTunes and searching for music, which happens once in a while,” said Tom Anderson, president and co-founder of MySpace, “you can see the band and buy their music.”

But for the four major labels, which must approve each retailer that sells digital versions of their music, the new store could represent a challenge.

The MySpace store would let labels set their own prices for songs, which they have complained that iTunes does not let them do. And all of the major labels have put their catalogs into Snocap’s database, which uses an audio fingerprinting technology to prevent people from selling songs they do not own.

The MySpace store will sell music in the MP3 format, however, which allows them to be played on the Apple iPod but does not offer any copy protection. So far, the labels have been unwilling to sell music online in any format that does not allow them to restrict how many copies can be made.

At least one of the major labels, EMI, is in talks with MySpace, according to one person with knowledge of the negotiations who declined to be identified, citing the confidentiality of the discussions.

Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, said: “We’re hopeful that once we start getting adoption from smaller bands and labels, the major labels will want to participate. We’ll be talking to them continually, as will Snocap.”

Others are more skeptical.

State Of Adult Contemporary
By Mike McVay



 
Adult Contemporary is again at a crossroads.  It seems to be at some sort of crossroads every couple of years.  This is largely due to the fact that ours is a mongrel format.  Adult Contemporary has very few “format exclusive” songs.  The thinking of some programmers is that a song cannot be an Adult Contemporary hit unless it has exposure in another format.  More accurately, the thinking should be that “unless it has exposure on another station” it might not be able to be an Adult Contemporary hit. There are even those who will argue that it is impossible to have a Top 5 hit at Adult Contemporary without it also having been a Top 5 hit in another format.

There are exceptions to that rule.  How does one justify the music of Mercy Me? Yes, it was also a hit at Christian AC, but none of their music has been mass appeal hits, other than at AC. And, they’re selling music. They are proof positive that AC can cross songs to other formats. We don’t always have to “eat at the kids table.”

There are even those who think it is impossible to have a Top 5 song without the support of one of the two big nightly syndicated national radio shows that exist in our format.  I would argue it is possible to have a Top 5 song, providing that the record labels “close out” the AC panel.  One daypart does not a hit make. Not having nighttime airplay does make it more difficult to get Top 5. It helps to be on The John Tesh Show or The Delilah Show, but those shows are at the end of the journey. Not the beginning. You cannot expect such shows to break new music.

The reality for Adult Contemporary, looking at it purely as a programming format and not as something that interests the record labels, is that the further an adult goes beyond the age of 40, the more important it is to them that they hear familiar music.  That is not to say they don’t want to hear new music, but rather it takes them a long time to become familiar with a new song.  Those songs they love the most tend to be the standards of all time and are those that receive the biggest airplay.

For many radio stations “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion has never been off the air since it first came out as a single in 1996.  While some feel that familiarity breeds contempt, familiarity breeds passion.  Look at research and you’ll find that the most familiar songs, those that by all rights should be “burned out” with the audience, still score the greatest in popularity.

And what about the Adult Variety formats? Jack and Bob (personally I like the format named “Mike”) also share with AC stations. They have always had greater success in Canada than in the USA, but the format is starting to grow inside of these 50 states …and that is because the format has changed. They’ve altered their music and now lean more Mainstream AC. They’re not clear cut AC, but they’re closer to AC than they were just 12 months ago.

In many ways, the Adult Variety format is Classic Hits. It’s what we programmed on AC stations in the early 80s, when AC debuted on FM. I was programming WMJI/Cleveland when Joel Lind had WBUF/Buffalo, Jay Meyers was at WVOR/Rochester and Gary Berkowitz had WROR/Boston. We played edgier songs and we screamed “Variety” from the mountaintops.

Expect to see blatantly female-targeted Adult Variety formats like Jill (from George Johns) and Jayne (from Robin Marshall and Tony Florentino) begin to challenge your AC station for those female demos. George’s version is more 35-44 than Robin’s, but they’re both dynamic stations with great imaging and production. They will create headaches for AC stations.

The Big 8 challenges facing Adult Contemporary are as follows:

1.       Lower passion scores on music tests.
2.       Higher burn endangering Time Spent Listening.
3.       The female version of the Adult Variety format.
4.       A de-fragmentation of the format.
5.       A lack of format-exclusive artists.
6.       You don’t “miss anything” if you don’t listen.
7.       Too much talk as commercials and clutter increase.
8.       AC is a format that requires continual marketing and that means $.

The fact is music testing shows fewer and fewer songs receiving a high passion score.  It used to be a song needed to have a 75% and above Total Positive score to be in a Power Gold category.  Many radio stations now accept songs for Power Gold down into the 60% score range.

Burn is being accepted at a higher level today, mainly because we continue to test the same songs in every research project that is conducted. That means we pound the heck out of the same songs over and over. That needs to STOP! Test more variety in the songs you research.

It is not necessary we expand the number of titles in our library from 275 up to 500 titles, but rather that we look for new and fresh titles to test.  Instead of lowering your criteria of what’s acceptable to play, why not look for more songs to test that fit your original high standards?  It may mean testing more music to get the number of songs you want. Consider broadening the eras you play to include 70’s and late 60’s. Start looking at other formats for fresh gold titles. Something has to be done if we are to continue to build TSL in the AC format.

There was a time when Power Gold songs could have no double-digit burn and Regular Gold could have no burn over 20%.  Today we will accept Power Gold songs up to 20% and Regular Gold up to 30% in burn.  While it is a plausible argument that it is okay to accept 30% burn because 70% of the audience still likes the song, it has to be wrapped in the usage of AC.  Our core listeners turn us on and leave us on for seven to nine hours a day while working.  When we play songs that are fried, we are chasing people away from the format and from radio in general.

It is my suggestion that AC stations turnover their Power Gold songs at 1.50 days and the Regular Gold at 3.0 days. The Power category remains tight. The Regular Gold category turns over at a slower 3 days. That can create the illusion of variety, providing you use imaging and you move your music around day to day.

Look back five years and you’ll see that Adult Contemporary had fragmented into Pop Alternative/Hot AC, straight-ahead Hot AC, Mainstream AC, Soft AC, Rock AC, and Oldies-based AC. Things have changed. The format is starting to meld together, once again.  We have Hot AC, Mainstream AC, and Soft AC.  The variations of AC seem to be narrowing to those big three colorations of the format. Today we’re seeing Hot AC become more Mainstream. Mainstream AC seems to be moving softer. Don’t get hung up on format handles. Play the music your target demo wants … whatever those songs are. THAT is what AC is all about.

Adult Contemporary faces a challenge in that by the mere nature of its positive benefit as a “background station,” it creates the illusion that “if I don’t listen I won’t miss anything.”

What will you do on your AC station to drive listeners to it on a daily basis?  I am of the belief that personality is an important attribute to AC and that the best air talent bring people back on a daily basis.  The morning show has to be designed to create day-to-day tune-in.  Get listeners’ days started with survival information, but put a smile on their face as you do it.  Provide them with the entertainment news and gossip they feel they must have, so they don’t miss something.

Present news and information in a compact package that will let listeners know they can stay tuned to your station in these troublesome times.  They need not go on a scavenger hunt for information when listening to music FM. Because of the terrorist threats in America, the War in Iraq and the memory of 9-11, we need to have news on FM…even if it’s limited to AM-Drive only.

Air personalities through the midday and afternoon drive should serve as companions.  They are there to help you through the workday and get you through the afternoon, serving as a decompression chamber back into the real world.  Nighttime programs, be they live or syndicated, should be designed to take advantage of the audience available.  There are a number of nationally syndicated shows that can create day-to-day tune-in.  The John Tesh Radio Show provides information for listeners’ lifestyles (Intelligence For Your Life), wrapped in the blanket of a lot of music. John’s program is pulling amazing ratings. The Delilah Show continues to be aired in many markets. She engages listeners with romance and romantic music. Women love to hear stories and that’s what her show delivers.  Lia, a Country version of Delilah, is also a challenger for our female listeners. There’s a lot of “noise” out there. Be memorable.

The health of Adult Contemporary is good.  It is not great.  It will be better when we learn to address the elements of variety and how to keep listeners tuned in daily. Focusing more of our energies on producing the sound of the station, making it memorable to go beyond being a “background format” and committing to personalities. These elements are all a part of the curative for what ails AC.

Mike McVay is founder and President of McVay Media, a full-service consultancy, serving Adult Contemporary, Country, CHR, Hip Hop/Urban, Oldies, Rock, Hispanic, Sports, and News/Talk radio stations.  McVay’s 35 years of world wide broadcast experience include stints as a Station Owner, General Manager, Program Director, and Air Personality.  McVay Media also consults Singers/Song Writers and their Managers, Networks and Syndicators, Authors, Television Programming and a myriad of non-Broadcast related companies. You can e-mail Mike at mike@mcvaymedia.com or phone him at 440-892-1910. www.mcvaymedia.com.
   

This Tower’s leaning more than the one at Pisa.
Tower Records filed a Chapter 11 petition in federal bankruptcy court yesterday (8/20), with the owners seeking to sell the fabled chain "as a going concern" so that a buyer could take control prior to the 2006 holiday season.

According to the Delaware filing, eight separate parties own and operate the 89-store chain, which includes a direct sales network and warehouse distribution facility. According to sources, they are Three A's Holdings, Jeremy's Holdings, Tower Direct, 33rd Street Records, Pipernick, MTS, Columbus Bay and R.T. Records.

Creditors number in the “thousands,” according to the doument. Among the largest: Six Degrees Records ($1.9 million) in San Francisco; International Periodical ($1.3 million) in Chicago; City Hall Records ($595,000) in San Rafael, CA.; and Baker & Taylor Book ($437,000) in Chicago. The chain reportedly owes a total of $87 million, $70 million of that to the four major music distributors, who cut off the chain's line of credit at NARM two weeks ago.

The debtors want the bankruptcy court to establish bid procedures and set an auction date for the sale of assets. A Chapter 11 petition was previously filed two years ago which contained a pre-packaged plan of reorganization. While that case remains open, court documents insist certain claims issues are the only remaining matters left to resolve.

In that restructure, debtors converted $110 million of unsecured notes into common stock comprising 85% of the outstanding equity in MTS and $30 million in new notes.

Since then, Tower's profits have plummeted, blamed on an "industry-wide decline in the sales of physical music and video products" and "intense competition from music downloading (legal and illegal) and 'big-box' retailers which use music and video products as loss-leaders."

NEW YORK – The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced the formal launch of a Master Ringtone Sales Award, updating its 47-year old Gold and Platinum program to recognize the growing popularity of enjoying music through cellular phones.

