Innholdsfortegnelse for November 17, 2012 i Billboard Magazine

While Universal Music Group has the opportunity to eliminate the most overhead with its acquisition of EMI’s U.S. label assets, it’s choosing not to focus on cost-cutting beyond the £100 million ($165.6 million) in synergies it said it would trim when the deal was originally brokered. Besides having the typically shared services for distribution and information technology systems, it has let its major labels continue to be more autonomous than not. For instance, while Island Def Jam Music Group and Republic Music Group may have one overall leader under chairman/CEO Barry Weiss and some shared services for sales, production and finance, each label has its own president, marketing, promotion and A&R team. Within that the company creates other A&R centers, which will leverage the shared services and the other marketing…

www.billboard.biz >>>PANDORA SUES ASCAP FOR LOWER RATES Internet radio company Pandora has sued ASCAP in a federal court in New York in an effort to get lower rates for the performance of ASCAP’s songwriters’ and composers’ works. Pandora, which is also actively lobbying congress to lower royalty rates, claims ASCAP gave a lower fee to the Radio Music Licensing Committee, which includes competitor iHeartRadio, the Internet radio service of Clear Channel. That deal covers both terrestrial and digital rights. >>>HOW THE ELECTIONS AFFECT THE MUSIC BUSINESS The music business lost one of its biggest supporters and a longtime friend in the Nov. 6 elections. Howard Berman, a dogged fighter on behalf of content owners who co-sponsored the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act and SOPA, lost his seat in the…

As is our tradition, here are our predictions for the Latin Grammy Awards, handed out Nov. 15, in key categories. This year presents a challenge, as for the first time there are 10 contenders in each of the main categories (which we think is akin to giving 10th-place meda l s , but that’s another story), but we’ll try to make our guesses as educated as ever. As always, predictions aren’t based on personal taste but on past voting behavior and observation of the market and trends. Album of the year: Our pick is Ricardo Arjona’Independiente for a plethora of reasons: a collection of great songs; it was independently produced, marketed and distributed, and still reached everyone; and Arjona has been nominated 10 times, but won a Latin Grammy only…

Best Fest has come a long way from its early days as a tribute to Bob Dylan at Manhattan dive bar Manitoba’s in the East Village. Now in its 11th year, the all-star concert series founded by Rolling Stone contributing editor Austin Scaggs and former Epic Records promotion VP Alex Levy is expanding in a big way this year courtesy of a new title sponsor, Jameson. Petty Fest, a popular concert that has honored Tom Petty for nearly a decade, was not only able to enhance its VIP and artist experiences at its annual New York show, held Oct. 24 at Webster Hall, but it’s also expanding for the first time to Los Angeles for two shows at the El Rey Theatre (Nov. 14-15), with a San Francisco engagement set…

Tastes being what they are, the designation “world’s greatest rock’n’roll band” is up for debate. But one designation that cannot be argued with is the Rolling Stones’ status as the “world’s greatest rock’n’roll business,” particularly as it relates to touring. Put simply, if it has to do with touring, the Rolling Stones either invented it, improved it greatly or changed it forever. The innovation, creativity and business acumen of this band, along with the considerable contributions of the chosen few who have worked with it through the years, extend into virtually every area of the business: production, sponsorships, branding, ticketing, merchandising, global routing, concert promotion and overall touring economics. “They’ve either had an impact on or pioneered every single aspect of touring,” says Bill Zysblat, who with Joe Rascoff are…

“I’VE ALWAYS SAID that there was going to be a day that we were on iTunes.” It’s Halloween, and Kid Rock is singing a different, and unexpected, tune. Until recently, the multiplatinum self-proclaimed American Bad Ass remained one of the last high-profile iTunes holdouts, preferring to keep his music inside shiny jewel cases and off of Apple’s giant retailer, and citing iTunes’ near-uniform song pricing as the main reason. And then in late October, Rebel Soul, his ninth studio album due Nov. 19 on Top Dog/Atlantic, was quietly made available as a preorder on iTunes. Its title track was posted for $1.29, marking the first non-soundtrack piece of music the artist had issued on the platform. Something had changed for Kid Rock. But what? Despite forgoing digital sales, his career…