Some 84 titles are included in the inaugural group of certifications, encompassing tracks from artists on all the major record companies and representing a variety of musical genres. Specifically, the RIAA awarded 84 Gold, 40 Platinum and four Multi-Platinum Master Ringtone certifications.

Ringtones are the original recording, rather than a synthesized instrumental version, of a hit song. Following the lead of the existing program, tracks will be certified Gold (500,000 downloads), Platinum (1 million downloads) and Multi-Platinum (starting at 2 million and following in increments of 1 million thereafter).

“Our Gold and Platinum Program is designed to honor artists who have achieved the highest success,” Mitch Bainwol, Chairman and CEO, RIAA. “As our industry evolves and offers fans new ways to enjoy music from today’s best artists, so too should the G&P Program. The music community, along with its technology partners like the wireless communications companies, is offering fans the music they love, when then want it and how they want it.”

“The marriage between music and wireless communications is a perfect one,” added Bainwol. “It’s an instant, personalized connection to fans’ favorite music. And it’s an important new way for the industry to recognize a return on its investment in music.”

“I think this impressive awards ceremony signifies the enormous effect that mobile music is having on individuals all around the globe,” said Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association ™. “The power of music to influence societies and bring about new and positive ideas is well documented throughout history, and I believe the increasing use of personal wireless communications devices to access and deliver digital music will only make this experience more profound.”

"Like when peanut butter first met chocolate and ice cream was first plopped on top of an edible wafer cone, wireless and music are a natural and historic fit,” Largent continued. “But more importantly, I truly believe this marriage of technology and art has the potential to bridge cultural divides and bring peoples of the world together like few inventions before it.”

Bow Wow, Bubba Sparxxx, Dem Franchize Boyz and Rick Ross picked up their awards during a ceremony today at the Time Warner Center in New York City. Columbia Records’ Bow Wow picked up Platinum awards for “Let Me Hold You” and “Like You” and a Gold award for “Fresh Azimiz.” Bubba Sparxxx’s “Ms. New Booty” earned the Virgin Records rapper a Gold award. Virgin Records’ Dem Franchize Boyz earned a Platinum award for the snap music anthem “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” and a Gold award for the smash “I Think They Like Me.” Rick Ross’ “Hustlin’” won a Gold award for the Def Jam/Slip-N-Slide rapper.

A&M’s Black Eyed Peas earned a Multi-Platinum award for “My Humps,” as did Universal’s Chamillionaire for “Ridin’.” Atlantic Records’ artist D4L grabbed a Multi-Platinum award for the infectious hit “Laffy Taffy,” and Jive’s T-Pain also went Multi-Platinum for “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper).”

Some catalog tracks enjoyed exposure to a new generation of fans via mobile music. Epic’s AC/DC picked up a Platinum certification for “Back In Black.” The Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey” won a Gold award, and girls everywhere are having fun with Cyndi Lauper’s Gold certification of her 80s smash “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Marvin Gaye picked up a posthumous Gold award for the iconic “Let’s Get It On,” and newfound interest in “The Dukes of Hazard” earned Waylon Jennings a Gold award for the theme song.

As with the existing Gold and Platinum award program, all certifications for the Digital Sales award are audited by the firm of Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman.

Consultant Alan Burns & The Movin’ Format

 
Don’t look now but a new format could be “Movin’” into your market. If L.A. , Philly, Seattle and Vegas are any indication, chances are good this new Rhythmic/Adult mix may soon land in your market targeting the upper end of the female audience. A variation of the format is already in place in New York where both WNEW (Mix 102.7) and WKTU have always incorporated Rhythmic classics into the mix. KTU has more of a current lean, but both stations have always relied on songs from the Disco era. “Movin’” focuses more on ‘80s and ‘90s music with current songs added to the mix and just a splash of Disco.
    It was Alan Burns of Alan Burns & Associates who officially named the format Movin’ when he launched it in Seattle in May of this year. The format was designed as something new and refreshing for the female listener who has recently drifted out of the CHR demo, but isn’t quite ready for a Traditional AC music mix. If you think this format is “Jammin’ Oldies” all over again, think again! It seems that women 28-40 have been searching for a Rhythmic leaning station that doesn’t lean heavy on Hip-Hop, which may explain the recent sign ons of similar sounding formats in markets such as Philly, where a version of "Movin'," dubbed “Philly's 106.1” debuted recently with an even broader target. The women who are targeted grew up on Rhythmic hit radio back in the day, where most Adult leaning stations nowadays rely on a steady diet of Matchbox 20 and Sheryl Crow. One thing is for sure, the format is yet another choice, and one that could have some real staying power since its music mix includes current and recurrent based music. FMQB recently caught up with the format’s creator, Alan Burns, to talk about the format’s conception, where it’s headed and the keys to its success.   

How did the idea for the “Movin’” format come about?
I was in a West Coast market trying to help a station figure out a format to do in a pretty crowded market. It was a high Hispanic market that had both a Rhythmic/ CHR and a Jammin’ Oldies that were doing well. There weren’t a lot of opportunities in the market, but it helped me realize there was something between Jammin’ Oldies and Rhythmic/ CHR .

Programmers for the most part had ignored Rhythmic music from the ‘80s and ‘90s for years. Did that play a factor in the format's design?
That was the thing. When I became interested in this and started looking at the potential format, the wonderful thing was that we found this huge body of music from the ’80s and ’90s that nobody was playing very much, except maybe in their specialty shows, one that we could put together and own. That was the good thing. The scary thing was that almost everybody said: “Well, that’s because that music doesn’t test.” In some circles I'm known as somewhat of a research junkie but, in this case, my gut just told me if you put this thing together right it would absolutely find an audience.

Would you say the format is based more on gut than research?
Originally it was. Once I started putting the concept together, I would be on airplanes and I’d sit next to women who were in the target age and I’d say, “How would you feel about a radio station that played this?” Universally I received positive responses.  Then we put a demo together and started playing it for some women. Once again, universally, it was: “Oh, God, where is a station like that? Is that around here?” But for the most part, radio people felt like it wouldn’t work based on the fact that those songs generally didn’t test that well. But the consumers all said: “Where is that? I want it!”

Who is the target audience?
If you describe it by age, women 25 to 44 would be the wide target, but psychologically it’s women who are probably just a little past the point of being into a diet of straight, current Hip-Hop all the time, but yet they don’t feel like retiring to a traditional Oldies station. 

What’s the difference between “Movin’” and what some have described as a failed format in “Jammin’ Oldies?”
“Movin’” is more contemporary. It has a connection to the present. It plays currents and recurrents, so it has a way to keep the format refreshed all the time. My sense is also that the library is probably a little larger than you have in Oldies.   

Give us a sample of the artists played on a "Movin’" format?
You have ’80s and ’90s artists such as Prince, Madonna, Janet Jackson, En Vogue and Salt-n-Pepa. Then you’ll hear some current artists too such as Mariah Carey, Rihanna, and even a little bit of Mary J. Blige. 

In the ’80s and early ’90s there were many one hit wonders that leaned Rhythmic, were those songs considered during music and research tests? 
Absolutely! Playing [EU] "Da Butt" and [Sir Mix-A-Lot] "Baby Got Back" and records like that is part of the fun of the format. Vanilla Ice doesn’t necessarily test well, but it’s fun to occasionally hear it.

Any success stories to tell us, or is it too early?
The first "Movin’" station, KQMV in Seattle , signed on May 1. The PD Lisa Adams and GM Marc Kaye deserve a lot of recognition because they’ve done a tremendous job. I had worked with Marc at KIIS in Los Angeles years ago when Marc was a GM there, and Marc really rolled the dice and took a gamble. He believed in the format. The station flipped formats three days before the beginning of week six of the Spring Arbitron. And in weeks six through twelve (the end of the ratings period), they were tied for No. 1 with Women 25 to 44 in the market. That’s in just the first six or seven weeks they were on the air. 

"Movin'" recently signed on in Los Angeles .
L.A. is being run by some great people at Emmis with Jimmy Steal. LA is also an example of the fact that “Movin’” is going to sound different to one degree or another in most markets. There were some things about Seattle that made the "Movin’" sign-on there a little bit different than I had conceived it. But it made a lot more sense in Seattle to do it the way we did it. Los Angeles is a little different. The next one that signs on will differ in its own way. There will be markets with heavy Hispanics and markets without them. There will be markets that have had a CHR playing more Street/Rhythm for fifteen years, and markets without that. It just depends on the market influence and the competitive makeup.

Are you surprised the format has popped up in more than a couple of major markets?
No. I believe in this, and believed in it when we launched it or we wouldn’t have launched it. I would have been disappointed if it hadn’t popped up. 

For this format to have some real staying power in the future it must select the right currents to play. Would you agree?
Absolutely! That’s part of the difference between Jammin’ Oldies and “Movin’,” that connection to the present and the era depth. It has to be the right currents. It can’t be too conservative, at the same time we have to maintain that difference between CHR and ourselves. Timing is also very important; it’s playing the right currents at the right time.

Will the format evolve into a personality-driven music format since the same audience who it targets grew up listening to some great on air personalities and not just liner card readers?
I believe and hope it will. In fact, in Seattle , which is right now putting a staff together, we’re trying to inject personality on the station even before we get a live air staff.  There are liners where if you hear a Vanilla Ice or “Da Butt” or something like that, you might hear a recorded liner in front of it saying something like: "There’s a fine line between cheesy and tasteful, and we’re about to jump right over it!” We’re just trying to have some fun on the radio station and personality will add a necessary dimension to the station and make it bigger. 

Is this where Adult Contemporary is moving?
To some extent this will windup showing ACs that they’ve been overlooking the Rhythmic taste in women for too long.

Will “Movin’” be a viable music format for the future of radio, or is it just a flavor-of-the-month format, kind of like “Jack” with a Rhythmic twist?
It’s designed to be a viable format for a long time. It’s designed for a generation of women that needed a home. It’s not supposed to be just a novelty that feels good for a short period of time. We’re putting together something we think will run for years and years to come.

** QB Content by Bob Burke **
 

Rod Stewart will usher in the Oct. 10 release of his new J Records covers album, Still the Same… Great Rock Classics of Our Time, with a performance at the Nokia Theater Times Square in New York City the night before. The show will also be presented later that same evening at 117 participating Regal, United Artists, Edwards, Cinemark, AMC And Georgia theaters as part of National CineMedia and Network Live’s Big Screen Concerts series. The concert will be shown in High-Definition and 5.1 audio. Tickets are on sale now at presenting theatre box offices and online at www.BigScreenConcerts.com for $15. The new album features Stewart covers of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bob Seger and John Fogerty. It’s being touted as Stewart’s first rock album in eight years after his Great American Songbook series has sold some 15 million copies worldwide. And you thought the guy’s cover of Paris Hilton’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” was the end of his career.