This report is a collaboration by Billboard and sister publication Billboard Brasil. WHEN THE Latin Recording Academy presents its 2012 Person of the Year honor to Brazilian music icon Caetano Veloso on Nov. 14 in Las Vegas, the organization behind the Latin Grammy Awards will recognize not only Veloso but the enduring impact of Brazil on the world’s music scene. The fusion of tropicalismo, which Veloso and his peers helped create in the ’60s; Brazilian rock, which Roberto Carlos and the “jovem guarda” pushed forth in that same decade; samba and bossa nova rhythms popularized at that time by João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim—these are just some of the styles from Brazil that have won devoted fans around the world. Western pop musicians, from the Brill Building songwriters of…

Grime time official: Londonbased rapper Wiley (aka “the Godfather of Grime”) has just announced a fourdate spring tour featuring fellow grime MCs Skepta and JME. Booked by the Coda Music Agency, the U.K. trek will take off in Norwich at the Norwich Waterfront (April 18), before making stops at the HMV Institute in Birmingham (April 19), the Forum in London (April 20) and closing in Manchester at the HMV Ritz (April 22) . . . Soaring: As she continues the run-up to her full-length Capitol debut (I’m Not Alright, due early next year), buzzing indie-pop singer Sky Ferreira keeps the show on the road working her recent Ghost EP. Booked by Creative Artists Agency, stops include Bardot/School Night in Los Angeles (Nov. 12), TT and the Bears in Cambridge, Mass.…

For more than a year, Toronto singer and Drake affiliate Abel Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd, was the hottest unsigned R&B artist since Frank Ocean. The three mixtapes he released for free through his website in 2011 (House of Balloons, Thursday, Echoes of Silence), sparked a media frenzy (House of Balloons was nominated for Canada’s Polaris Music Prize) and led to him selling out his first U.S. tour last spring in less than five minutes. But since signing with Republic in September in a joint venture with his own XO imprint, the Weeknd is attempting the transition from indie favorite to mainstream star with Trilogy, a rerelease of his mixtapes that includes three bonus songs and arrives Nov. 13. Though the three-disc album will top out at 30 tracks, it’ll be…

LUDACRIS FEATURING USHER & DAVID GUETTA Rest of My Life (3:52) Producers:David Guetta, Giorgio Tuinfort Writers:various Publishers:various Def Jam Recordings On “Rest of My Life,” the latest song to emerge from Ludacris’ forthcoming Ludaversal, the Southern rapper pulls an all-too-familiar yet commercially wise move by teaming with EDM star David Guetta and R&B king Usher for a motivational dancefloor banger. Despite being billed as the rapper’s song, Usher steals the spotlight here, playing the guy at the yacht-club party who’s downed one too many. Luda doesn’t disappear completely: The MC, post-self-prescribing “two drinks a night,” instructs his tombstone to read “women, weed and alcohol.” Naturally, the whole affair gets washed down with Guetta’s top 40-friendly chorus, in which the DJ goes buck wild with a bruising, bombastic beat. While “Rest…

Eight years after he last topped the U.K. charts, Robbie Williams is back at No. 1. “Candy,” the first single from Williams’ ninth solo studio album, Take the Crown, sold 137,000 first-week units, making it the fastest-selling single by a male artist in the United Kingdom this year, according to the Official Charts Co. (OCC). Co-written by Williams, Gary Barlow and Terje Olsen, “Candy” is the 38-year-old singer’s seventh solo No. 1 and his 14th U.K. No. 1, including his years as a member of British vocal group Take That, of which Barlow is also a member. Williams famously quit the quintet in 1995 and went on to sell more than 60 million albums as a solo artist, according to his label, Island Records/Universal. In 2010, he temporarily rejoined the…

Taylor Swift’Red hangs tight for a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, shifting 344,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan (down 72%). Last week, the Big Machine Records album blasted in at No. 1 with 1.2 million, marking the largest sales week for an album since 2002. Wi t h 1 .6 mi l l ion sold in two weeks, Red overtakes One Direction’Up All Night (1.3 million) to become the second-biggest-selling album of 2012. Adele’21 is way ahead as the year’s top seller, with 4.1 million. Swift’s previous album, Speak Now, also spent its first two weeks at No. 1, moving nearly 1.1 million and 320,000 in those respective frames. (It fell by 69% in its second week.) Speak Now then left the top slot for five…

ALICE IN WEMBLEY LAND Some 40 years after playing his first gig at London’s Wembley Arena, rock legend ALICE COOPER was recently honored as the only international act to headline the iconic venue in five consecutive decades. Flanking Cooper and his handprints in the arena’s Square of Fame are Wembley GM JOHN DRURY (left) and marketing manager ROB LIEVESLEY. 1FUSE WAS OUT IN FULL FORCE at New Orleans’ Voodoo Music+Arts Experience on Oct. 27 as part of Scope Mouthwash’s “Encourage Courage” campaign. Plugging into the Crescent City scene are (from left) Fuse senior VP of national ad sales JASON MILLER, news co-anchor JACK OSBOURNE, advertising account executive LIZ PHILLIPS and VP of East Coast ad sales MIKE ROCHE. 2ERIN BOHEME premiered her “In My Place” music video and performed tracks…

The decision by Warner Music Group (WMG) to realign its business with an emphasis on managing artists’ overall rights has drawn some comparison to EMI’s restructuring two years ago, but closer analysis shows this is yet another iteration by a major to refocus for a 21st-century music industry. The company has been structured so that the high risk/high reward businesses like front-line labels are in one group, while the more predictable steady income stream producers like music publishing and catalog are in another group, and the label services and tertiary businesses are in a third group. This would be more akin to the perspective of an outside investor—not too dissimilar from owner Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries viewpoint of the music business. “This realignment is about creating an environment of greater…

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many Northeast U.S. music industry companies were inconvenienced by employee transportation issues or a loss of power that displaced operations for a few days. But there were several players in the music biz that were directly affected by the hurricane, and the hit has been devastating. Three of the hardest-hit businesses are garage rock label Norton Records and classical music label New Amsterdam Records, both with facilities in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood; and Drew’s Entertainment, which operates as Drew’s Party Music and Turn Up the Music, a cover-song compilation company based in Edison, N.J. Beyond those labels, Translator Audio/South Sound, a recording studio located near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and venues like AEG’s Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, N.J., and the Galapagos Art Space…

The late Tito Puente had many titles throughout his career, from “King of Latin Music” to “King of the Timbales.” But for Joe Conzo, the Latin jazz and salsa musician had only one title that meant the most to him. “He was my best friend,” Conzo says. “Since his death in 2000 not a day has gone by that I don’t think of Tito.” Conzo, the publisher of “Mambo Diablo: My Journey With Tito Puente,” is considered the authority on Puente and was instrumental in co-producing the release of Puente’s Quatro: The Definitive Collection. The Sony Music U.S. Latin project is available in a limited-edition boxed set of four albums that were digitally remastered. Additionally, a fifth CD includes Puente’s hit single “Ran Kan Kan” and bonus tracks. The set,…

The crane hovering over the Agency Group offices on West 57th Street in Manhattan has been secured and, as of Nov. 5, agents and staff returned to the business of bringing music to the people. Not that they ever quit working. But the suspended crane was symbolic of an industry that was basically working without a net for a week that was anything but business as usual. Routing a tour is a meticulous, strategic, dominos-like business in the best of times, and agents get paid to do it well. Once. A single postponed date topples a few dominos. Several lost shows means blowing up the plan, knocking over the dominos and rerouting, digging out building and artist avails, coordinating on-sales and forgoing shows that might have been booked elsewhere on…

The first floor of London’s Dorchester Hotel is crowded with security men, management staff and press assistants, all moving between various suites. Little sensing the comedy value, they dart through one door only to appear from behind another moments later to check a watch or make another call. The business of promoting a new compilation, a film and a handful of live dates is afoot, and the Rolling Stones are working hard. On Oct. 19, halfway through an intense run of rehearsal days in Paris, they interrupted that schedule to fly home for the London premiere of “Crossfire Hurricane”—the documentary directed by Brett Morgen, produced by Mick Jagger and executive-produced by the rest of the Stones—and a day of interviews. Ronnie Wood looks bleary-eyed, but enthusiastic to a fault. Charlie…

Billboard’s Future-Sound conference was created to look for ways to advance the conversation surrounding the most important issues in the digital music business. A collection of executives and thought leaders in music and technology will converge at Terra in San Francisco on Nov. 15 and 16 to push the dialogue forward and discuss themes ranging from the economics of digital music and licensing to data and analytics. ¶The conference will kick off with a keynote from Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson at 1:15 p.m. on Nov. 15. Wilson is an influential venture capital figure who has invested in such digital music startups as Turntable.fm, SoundCloud and Songkick. The conversation is likely to cover the venture capitalist’s uneasiness in funding startups whose business model require licenses from record labels. Although…