For the third straight year, the most expensive show on TV is American Idol, for which advertisers peel as much as $700,000 for a 30-second spot, according to a survey conducted annually by Advertising Age. There’s a good reason Fox gets top dollar for Idol—the show, which returns in January, commanded an 18-49-year-old audience of 31 million during the 2005-2006 season. Other pricey ad buys include Fox's House (which has seen pricing double from last year's $200,000 to $400,000), ABC's Desperate Housewives and ABC newcomer Brothers and Sisters.

There was a time when Rod Stewart's songwriting chops regularly helped him crown Billboard charts. Today, the singer sells his millions by interpreting the songs of others, most notably in the four highly successful volumes of his "Great American Songbook" series.

As J/Arista Records GM Tom Corson says, this era in Stewart's career is "defined by the repertoire." The tradition continues as Stewart releases "Still the Same: Great Rock Classics of Our Time" on Oct. 10 via J Records.

With covers of Bob Dylan, Badfinger and John Fogerty ("Have You Ever Seen the Rain," the album's first single), Stewart is returning, somewhat, to the form and genre that first made him famous. Produced by longtime cohort Clive Davis and Grammy Award winner John Shanks, "Still the Same" will be supported with a full tour starting in early 2007, with much of the same band that backed Stewart during the "Great American Songbook" stint. Stewart talked with Billboard about his latest effort.

CASHBOX MAGAZINE, INC. 

The new owners of Cashbox Magazine are recreating an American classic based on George Alberts old Cashbox Magazine which ceased publication in 1996. For years the industry had three trades, Cashbox, Billboard and Record World. With the advent of the internet and music downloads the industry has nothing more to do with the years of the 78, 45, or the Lp. Singles are now sent by broadband instead of that warm, sometimes colored piece of plastic. Its really sad but technology has created a new generation that downloads music on their computer from i tunes, Wal-Mart and many others. There are new schemes everyday from pyramid type sites that offer anyone a job in the music industry to downright stealing and its all so simple. Nothings free however and if it sounds too good to be true it generally is.

The big question is directed to our closest competition. BILLBOARD, WE'RE BACK!

The primary owner knows the sordid details in Music corruption. During the late 80's through the mid 90's Cashbox charts were ruled by three promoters and several booking/showcase talent guys. I personally had to deal with them. Kevin Hughes, God Rest his soul, knew them too and he tried to do the right thing and it cost him his life. My small label couldn't compete with the majors or the dubious three but in spite of all of them I put out very good product and got good chart positions Kevin knew I was honest and I worked hard for my artist putting in 16 and 17 hour days six days a week, so much so that some of these artist are still with me some 20 years later still putting out exceptional material. 

I never signed just any artist, they had to be exceptional and different and my philosophy was, were they good enough for me to go spend .88 for a single. I spent a lot of time in Nashville and have seen more hearts broken, homes mortgaged and foreclosed on by unscrupulous promoters and talent agents promising new acts that "pie in the sky" stardom only to have ghosted 45's make the lower parts of the charts so they could get more money, the chart numbers made by rolling the dice of certain dj's promised with hundred dollar steak dinners. No one actually ever heard these songs except the studio where they were made. Number of 45's pressed, what 45's? Joel Whitburn, author of the Billboard books was trying to collect every 45 that made Billboard. He was especially having a hard time finding the bottom 25 from the charts. My quote to Joel was, the artist would have liked a copy of their single too. It wasn't just Cashbox, but Billboard suffered its share of ghosting singles. When Billboard went back to 75 positions it virtually eliminated the corruption on their end, however Cashbox kept their top 100. With Billboard clean, the crooked promoters and agents created Indie Bullet then Indie Tracker to gleam more money off talent. Some of these crooks have whole polished websites dedicated to being Cashbox label, promoter or agent of the year. Don't buy into it! Their showcases are for their egos. Their so called publishing companies have never had a hit. With honey rolling off their lips, they know every star. Beware, they are sheep in wolves clothing. Check credentials. Ask people that know, not people they refer you too that are on the take too. Don't buy into Web site scams. One of these guys has a really slick site folks posing with a lot of stars. I'm here to tell you folks, I too have been backstage at the Opry many times and I have photos too, but all they are or photos I made with the stars as a fan. I have never used them to promote my label, book or any of my music promotion.

We at Cashbox Magazine are recreating an American legend VIA the internet. It will be honest and forthright. We will have panels for each genre of music and Indy charts but rest assured, I know who to look for and my advice to you is don't try and crack this shell it won't work and I know the back alley tactics, that won't work either and besides you're already banned from doing business with us. This new Cashbox will carry itself with the utmost integrity. There will be 15 genres of music and it is being fine tuned to make charts the right way. We'll fine tune the way things should be not all the sub and side charts our competitor has seen fit to incorporate into every fashion and mode. Before long there'll be a chart for animals singing their favorite songs! There will be a top 50 Indy chart for each genre and the criteria is going to be extraordinary. The criteria will be based on the Colonels secret recipe and it will work but the primary goal on these charts will be quality of song, sound and voice. You better be exceptional and our secret recipe will not except the hype of labels, artist, songwriters or any hint of impropriety. Once Cashbox is reestablished in all its glory we will have advertising and promotion rates but in no way will this buy you a chart number. It will be based on radio airplay, internet voting, soundscan, jukebox airplay, and our top secret methods on security. It will be virtually crook proof. If you happen to get to number 12 on an Indy Country chart you can bet your bottom dollar you have earned it in a credible and honest tabulation. Depending on the chart, the charts will change weekly except for a few certain genres. If you are interested in joining the Cashbox team or have any questions email us.

Google Purchases YouTube
Google announced on Monday that it has purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. The deal marks the highest price paid for a consumer-generated media site. The purchase also follows news that both Google and YouTube have struck music video distribution deals with major labels. Despite these deals, some analysts believe Google could face copyright lawsuits over material posted on YouTube. (10/10)

Google, YouTube Ink Deals With Labels

Google and YouTube separately announced music video distribution deals with major labels today. Universal Music Group and Sony BMG have agreed to offer thousands of its videos to YouTube users. The decision ends a public feud between Universal Music and YouTube over the protection of artists' rights. Google also signed similar deals with Warner Music and Sony BMG. (10/9)

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - Few topics get George Jones, who has been called everything from "the greatest living country singer" to "the Rolls-Royce of country singers," riled up like contemporary country music. In fact, he disputes that it's country music at all.

"It's great to have young people loving country music, but they don't even know that that's not real country," Jones says. "Why in the hell do they call the stuff country? Why don't you find them another name and let us country (artists) have our chart? No, they have to have it to walk on. They use country music as a steppingstone."

To call Jones a hardcore traditionalist is an understatement. And at 75 years old, he's also a living legend. On October 24, Bandit Records will release a new album by Jones, "Kickin' Out the Footlights ... Again." Subtitled "Jones Sings Haggard, Haggard Sings Jones," the album features fellow legend Merle Haggard singing five of Jones' songs and vice versa. The pair also do four duets.

"I'm still traditional, and I can't like anything else. I don't know why," Jones says. "I can appreciate talent, and I can appreciate a good song, but to me they don't write the songs nowadays like they used to. Think back on the big songs that Hank Williams, Jim Reeves and Ray Price had. You don't hear that type of song anymore, or at least I'm not hearing it."

Jones admits it's a matter of personal taste, but it's nothing personal. "I love a lot of the people in the business. Dierks Bentley is a very good friend, Kenny Chesney is, I guess, my best friend -- he calls me 'Daddy' and I call him 'my son,"' Jones says. "I love a lot of the new artists, and what's amazing to me is I have so many tell me, 'I wish to hell they'd let me go in and cut a good traditional country song.' I understand what they're up against, they have to do what they're told nowadays."

Things weren't always that way, according to Jones. "Used to be it was a wide-open business. If they liked your singing, they signed you," he says. "You didn't have to be cute and go get your teeth fixed and all this crap. They just brought you in the studio and recorded you, and if you didn't have a hit the first time or two, they had plenty of time, and so did I. They gave you a chance to get two or three hits."

There's a new criteria for star-making in Nashville, by Jones' way of thinking. "There's a lot of great singers in this town today that people won't even talk to because they don't look like what they're looking for," he says. "Hell, nobody used to care what you looked like. I couldn't have won a beauty contest if I bought it. Nobody held that against me."

In the flush of youth, Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow would have laughed to think their careers would ever be linked. Back then — the early 1970s — Stewart was a rock kingpin strutting his rooster haircut in the Faces and scoring solo hits including "Maggie May." Manilow, though a year younger than Stewart, was acting like rock never happened, arranging Andrews Sisters songs for Bette Midler and stepping toward easy-listening superstardom.

Stewart surfed the wave of a counterculture going mainstream; Manilow aimed at a Middle America that viewed rock as a rip in the continuum from Nat King Cole to the Carpenters. But years gone by make friends of former ideological adversaries. Today, Stewart and Manilow are united in rewriting the musical — and, by extension, cultural — history of rock.

Their latest releases share much beyond the tinted coifs, bad suit jackets and knowing smiles the singers wear in their cover portraits. Both are selling massively to the one demographic that still prefers albums over ringtones. (Manilow even promoted his on Mom's home-inside-the-home, the QVC Channel.) Pop tycoon Clive Davis co-produced Manilow's for Arista, the label he founded in 1974, and Stewart's for J, his post-Arista gig. Each takes its star into the classic-rock era after big scores with collections of pre-rock standards, and each focuses on ballads: rock's isolation tank for pre-rock sentimentality. Neither contains a note that could cause uncertainty or discomfort. And both have titles asserting that the music within is "great."

Stewart and Manilow both have been singled out as enemies of "quality" rock — the British lad after he moved to California in 1975 and "sold out," the pop maestro since he had his first hit, 1974's tear-stained love letter "Mandy." These new efforts recast the rock era in a light that favors their own values. And they don't need critical validation — as "songbooks," they are canonizing works, passing down an official list that millions of listeners will preserve.

Stewart's "Still the Same ... Great Rock Classics of Our Time" is the odder duck. Most of its picks are from the mid-1970s — the time of rock's gentrification, when suave players such as David Gates of Bread (whose "Everything I Own" Stewart delivers) polished its grit to suit the leisure-suit set. Soft-rock icons the Eagles and Cat Stevens are presented as cut from the same cloth as iconoclasts Bob Dylan and Van Morrison; in fact, Stewart renders poppy efforts by those undisputed greats indistinguishable from the work of their imitators. The result is a portrait of rock that eliminates its more challenging subversions.

This move means to resolve the conflict that's long haunted Stewart. Originally, Stewart was the voice of the common counterculture, an ordinary kid caught up in social change and trying to sort out its meaning for the working class. Then, detractors say, he got cheap, just another airplay chaser selling sex and romantic clichés. His "Great American Songbook" series resurrected sales this decade by removing him from rock altogether but didn't solve the problem of his damaged rocker rep.

"Still the Same" attempts to level the hierarchies that led to Stewart's mixed reputation. Play only the first 10 seconds of each track and you'll recognize every hit: They've been chosen for that earworm quality, their riffs or chord progressions made iconic by repeated airplay. Their moderate tempos and arching melodies follow the most reliable blueprint for pop drama, building steadily, verse by verse, toward a chorus that unifies all of the music's impulses. Studio greats including guitarist Greg Leisz, bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Kenny Aronoff breathe them into shape.

Gone are the rough edges — Badfinger leader Pete Ham's sob of a vocal in "Day After Day," the hyper tone of Dylan's "If Not for You." Those qualities are what rock brought to pop — the bursting seam of the amateur's voice as it reached for the stars. Pre-rock pop celebrated individuality but valued the entertainer's savvy over the maverick's nerve. Stewart, far from his freaky days but still hoping to maintain his rocker cred, is making a case for considering rock within the value system of pop.

"Still the Same" won't make many year-end critics' polls; it's far too bland and calculated a product. But it's perfect for a generation reconsidering its own ideals. The counterculture Stewart rode in on seems so distant, given the baby-boomer conservatives running things. In that light, Stewart's crafty assertion that rock be viewed as part of pop, not something working against it, offers a strange kind of comfort.

Manilow's take on the '60s

Manilow might have done exactly the same thing — it's easy to imagine him singing many of the songs Stewart tackled — but, in fact, he makes a bolder assertion. With "The Greatest Songs of the Sixties," he allows fans to imagine a pop world almost completely untainted by rock. There's some reality to his vision: Even during the Summer of Love, the Billboard charts were full of bright, pretty music free of rock's troubling sexiness and implied (if not outright) violence. It's that lineage Manilow celebrates.

He even enlists the Association, the choral group whose 1967 hit "Windy" turned hippie femininity into something worthy of a Good Housekeeping seal, for a medley blending that hit with the group's "Cherish," from the previous year. The pairing produces a marvelous sonic wreck, a hyper-arranged mishmash that merges a painfully sad song with a demonically perky one, ultimately eliminating coherent feeling altogether.

But then, that's partly what Manilow is about — his own songs explode with grandiosity, ending up more expressive of the idea of passion than of any particular feeling. On "Greatest Songs," he highlights classics that turn feeling into show. Under his flashy hand, what a show it is.

His most brazen move may be reclaiming "Blue Velvet," a No. 1 single for velvet tux man Bobby Vinton in 1963. Ever since David Lynch released his film of the same name in 1986, that song has symbolized Middle America's sordid subconscious; it's difficult to hear it without visualizing the victimized mother, played by Isabella Rossellini, who sang it in the film. But for Manilow, it's just a song: a vehicle that can be emptied of those associations. This is the pure idea of the pop standard, emphasizing craft and lineage over rock's zeal and exploratory weirdness.

Manilow finds much personality in pop, though as usual with this consummate showman, it's hard to know if he's really feeling it. He mimics Dean Martin, whom he venerates, and pays tribute to his own list of greats: Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Herb Alpert, Dionne Warwick, the Paul half of Lennon/McCartney. His voice is as plebeian as ever, a hearty bellow when the choruses rise and a creature of winks and nudges when the mood is spicy. His primary tone is almost tongue-tied, as if that clear voice can only reach for emotion, not grab its essence.

Manilow's flat affect works as a sort of democratizing force; like his old friend Karen Carpenter, he turns being facile into facility. The common touch implies that this star could be you.

Rock of the 1960s expressed democracy differently: Its story was one of oddballs encouraging each other to vent. The ongoing success of Manilow and Stewart reminds us that nonconformist ideals aren't often maintained. It's easy to be a freak when you're young and pretty; when things start sagging, one is encouraged to go classic. And apparently that's true in pop as well as in life.

Pamela!! One of the things i've personally not liked about rock music was the loud guitars and this idea that there's nothing in the world but sex and drugs or striking out against the "establishment" and it was typically the conservative establishment being struck out against.

NASHVILLE, Nov. 6 -- To walk along lower Broadway here is to be bombarded by the lachrymose sound of steel guitars pouring out of the honky-tonks that line the bustling, touristy boulevard. But don't be fooled by the doleful din: These are joyous, auspicious times in Music City.

While the music industry continues to struggle (overall album sales are down by about 5 percent this year), sales of country albums have spiked by nearly 10 percent over last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Country artists continue to be a major force on the touring circuit, too, with Kenny Chesney, George Strait and power couple Tim McGraw and Faith Hill responsible for three of the top 10 box-office totals in the first half of 2006.

Thus, there was a triumphal tone at the Country Music Association Awards Monday night, when the industry convened to toast its success (double bourbon, neat, please) while honoring some of its stars -- led by Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn, who won the single of the year award for "Believe," an inspirational story-song that also won the top songwriting award. The veteran hillbillies won for video of the year, too, as well as their usual best vocal duo award. (They've lost just once since 1992.) Brad Paisley's "Time Well Wasted" was the surprise winner for album of the year. Paisley also won for musical event of the year for "When I Get Where I'm Going," with Dolly Parton.

Guitarist Randy Scruggs was named musician of the year.

As if they didn't get enough camera time in their acceptance speeches, Brooks & Dunn opened the festivities by performing and served as hosts, proffering back-pats, redneck humor and odd exclamations. Dunn also accepted the male vocalist award on behalf of Keith Urban, who is in alcohol rehab.

"Yaa-oo-hoo," Dunn yelped at one point, apropos of nothing. Or perhaps he was just cheering for the genre in general. Said Mike Dungan, president and CEO of Capitol Nashville and head of the CMA board: "Country is in a good spot right now."

The show was broadcast live from the Gaylord Entertainment Center, in the shadow of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and just a boot-scoot from Music Row. The perfect place, Brooks declared, for a showcase of "the greatest music on the face of the Earth."

It's worth noting that much of that music sounded pitchy in the live performances, with artists from Chesney -- who was named entertainer of the year -- to Martina McBride wandering off-key. Also: One of the genre's greatest bands -- the Dixie Chicks -- wasn't included, despite having recorded one of the best and best-selling albums of the year, "Taking the Long Way." Winner of 10 previous CMAs, the trio didn't receive any nominations this year, thanks to those now-infamous remarks about President Bush, which rankled country's core constituency and its establishment. But enough about the singers non grata.

"We're trying to promote and expose great country music to as many people as possible," said Tammy Genovese, the CMA's chief operating officer, earlier in the month. "Other genres just aren't where we are right now. I don't know why, and I don't care."

Oh but Jerry....so many rock songs are about so much more than that! U2 in particular creates lots of music that touches the social conscience, not to mention, a boat load of songs about the universal subject - Love!

NASHVILLE, TN Wednesday Nov.8.2006 -- The milestone 40th Annual CMA Awards show at the Gaylord Entertainment center in Nashville was the biggest CMA awards show ever staged in music city just by the sheer numbers of fans and music industry folks able to pour into the show. The show, broadcast on ABC TV had great performances and record breaking wins.

Brooks&Dunn had an enormous presence, not only because they served as host, but also because the won big. Brooks & Dunn took home the most wins, including Music Video, and Single and song of the Year for "Believe," and their unprecedented fourteenth Vocal Duo of the Year Award. These three Awards bring Brooks & Dunn's overall CMA Awards tally to 18, tying Vince Gill's record for most wins. "It's really good to win," Kix Brooks said backstage. "We are prepared every year to clap for someone else. We are surprised that voters aren't tired of seeing us win every year."

Ronnie Dunn also picked up his first Song of the Year Award with 2004 Song of the Year winner Craig Wiseman for "Believe," a song about hope and redemption with a Gospel feel. "It's an amazing song and I am blown away by it," Wiseman said backstage after praising his co-writer. "Every time I hear it it's like I hear it for the first time." The duo, who took their third turn as hosts of the CMA Awards, opened the show with "Building Bridges" with Vince Gill and Sheryl Crow, which was nominated for Musical Event of the Year.

BRAD PAISLEY picked up two Awards, including Musical Event of the Year for "When I Get Where I'm Going" featuring Dolly Parton and Album of the Year for Time Well Wasted. Paisley performed "She's Everything," from Time Well Wasted.

CARRIE UNDERWOOD had said before the show that if she only one award last she most wanted The Horizon award because, she said, "You only have one shot at that award when you're new." So, she was understandably happy about taking the award she wanted, ""Thank you so much! It took so many people to make this have this year be as successful as it was. Thank you country radio, thank you fans. To Arista, thank you American Idol, thank you fans, thank you, thank you, you don't know how much this means to me. Thank you God, thank you mom and dad," Carrie exclaimed. At that point Carrie thought that was her big win of the night, until she blew past some of the biggest female artists in country music to take Female Vocalist of the Year as well.

Carrie was nearly overcome with emotion as she accepted the second award, "Oh my gosh! You guys, two years ago I sitting home watching these awards watching everybody win and having the best night of their lives and this is the best night of my life!"

KENNY CHESNEY was extremely pleased to accept his second CMA Entertainer of the Year award. "The relationship that I have with all of the people back there in the back is unbelievable," Chesney said from the stage. Backstage, Chesney could not say enough about his fans. "To see those people come hear the songs I sing ­ it's bigger than anything I have ever dreamed." Chesney performed current single "You Save Me" from his double-Platinum album The Road and the Radio.

KEITH URBAN, in absentia, won his third consecutive Male Vocalist of the Year Award, matching George Strait who won in 1996 through 1998. In the event that he won this award, he gave his friend, Ronnie Dunn a letter to read as he accepted the award on Keith's behalf. "I'm pained not being here tonight," Urban wrote. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I look forward to coming home and seeing you soon."

RASCAL FLATTS MADE IT FOUR VOCAL GROUP WINS IN A ROW The trio of talented men of Rascal Flatts had accomplished so much on the charts, in record sales and tour, that this was the one category where the outcome was a surprise to nobody including their competition. "We've had an amazing year," lead singer Gary LeVox said. "Thank you to God for giving us a stage to perform on every night." BRAD PAISLEY PICKED UP TWO AWARDS Brad Paisley collected two wins for Musical Event of the Year, with Dolly for "When I Get Where I'm Going."

So Sunny 93.9 FM is back at it, having pulled its annual switch to full-time Christmas music. This year the station dumped its soft-rock sound on Nov. 1, the earliest it ever has.

What will you hear when you tune in? The most-played holiday chestnuts are:

1. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" Bing Crosby.

2. "Silver Bells," Martina McBride.

3. "Sleigh Ride," Johnny Mathis.

If those aren't your cup of Christmas tea, maybe you'll find something else to hum along with as we roll out our version of Christmas music by-the-numbers.

* Songs included on the album "Christmas on Death Row," which features Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg's version of "Santa Claus Goes to the Ghetto": 16.

* According to Snoop, the Day of Christmas in which "my homeboy gave to me, a sack of that crazy glue and told me to smoke it up slowly": The first.

* Years "The Andy Williams Show," with its famous Christmas specials, lasted on NBC: 9.

* As of Dec. 3, years Williams has been alive: 79.

* Number of gigs he's playing in Branson, Mo., this December: 16.

* According to The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, "The Christmas Song" claims this spot on the list of the most performed ASCAP holiday songs of the 21st century: 1.

* Times the word "Christmas" is mentioned in the lyrics of the aforementioned tune as sung by Nat "King" Cole, right, (also known as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"): 1.*

* Times you'll hear the phrase "holiday chestnut" this season: 1,283.

* Number of actual Americans who have roasted actual chestnuts over an actual fire: approximately 0.

*If you don't count his repeat of the line at the song's end.

Mary J. Blige won big at this year's Billboard Music Awards as her chart-topping comeback album "The Breakthrough" landed the R&B diva a leading nine honors.

Among the awards the 35-year-old singer claimed Monday night were R&B/Hip-Hop artist of the year, female R&B artist of the year and R&B/Hip-Hop album of the year.

"The Breakthrough" shot to No. 1 after it debuted on the Billboard charts in December 2005 and has sold 2.6 million copies since.

Blige, in white go-go boots and a sparkly mini-dress, rocked the full house by belting out a medley of her "Enough Crying" and "Take me as I am" during the two-hour show aired live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Blige said she's already reached the pinnacle of her career by enduring personal struggles that once led her to sing hopefully about having "no more drama" in her life.

"I've realized if I don't (love) myself, nobody will. Nobody is going to love me more than I do," Blige told reporters after the show.

Chris Brown, a 17-year-old lothario who calls his music "Hip-Hop with a swagger," won new artist of the year, male of artist of the year and artist of the year awards.

"I'm 17. That's crazy, it's mind-boggling," said Brown. "My mom, she still keeps me humble. She tells me to take out the trash, ya know, clean my room."

Newcomers Rihanna and idol-turned-country star Carrie Underwood also walked away with high honors.

The 18-year-old from Barbados edged out Blige and Beyonce for the top songstress honor.

"I really can't feel my legs, this is phenomenal," said Rihanna as she accepted the award for best female artist of the year award. "That was a really tough category."

Janet Jackson opened the show with a nod to the old and the new. Sporting a short bob haircut and a belly-baring white turtleneck sweater that offered no chance of wardrobe malfunction, Jackson performed her 1980s classic, "The Pleasure Principle," mixed into "So Excited," a single from her 2006 comeback album, "20 Y.O."

The telecast did not, however, feature Tinseltown's duo du jour — heiress Paris Hilton and mom-gone-wild Britney Spears.


After their recent binge of late-night partying, it was reported that the new best friends would be co-hosting the show. But neither appeared and the show went on without a host, a lineup of presenters filling in to move things along.

Country crossover Carrie Underwood's "Some Hearts" won both country album and album of the year. The "American Idol" winner was named female country artist of the year.

Atlanta rapper T.I. took home rap artist of the year and rap album of the year for his fourth solo album, "King," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart in March.

Canadian rockers Nickelback's "All the Right Reasons," won rock album of the year and artist-duo/group of the year. The band closed the show jamming to "Looking for some Touch," with Kid Rock and ZZ Top.

Gwen Stefani and Black Eyed Peas lead singer Fergie, both with solo efforts this year, also performed.

Las Vegas natives The Killers backed out of a performance because bandmember Brandon Flowers was ill, the group said.

Crooner Tony Bennett was honored with the Billboard Century Award, a lifetime achievement award.

Bennett timed his release of "Duets: An American Classic" — featuring Bono, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand and other musical big-timers — to his 80th birthday. The September release has become the best-selling album of his 50-plus-year recording career.

The Billboard Awards are given to the year's chart-topping artists. Winners are determined by the magazine's year-end chart listings, which are based on record sales and airplay.

———

On the Net:

Billboard Music Awards: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/index.jsp

Just a few years ago, when teens dominated the pop charts, to be a singer of a more senior age — say, about 30 — was something to be downplayed or outright omitted on one's musical resume.

Indeed, as the likes of 'N Sync, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera posted hit after hit and sold millions and millions of albums, the most coveted part of a performer's act seemed to be his or her youth.

But these days, Justin Timberlake has graduated from `N Sync to sexy adult club tracks, Aguilera is a married woman singing mature ballads and it no longer seems necessary to shave a few years off your age. While teen acts like JoJo, Rihanna and Chris Brown are still creating hits, they are no longer ruling the marketplace. Most of this year's top-selling artists were in their 20s or 30s, like Gnarls Barkley, Mary J. Blige, James Blunt, Nelly Furtado and Shakira. And oldsters like 60-year-old Barry Manilow and 65-year-old Bob Dylan also had strong sales.

"There has been more product that was clearly adult for the last five to ten years," says Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, which tracks radio trends.

"Thirty-five-year olds are going to a point where rap is O.K. and 18-year-olds want more mellow music. ... It's more like there's nothing galvanizing in the center and that lets everybody see what's in the fringes."

Still, there may be the rumblings of a teen craze on the horizon. The year's biggest-selling album was the soundtrack to the Disney TV movie "High School Musical," although it was aimed at the tween set. And a graduate from that film, Vanessa Hudgens, is having some success on radio with her solo debut.

In addition, while there have been no monster albums from teens this year, there have been other radio successes with acts like 16-year-old singer Paula DeAnda ("Doing Too Much"), 15-year-old rappers Jibbs ("Chain Hang Low"), and 15-year-old JoJo, whose ballad "Too Little Too Late," was a top five Billboard pop hit.

"I think a lot of times it's been older people, but now the teenage group, the younger group, it's very youthful now," said DeAnda.

"There's hot new artists out there. ... It's a real big year for us."

"I think it's kind of happening," JoJo said of a possible teen resurgence on the charts. "But I don't think it's in the same way that it happened maybe seven years ago with the boy bands and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera."

Back then, acts like Spears and Aguilera made blockbuster albums that sold millions of copies apiece during a music-industry boom.

But as the acts grew older along with the teens that once worshipped them, the craze began to fade, along with the decline of the music industry with the advent of Internet downloading.

"Teen stuff continues to sell, it's always going to sell, (but) it's not a craze like it (was)," says Rick Krim, executive vice president of music and talent relations at VH1. "I think a lot of the teen music tends to be disposable, and it's not the kind of music that stays with you for your lifetime."

A recent survey from the Recording Industry Association of America showed that from 1996 to 2005, the number of 15- to 19-year-olds purchasing music declined from 17.2 percent of music buyers to 11.9 percent. The percentage of buyers in the age groups between 20 and 44 either declined very slightly or remained about steady, but the biggest leap was in the over-45 group: They now represent 25.5 percent of music buyers, up from 15.1 percent in 1996.

Even though Manilow and Dylan had No. 1 debuts with their albums this year, it's not as if pop is no longer a music that appeals to the youth. After all, one of its biggest sensations, Beyonce, is a certified veteran at age 25.

But her boyfriend, 37-year-old Jay-Z, had one of the biggest sales debuts of the year with his album, "Kingdom Come." On it, he talks about being mature and seasoned and even has a song, "30 Something," bragging about his elder status.

"When you're 50-years-old, you still love hip-hop but you just can't relate to the music any more because the people making it as they grow, they're still trying to cater to a younger audience," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I just felt it was very important for me to make a grown-up album and that's the tone of it, the whole album."'

Jay-Z isn't ruling out selling to the kids either. And it seems that these days, there's less of a distinction between the MTV set and the VH1 set.

"(Certain acts) start off appealing adult, but just because it's really great music ... it's appealing to other demos," said Krim, noting the success of acts like Blunt and the rock group Keane.

Daniel Powter, 36, had one of the year's biggest hits with "Bad Day," a sing-a-long piano track that first got popular when it was used as the sendoff song on "American Idol."

Powter credited his life experience for helping him to finally make a hit like "Bad Day."

"I think I've put a foundation in. I couldn't have written the music when I was 18," he told The AP earlier this year.

"I don't want to lie about how old I am. I still feel good. I still feel great. I love to play music."

Music companies make up for lower CD sales with singles and ringtones
By Jeff Leeds Published: December 10, 2006

NEW YORK: "Konvicted," the new CD from Akon, promised to be one of the year's big sellers when it appeared in record stores last month. Buoyed by two of the hottest singles in the country, Akon, a silky-voiced R&B singer, also had the most-viewed page among major-label acts on MySpace.com.

Sure enough, the album opened big, but in a way that reflects the transitional state of the record business. "Konvicted" sold more than 283,000 copies in its first week, enough to reach at No.2 on the Billboard chart. On top of that, the album's two singles sold more than 244,000 copies combined that week at digital music services like iTunes. And a week later, snippets of the same songs captured two of the top three spots on a new chart tracking sales of ringtones, combining to sell 269,000.

As a recording that has sold modestly, but in an array of forms, Akon's music illustrates the new definition of a hit in pop music: Instead of racking up sales of a half-million CDs or more in the first week, it arrives with solid sales from multiple sources. And it serves as an example of the business model the retrenching music industry is embracing as sales of the CD, its mainstay product for two decades, slowly decay.

The hope is that the success of Akon and others will put the industry back on track after a slide in overall sales in five of the past six years. But nearing the end of the holiday shopping season, which typically accounts for a third or more of the industry's annual sales, many are not sure whether to be cheered or disenchanted by the new order of business.

With some sales still to be tabulated, album sales are down 4.6 percent this year, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. Sales at digital-music services like iTunes continue to rise, but the pace of the increase has slowed compared with last year. Still, if every 10 individual tracks sold online are counted as albums, overall recorded music sales are off only by about 0.7 percent this year. While that is a far cry from last year's 4 percent drop, it represents a decline from early summer, when overall sales were running ahead of last year.


 All of that indicates how sales of individual song downloads are eroding the underpinnings of the CD and remixing the industry's economics. More and more, it is looking toward sales of bite-size units — individual songs typically sell for 99 cents — instead of full albums that may sell for $15 at record shops. Barring a late surge in CD sales, more digital tracks than CDs will be sold in the United States for the first time this year.

Sales of digital singles and ringtones now represent "more than a Band-Aid," said Steve Rifkind, president of the SRC record label, which released Akon's album in partnership with the Universal Records unit of Vivendi. But, he said, "it's not going to offset people taking music" through illicit file-sharing online or copying CDs for friends.

The fortunes of big record companies are still overwhelmingly tied to CD sales, and the picture there is mixed. EMI Group in Britain, the third-biggest of the four major record corporations, said in reporting its half-year results in November that recorded-music sales had declined more than 5 percent, though a drop in CD sales and net prices had been "slightly" offset by digital revenue. But Warner Music Group, the fourth-biggest company, said overall recorded-music sales for its full fiscal year rose almost 3 percent to $3 billion, and that digital revenue had more than offset the drop in CDs.

The problem is, digital song sales are not fueling a recovery as quickly as some thought — in fact, sales have been sputtering. After rising 150 percent last year, sales of digital downloads have increased by less than half as much this year. Some executives argue that early adopters of iPods and similar devices may have dabbled with paid downloads enough to drive sales initially, but now tend to fill them with music from their existing CD collections' or copy it from friends rather that purchase new songs.

Still, investors appear to be valuing the big music corporations more highly than they did amid the first years of the slide. Doug Morris, chairman of the industry's biggest player, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, said "the big picture of digital music trumps the fears of piracy — that's why the companies are becoming more valuable."

Analysts, though, note that shifting toward a mostly digital — and potentially more profitable — business remains a very tough road. Richard Greenfield, an analyst who tracks music sales at Pali Research, projects the industry to be flat over all for the next two years.

The overall decline has been spurred by a series of factors: illicit file-sharing online, CD burning, high prices and competition from products like DVDs and video games. Many retailers and music executives also attribute the industry's sluggishness to a dearth of high-wattage talent.

The industry has "a lot of bands that people care about for five minutes and then move on," said Joe Nardone Jr., owner of the Gallery of Sound chain based in Pennsylvania, which includes 10 stores.

Consumer fickleness has become evident on the Billboard charts, where the old-fashioned blockbuster album appears to be a dying breed. More titles have come and gone from the No.1 spot on the magazine's national album sales chart this year than any year since the industry began computerized tracking of sales in 1991. Analysts say that is a reflection of lackluster staying power even among in-demand titles.

Most recently, "Kingdom Come," the hotly anticipated CD from the briefly retired rap superstar Jay-Z, sold a healthy 680,000 copies in its first week, but slid 79 percent in its second week on the charts. In recent weeks, acts including Diddy, Danity Kane and Ludacris briefly held sway at No.1 before plummeting. Back in July, Johnny Cash reached the top spot for the first time in 37 years with a posthumous CD, despite selling just 88,000 copies, the lowest total for a No.1 debut in SoundScan history.


 As a result, music executives are taking a far more expansive view of how to carve out a piece of the music economy, which by some estimates encompasses up to $75 billion, including recording sales, music publishing, concert ticket and merchandise sales and other sources.

There has also been a scramble to squeeze revenue from other unconventional sources, including amateur videos posted to YouTube that incorporate copyrighted songs. Universal threatened to withhold its huge music catalog from Microsoft's new digital- music service unless it received a royalty of more than $1 on each sale of the technology giant's Zune portable music player.

But as album sales drop, the major labels are still adopting strategies to squeeze more revenue from each title. Indeed, the industry now regularly sees acts with towering singles generate more money from downloads or ringtone sales than from their comparatively slow-selling CDs.

Rifkind, the label executive, said, "I find myself, when I'm signing a record deal now, asking, 'can this sell as a ringtone?'"

But ringtones, which have been projected to generate $600 million in U.S. sales this year, are only part of the puzzle.

Many executives are now betting that even more money can be generated with a wider array of individual products tied to the same recording, especially in digitally advanced markets. In Asia, where sales of music to mobile phones outpace CD sales in certain markets, labels may offer more than 400 different items in connection with a specific album, including ringback tones, snippets of music that play to a caller while they wait for their call to go through, or "color call" tones, which are background songs that play while a caller talks on the phone.

To show the promise of digital sales for individual albums, Warner Music executives provided internal cost analysis data from a successful hip-hop record released in the past 12 months. The information was disclosed on condition that the artist would not be identified for publication.

According to the data, sales of the CD still accounted for roughly 74 percent of the U.S. revenue earned by the company, or roughly $17 million. But sales of an array of individual digital products added almost $6 million. About two-thirds came from ringtones of hit singles, but the figure also included roughly $330,000 from mobile phone games related to the artist and $94,000 in sales of cellphone "wallpaper," or screen backgrounds.

But the industry as a whole still remains uncertain, and in the meantime must try to promote digital sales at the same time it attempts to preserve the CD and brick-and-mortar retail shops.

Nardone said the industry must consider lowering CD prices to allow retailers to compete with Apple's industry-leading iTunes service, where full- length digital albums typically sell for $9.99, which is less than the wholesale cost he pays for labels' CDs. He said sales at his chain are running about 9 percent behind last year. "Everybody's still hoping for the best," he said. "But the best ain't what it used to be."

Country music legend George Jones was one of several country artists testifying Monday (Dec. 11) at an FCC hearing in Nashville. The hearing, one of six such regional affairs scheduled around the U.S., is exploring the subject of media ownership. Specifically, the artists targeted the impact that increasingly conglomerated radio has on shrinking country playlists. Others testifying included John Rich, Cowboy Troy, Naomi Judd, Porter Wagoner and Dobie Gray. Referring to current country radio, Jones said, "You know sugar is sweet, but too much can kill you." He added, "When my life and my income and my profession are affected by media consolidation, we don't need to make a move any further in the wrong direction. Please don't make it any rougher for recording artists like me or tomorrow's rising stars." Judd noted there is a "pitiful disconnect" between the country audience and mainstream country radio. "I humbly submit that if my music is good enough for the Grand Ole Opry, it's good enough for the radio," said Cowboy Troy. John Rich spoke of such major markets and New York and Los Angeles losing country stations and added, "One guy can affect what 30 million people get to hear. That's censorship."

Mediabase Announces 2006 Radio Airplay Leaders


LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Mediabase, the radio industry's leading airplay monitoring service, has released its year-end charts featuring the most played songs, artists and record labels of 2006. Here is a list of the winners at each radio format, along with the top 20 most played artists, and leading record labels, by format. For a complete list, including the top songs played at Christian, Latin, and Canadian stations, please visit http://www.mediabasemusic.com/.

  Most Played Songs on Radio

  Overall:       Mary J. Blige/Be Without You (Geffen)
  Top 40:       Natasha Bedingfield/Unwritten (Epic)
  Rhythmic:     Cassie/Me & U (Next Selection/Bad Boy/Atlantic)
  Urban:        Mary J. Blige/Be Without You (Geffen)
  Urban AC:     Anthony Hamilton/Can't Let Go (So So Def/Arista/Zomba)
  Country:      Rascal Flatts/What Hurts the Most (Lyric Street)
  Smooth Jazz:  Paul Brown/Winelight (GRP/VMG)
  AC:           James Blunt/You're Beautiful (Custard/Atlantic)
  Hot AC:       Fray/Over My Head (Cable Car) (Epic)
  Rock:         Shinedown/Save Me (Atlantic)
  Active Rock:  Three Days Grace/Animal I Have Become (Jive/Zomba)
  Alternative:  Red Hot Chili Peppers/Dani California (Warner Bros.)
  Triple A:     Jack Johnson/Upside Down (Brushfire/Universal Republic)

  Most Played Artists on Radio

 Rank     Artist                Radio Spins
 1.     Kelly Clarkson               901206
 2.     Nickelback                   890971
 3.     Chris Brown                  787836
 4.     Sean Paul                    657014
 5.     Rihanna                      655341
 6.     Ne-Yo                        641350
 7.     Pussycat Dolls               635741
 8.     Mariah Carey                 601178
 9.     Mary J. Blige                577652
 10.    Rascal Flatts                540244
 11.    Keith Urban                  508882
 12.    Beyonce                      486228
 13.    Fall Out Boy                 427847
 14.    Natasha Bedingfield          426402
 15.    Fray                         418892
 16.    Kenny Chesney                417321
 17.    Green Day                    406787
 18.    Justin Timberlake            397654
 19.    All- American Rejects        393447
 20.    Rob Thomas                   390938

  Radio Airplay Leaders by Label

  Overall:      Island Def Jam
  Top 40:       Island Def Jam
  Rhythmic:     Atlantic
  Urban:        Atlantic
  Urban AC:     RCA Music Group
  Country:      Arista Nashville
  Smooth Jazz:  Rendezvous
  AC:           RCA Music Group
  Hot AC:       Island Def Jam
  Rock:         Universal Republic
  Active Rock:  Universal Republic
  Alternative:  Interscope
  Triple A:     Columbia


In 1987, Mediabase introduced and innovated the concept of monitored airplay and today, the company provides vital airplay information to nearly 1,700 affiliate radio stations and every major broadcast group and provides research to every major record label in North America. In addition, Mediabase monitors more than 1,800 radio stations in 175 U.S. and Canadian markets.

Premiere Radio Networks, Inc., a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, syndicates 70 radio programs and services to more than 5,000 radio affiliations and reaches over 190 million listeners weekly. Premiere Radio is the number one radio network in the country and features the following personalities: Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome, Casey Kasem, Ryan Seacrest, Glenn Beck, Bob (Kevoian) & Tom (Griswold), Delilah, Steve Harvey, Blair Garner, George Noory, Maria Bartiromo, Ty Pennington, Whoopi Goldberg, John Boy and Billy, Matt Drudge, Art Bell, Donald Trump, Big Tigger, Bob Costas and others. Premiere is based in Sherman Oaks, California, with 13 offices nationwide.

Website: http://www.mediabasemusic.com/

Study: Digital Music Consumers Are More Involved Music Fans
 
January 4, 2007

A new study from the Digital Media Association (DiMA) finds that digital music consumers are more involved and passionate music fans. The organization surveyed over 1000 consumers, finding that 60 percent are listening to more music since they began using an online music service, including Internet radio and digital music download services.

The majority of those surveyed found that listening to music online has allowed them to discover new artists and try out more music than before. Over 60 percent said they have discovered "some new artists," with 25 percent saying they found "a lot of new artists." Additionally, over 35 percent said they now talk about music more than before, and more than 75 percent have recommended an online service to someone else. Also 15 percent of online music fans say they are now attending more concerts.

"These findings demonstrate that real music fans – and today’s music tastemakers – are online,” said DiMA Executive Director Jonathan Potter. “This makes the 2006 holiday sales jump in music devices and sound recordings exponentially more important to artists, songwriters, producers and music publishers, as online music’s impact extends way beyond immediate revenues. Consumers of innovative online music services are reviving the music economy as they enjoy more music and more new music in every way possible, and most importantly, as they introduce their friends to the music and online services they enjoy.”
 
DiMA also found that roughly half of digital music fans spend over $200 each year on music, with 30 percent spending over $300. "Prior to the digital age, someone who purchased six CDs per year – valued at just over $100 – was considered a significant music consumer,” said Potter. “Online music consumers’ spending habits, combined with what they are doing to promote and expand music enjoyment, is great for the entire music industry – artists, songwriters and producers."
 
The full study can be found at digmedia.org.

 

Sony BMG Licenses Songs For Podcasts
 
January 3, 2007

Though major labels have not become too involved in the world of podcasting just yet, Sony BMG has announced a new deal that may pave the way for greater usage of songs by artists signed to the big four. An agreement between Sony BMG, Ford, Chrysler and Rock River Communications will place between six and eight tunes from Sony BMG artists in a new podcast initiative.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the label will be paid a flat fee by Ford and Chrysler for its involvement in the podcast, which will include ads from the automakers. Rock River, which creates specialized CD for retailers such as The Gap, will oversee the project.

The Chrysler podcasts are titled "Chrysler Music Legends" and focus on just one artist per podcast, with Johnny Cash and Journey among those already profiled. The podcast is available from Chrysler's Web site, as well as iTunes. The Ford podcast will launch later in January.

Adam Block, SVP/GM of Sony BMG's Legacy Recordings, describes the podcasts as "essentially a movie trailer for our projects." Digital media strategist Ted Cohen, formerly of EMI, told the WSJ that "protecting" major label artists' songs from appearing in podcasts has backfired as a strategy. "We've protected them so well nobody knows they exist," he joked.


 

New York Radio Gets "Fresh" New Station
 
January 2, 2007

This morning at 5 a.m., CBS Radio flipped WNEW/New York City, launching Fresh 102.7. The soft music station targets women 25-44 and will be highly focused on the 30 to 40-year-old woman with an emphasis on songs released in the last decade. The programming will include artists like John Mayer, James Blunt, Alicia Keys, Marc Anthony, The Fray and Dido.

"Over the past year, the New York market has markedly changed, creating a host of opportunities," said station VP/GM Maire Mason. "More than ever we solicited input from potential listeners, and have heard first hand that this is the station they've been looking for. We firmly believe this is the right time and appropriate implementation of a current adult contemporary format in the market."

PD Rick Martini added, "The music will be what drives Fresh 102.7, and the on-air presentation will be subtle yet unique. As we evolve, talent will be integrated into the station's presentation without taking anything away from the music. We are excited to be making this move and taking the chance to own the modern-day soft music position."

The station is currently running jockless.


 

A source close to MTV says the cable network probably will cancel its U.S. series, "Total Request Live," due to falling ratings.

The New York Daily News reported that with ratings from "TRL" dropping again last year, MTV is eyeing a possible cancellation of the live series and then marketing the once-popular show in another way.

"The ratings are at an all-time low, around 300,000 viewers," the source said. "The show is going to be canceled and rebranded."

Official Nielsen data has "TRL's" ratings at 393,000, a far cry from the nearly 600,000 viewers it drew in back in 2001.

The possible cancellation of the live series comes less than a week after MTV President Michael Wolf stepped down from his post.

The Daily News said that while some linked Wolf's departure last Thursday to the struggles facing the network, the former exec has maintained the move was his own decision.

Barry Takes Manhattan
   
by Chuck Taylor
 
Having topped the Billboard charts twice in 2006 with his blockbuster albums "The Greatest Songs of the Fifties" and "The Greatest Songs of the Sixties," Barry Manilow brought a modified version of his Emmy-award winning Las Vegas show "Music and Passion" to the arena at Madison Square Garden for three sold-out nights on Jan. 16, 17 and 18th.

Backstage, Manilow was presented with a plaque commemorating the platinum sales status of his No. 1 debut "The Greatest Songs of the Fifties" and the gold status of "The Greatest Songs of the Sixties."

Next up, the AC staple will be recording "The Greatest Songs of the Seventies."

By Robert Hilburn, Special to The Times


CLIVE DAVIS, whose discoveries stretch from Janis Joplin to Alicia Keys, is sitting in his favorite bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, amused to hear what a rival record company chief once said privately about the "American Idol" phenomenon that Davis helps propel: "If 'American Idol' really is the future of the record business, I don't want to be part of this business anymore."

Davis, whose labels release the "Idol" CDs, is too diplomatic to take a pot shot at the executive, who's been fired since that remark two years ago — though the dismissal apparently didn't have anything to do with the man's view of "American Idol" as shallow and depressing.

 
Still, it's a popular belief, inside the industry and out, that "American Idol," which begins its sixth season Tuesday, is the antithesis of the creative daring that produced such pop-rock icons as the Beatles, Prince and U2. That's why many pop observers were surprised when the uncompromising rock group Pearl Jam signed with Davis in 2004, becoming, in effect, roster mates of the "Idol" gang.

"I'm well aware that all the success of 'American Idol' puts a taint with some people on my other history, which began with Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen and Carlos Santana," the bespectacled Davis says, looking sharp in his nicely tailored slacks and sweater.

"But a discerning person recognizes that when you are running a company, you're dealing with a mixture of commerce and art. The important thing is to know when you are dealing with art and when you are dealing with commerce, and I know that difference."

He's been famously hands-on in picking songs for singers such as Whitney Houston ("Saving All My Love for You") and Kelly Clarkson ("Since U Been Gone"), seeming to find as much enthusiasm for those who interpret songs as those who write them. And when a Pearl Jam arrives on his doorstep, he easily steps back.

"They write their own songs and … I told them, of course, I'd respect what they do," he says. "The whole conversation took two minutes.

"Ninety percent of the artists I sign are pretty much self-contained, and I would never interfere with them. Take Alicia. She's such a brilliant writer that it would never occur to me to give her someone else's song to record."

Davis' skill in mining hits from a wide range of artists — spanning Aretha Franklin, the Grateful Dead, Kenny G, "Idol" stars and more — has given him what some consider to be the most impressive history of any record executive. In an industry obsessed by youth, few top-level executives have been able to repeat their success after leaving one label, but this New Yorker has triumphed with three labels over four decades. At 73, he's still listening for the ever-shifting sound of a hit — and finding it.

As chairman and chief executive of BMG U.S., he heads a recording empire that includes approximately 170 artists, 500 employees and generates about $1 billion a year in sales. That roster includes such stars as Usher, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews Band and the Foo Fighters.

Oddly, it may have been an advantage for Davis not to have grown up a huge rock fan. Where many rock-minded executives look down on traditional pop, Davis, whose early love was Broadway musicals, respects the craft involved in mainstream pop, and that's left him open to a variety of artists others might have turned away, along with projects like "American Idol."

He and his staff haven't turned all the "Idol" favorites into stars, but some have emerged as bestsellers, notably Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

"The mistake people make about 'American Idol' is that they think the show itself is enough to make anyone a bestseller, so there is no creativity involved," Davis, a guest judge on the TV program, says in his deliberate, thorough way. "But the show's exposure is only worth about 350,000 to 500,000 record sales for an artist.

"To go beyond that, you have to have hit songs to get on the radio."

Reflections on the Dixie Chicks and the Grammy Awards

The Dixie Chicks' sweep of the top awards at Sunday night's Grammy Awards celebration has generated a great discussion here on About Top 40 / Pop. I would like to add a few more observations that have come to my mind since the event.

I can certainly understand the feelings of many pop fans who think they've been a bit cheated in having the music industry give its top awards to music with such little radio airplay. However, I think the backlash against radio is part of the point of the awards. Those who actually make the records, artists, producers, and engineers, are the people who vote for Grammy Awards. Unlike many other awards in performing arts, journalists, music industry executives, promotional personnel, radio personnel, etc. are excluded from voting. This was an award granted by the Dixie Chicks' peers celebrating the group standing up to, in part, the increasingly corporate world of radio.

Radio playlists are increasingly dominated by the whims of corporate executives with less and less impact from individual station program directors. This means, particularly in the case of country radio, political points of view of corporate executives can have a huge impact. Just as it may not make sense to fans that music they've heard very little of should win major awards, it also makes little sense that radio stations should refuse to play music from an album that debuts at #1 on the chart from sales to music fans and is the 6th best selling album of the year. For the record, country radio didn't like the last country album that won the Grammy for Album of the Year either. It was the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Some of you raised questions of how the Grammys could give the Country Album of the Year award to the Dixie Chicks when the Country Music Association didn't even nominate the album. The simple answer is the impact of voting corporate personnel in the Country Music Associaton vs. the dominace of artists and producers in selecting the Grammys. Also, at the Grammys, voting members of the Recording Academy may vote in multiple genres. For more on Grammy selection, check out the guide to How Grammy Award Winners are Selected.

I suspect that many of the artists selecting their peers the Dixie Chicks voted for them to honor the group's standing up to and overcoming a nightmare they hope they never have to experience themselves. It's very very rare that one comment generates the vehemence of the backlash the Dixie Chicks experienced. Loss in record sales and concert ticket sales is one thing, ongoing death threats and condemnation from the President of the United States is quite another. Arguably, Kanye West's comment about George W. Bush hating black people was significantly more pointed than what Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks had to say, but the backlash was much milder, in part because the corporate powers in Kanye's musical community did not turn on him with attempts to manipulate mass opinions of fans in the way the country music corporate powers turned on the Dixie Chicks.

I can make arguments for other nominees having the artistic edge over the Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way, although it is a very good album, but I can understand and honor the choice made by the artists in the recording industry. I do hope this victory sends a message that corporate manipulation does not rule the choices of an event like the Grammy Awards and many of us prefer an open sea of ideas and opinions expressed through our popular music.

Just as it may not make sense to fans that music they've heard very little of should win major awards, it also makes little sense that radio stations should refuse to play music from an album that debuts at #1 on the chart from sales to music fans and is the 6th best selling album of the year. For the record, country radio didn't like the last country album that won the Grammy for Album of the Year either. It was the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The news out of the once-glamorous record business is mostly grim these days, as it has been since the advent of the original Napster--headlines tend to highlight sales declines, a lack of new superstars and executive beheadings.

But for some music stars, though, things aren't that rough--even if you're not selling records, tapes, CDs or downloads, there are plenty of ways to make money. The 10 acts on the Forbes list of music's top moneymakers made a collective $973 million in 2006. That's down slightly from last year's total of $994 million. But you won't hear these stars complaining.

Least likely to gripe: The Rolling Stones, who top our list for the second year in a row. The aging (or is it timeless?) rockers generated $150.6 million over the course of the year, thanks in large part to their “A Bigger Bang” tour. Like so many of the acts on our list, the Stones earned the vast majority of their money--in this case, $138.5 million--on the road.

To determine which acts made Forbes’ list of 2006’s biggest moneymakers in music--in which we look at the cash they generated, rather than what flows into their bank accounts--we turned to concert trade magazine Pollstar, which calculates the North American tour grosses, and Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks U.S. album and digital sales. A big caveat: The list does not include music and ticket sales from the rest of the world. But figure that most of the top acts on this list do as well proportionately across the globe as they do in the U.S. Also not included: revenue from sponsorship, merchandise sales and mobile sales.

As in past years, music's biggest stars make most of their money when they're on stage, not in a recording studio. Much of that has to do with the strange economic incentive system in the music business--acts keep most of the money made on tour, while record labels keep most of any money made from record music sales.

“Conventional media tends to still look at album sales as a true barometer of what’s popular and what’s not, but it’s not really all that indicative of who's selling concert tickets, and the artists know that it’s also not indicative of who's making the most money,” says Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni.

Case in point: Barbra Streisand, who landed fifth on our list despite album sales that totaled less than $4 million. To put that into perspective, the showbiz legend can generate more than that with just one concert. With an average concert ticket priced at nearly $300, Streisand’s 20 U.S. shows garnered $92.5 million at the box office last year.

Unfortunately for the newer acts, touring money isn't as easy to make. For starters, a band with just an album or two will find it hard to put on a decent show. And their fans, who tend to be younger, can't or won't shell out for Streisand-priced tickets.

Take Rascal Flatts. The country group was last year's top-selling act when it came to album and digital track sales. But fans paid an average of just $46.17 per ticket to see them live. So even after a 72-show tour, the trio grossed $43.6 million--less than half of Streisand’s 20-show total.

Very aware of the industry’s troubles, record companies like Warner Music Group (nyse: WMG - news - people ), EMI Music Group and Vivendi Universal's (nyse: V - news - people ) Universal Music Group, have been busy brainstorming about new revenue streams. Among the ideas batted around is for record companies to “share” acts touring revenue with them, as EMI has done with both Robbie Williams and Korn.

But according to Pollstar’s Bongiovanni, who responds with a chuckle, “The only people that are talking about that are the record companies.”

I can certainly understand the feelings of many pop fans who think they've been a bit cheated in having the music industry give its top awards to music with such little radio airplay. However, I think the backlash against radio is part of the point of the awards.

Radio broadcasters to pay $12.5M, give indie tunes some play 
Updated 4h 17m ago | Comments3 | Recommend13 E-mail | Save | Print |   
 
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Exasperated listeners weary of hearing the same songs over and over on the radio may have something to cheer about: a pair of innovative deals that could shake up the music playlists of some of the nation's largest radio-station chains.
 

SEATTLE - Starbucks Corp.'s push into entertainment moved further from the coffeehouse shelves Monday as the company launched a record label based on its existing Hear Music brand.

The world's largest specialty coffee retailer said it would partner with Concord Music Group, which controls several other labels and helped Starbucks sell the Grammy-winning "Genius Loves Company," an album of Ray Charles duets.

Now, rather than basically lending the Starbucks brand to an album, the Los Angeles-based Hear Music label will sign its own artists and sell records through Starbucks stores and other retailers.

"We're not setting this up so that Starbucks stores would have any advantage over other retailers," said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment.

Officials refused to say whether the label had signed any artists, but said they would welcome both emerging and established musicians.

Seattle-based Starbucks has been extending its brand beyond the world of coffee in recent years to embrace music, books and even a movie, "Akeelah and the Bee."

The company also has opened four hybrid Hear Music Coffeehouses, where customers can purchase music from thousands of titles and burn the selections to CDs, and it has a branded page at Apple Inc.'s online iTunes store.

Starbucks' brand strategy, however, has been publicly debated in recent weeks, following a leaked memo from Chairman Howard Schultz that lamented a loss of authenticity as Starbucks expanded to some 13,000 stores worldwide.

In the e-mail to top Starbucks executives, Schultz said various changes over the years have led to "the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and what some might call the commoditization of our brand."

Some may now question whether launching a record label is the right move for Starbucks, said Dan Geiman, an analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen.

But music always has been close to what Starbucks sees as the identity of its brand, even though it remains a relatively small business, generally about 1 percent of all sales, he said.

"I think it's going to be kind of viewed as something that's going to detract from the experience and gets away from their core. But I don't necessarily think that's the case," Geiman said.

The record label expansion is sure to prompt more questions about whether Starbucks will begin offering digital downloading stations at its stores, Geiman said. Lombard said the company was focused mainly on the success of its iTunes page.

Starbucks and Concord said the label "advocates creative control for artists and encourages musicians to stretch and take risks."

Recording artists also should like the idea of a built-in audience in Starbucks stores, particularly at a time when digital downloading has created "a stressful time for the music industry," said Glen Barros, president of Concord Music Group.

"This is a pretty powerful new platform, when you can reach 44 million customers per week through Starbucks' stores," Barros said.

Lombard will lead management of the new label, working with Barros and reporting to a management committee made up of officials from both companies.

Starbucks shares fell 24 cents, or 0.8 percent, to close at $30.07 Monday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares added 5 cents in after-hours trading.

SEATTLE -- Paul McCartney was introduced Wednesday as the first artist signed to Starbucks Corp.'s new record label.

The former Beatle made an appearance via a video feed from London at the company's annual meeting.

The world's largest specialty coffee retailer announced earlier this month that it was partnering with Concord Music Group to launch the Los Angeles-based Hear Music label.

The McCartney announcement is another big step for Seattle-based Starbucks' attempts to spin part of its consumer appeal into the entertainment business. The coffeehouse chain already has produced and sold some albums, markets books, and helped develop a feature-length movie.

Hear Music has been used as a brand on other releases developed for sale in Starbucks stores. The coffee giant also has a branded page on Apple Inc.'s iTunes digital music store, and a handful of hybrid music-and-coffee stores that allow customers to burn tracks to CDs.

Concord, which controls several other labels, helped Starbucks sell the Grammy-winning "Genius Loves Company," an album of Ray Charles duets.

Wasn't it all so gloriously simple back when people listened to top 40 radio and obediently paid $20 for discs at record store chains?

Labels set the deal terms for artists. Managers handled the "biz." The touring circuits were maintained by well-mannered warlords that politely divvied up the venues. And everyone had their place in the pond.

So where did it all go wrong with the music business? Somehow, the pond became stagnant over time, mucked up with greed, laziness, contempt and excess. People got bored with music. Then, someone threw a rock into the middle of it called the Internet, and nothing will ever be the same. Today, anyone can hum a tune, mix it with a rhythm track and some samples on their Mac at home, put it up on MySpace.com, and end up with a publishing deal from Moby, which will then sell it to the next Super Bowl sponsor.

The industry has become decentralized. Major labels no longer have the market muscle or control over the distribution channels as they once did. Technology and consumer choice have caused a shift from the traditional music business model of major labels throwing copious amounts of money behind a few big hits to that of a vast collection of individual artists creating pockets of more moderate success among passionate fan bases.

This shift requires a different approach to the development and monetization of music by the producers and promoters--one that more directly resembles that of more traditional venture-backed business. The entrepreneurs (artists) create new intellectual property (music, artistic brand) that has a demonstrated market (fans) that is robust enough to attract investors (for example, a label) that wants to own some equity in that IP and wishes to put money into the asset to enable it to engage in value-building activities (distribution, merchandising, licensing, and so on). Oddly enough, this "new" model is, in fact, not new.

We've all heard of The Grateful Dead, Phish, Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann and the Barenaked Ladies. These great artists have grassroots beginnings. They all employed clever uses of the technology available to them at the time to find fans and create direct distribution channels (from bootleg cassettes and toll-free phone orders to MP3s and e-mail distributions). Using these methods, these "artist-entrepreneurs" have circumvented the traditional channel gatekeepers and have blazed a trail for the rank-and-file working artists and the weekend warriors to follow.

Now all serious artists need to conduct themselves as entrepreneurs engaged in building a business, not just playing and selling music. There are many tools and services out there that artists can use to help them sell. Still, it's not enough to put up a MySpace page and get a song on iTunes. They need to build a brand that has long-term value. They need to own that brand and their customers outright. There is a need for artist platforms that make this process more efficient so the economics make sense. Those solutions increasingly are becoming available.

Investors--including the major labels--need to understand the intricate partnership role they play in development. It's no longer about throwing money into the ether, marketing to no one in particular, and seeking only mega-hit payouts. It's about patience and commitment and focus. The labels--or their successors--need to get down to sea level, pick up an oar, and help row with the artist into this new ocean of opportunity.

Justin Timberlake, music star and movie star, is aiming to add another glittering line to his resume — star maker.

The pop singer will sign artists and release their music through a new record label he's heading that's a joint venture with Universal Music Group's Interscope Geffen A&M label group.

"We are all excited about the talent we have to offer already on our roster, and I cannot wait to introduce the world to my new discoveries," Timberlake said in a statement issued Monday.

Timberlake will serve as chairman and chief executive of the new label, dubbed Tennman Records, which will be based in Los Angeles and distributed globally by Interscope.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Day-to-day operations will be handled by Ken Komisar, a former vice president at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, who was named president at Tennman.

Timberlake's first two solo albums — 2002's "Justified" and last year's "FutureSex/LoveSound s" — have sold more than 13 million copies combined.

He's currently on the big screen, at least his voice is, in the mega-hit "Shrek the Third."