Gilberto Gil is in the midst of a North American tour devoted to forro, the party-starting country music of Northeast Brazil. Last month, Gil released Concerto de Cordas and Maquinas de Ritmo, an acoustic album with electronic flourishes, featuring some of the betterknown songs of his fivedecade-long career. At the Latin Grammy Awards on Nov. 15, the album Especial, Ivete, Gil e Caetano, a live recording with singer Ivete Sangalo and Caetano Veloso, will vie for album of the year. Billboard recently asked Gil what he would consider Brazil’s most important contribution to the world’s musical culture. “From the point of being exposed, of having a broad international exposure, it’s been the bossa nova,” Gil says. “It’s been the Brazilian style most welcome and most exposed worldwide. If you ask…

When the Grammy Award-winning metal band Deftones finished recording their sixth album, Diamond Eyes (Reprise, 2010), the members felt a surge of creative momentum. “We still had so many ideas left. We were almost ready to go back to the studio right away,” singer/guitarist Chino Moreno says. “So when we finished touring Diamond Eyes, we were fired up to keep going in the same direction.” Now, more than two years after Diamond Eyes bowed at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 (237,000 sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan), the Sacramento, Calif., group returns with Koi No Yokan (Nov. 13, Reprise), a project that shares what Moreno terms “a positive energy” with its predecessor. “We ran with our instincts and tried not to second-guess things,” he says. “We also tried to be…

When Robert “RZA” Diggs was pillaging old kung-fu flicks as a New York teen, he never imagined he’d one day be directing one. Since producing the landmark Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers (Loud) in 1993 and spawning the lengthy, fruitful career of the Wu-Tang Clan, the Grammy Awardwinning beatsmith has tapped into nearly all sides of the entertainment industry: collaborating with everyone from the Black Keys to Kanye West, penning two books and landing roles in films including “Funny People” and “American Gangster.” This month, RZA delivers Ghostface Killah’s Twelve Reasons to Die, the second release from his new label Soul Temple Records, and makes his directorial debut with “The Man With the Iron Fists,” a kung-fu film starring Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe that’s “presented by” Quentin Tarantino. The…

While millions of people took to social media networks to celebrate President Barack Obama’s victory on Nov. 6, some musicians used music as their medium to champion his win. Hours before Obama was elected to a second term, Def Jam rapper Young Jeezy released his track “We Done It Again,” a testament to his confidence that the president would best Mitt Romney in the election. The following day, Mariah Carey unleashed her inspirational “Bring It On Home,” and Plies dropped his midtempo cut “Obama Forward.” Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am is currently recording a victory song that serves as the follow-up to his 2008 release, “Yes We Can.” Artists who release victory songs not only express their support through music, they also benefit from their promotional value. WQHT (Hot 97)…

>>>WHEN ‘LOVE’ TAKES OVER Dance collective Rudimental made a splash earlier this year on the Official U.K. Singles chart, debuting atop the list with the soulful drum’n’bass hit “Feel the Love,” featuring John Newman. Now, the quartet (Piers Agget, Kesi Dryden, Amir Amor and DJ Locksmith) is flirting with breakout U.S. success, thanks to support from SiriusXM’s 20 on 20 and Hits 1 channels. On the horizon for the Big Beat/Atlantic act: a debut album due in February and a U.S. tour in March. >>>LIZ LONGLEY SINGS HER ‘SONG’ Liz Longley, winner of the 2010 BMI John Lennon Songwriting Scholarship Competition, bubbles under the Folk Albums chart with her self-released six-song EP, Inside This Song. The Nashvillebased graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music has opened for folk luminaries like…

HOLIDAY ‘VOICES’ >>Half of the “Voice” coaches are charting on the Billboard 200 with Christmas albums. Cee Lo Green’s Magic Moment debuts at No. 67 while Blake Shelton’s Cheers, It’s Christmas rises 45-28. Fellow coach Christina Aguilera gets in on the action, too, featuring on a Magic duet. TAYLOR FOR THREE? >>Taylor Swift’s Red is set for a third week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 next week, industry forecasters say. The biggest debut on the chart will likely come from Now 44, with around 100,000. PLUMB HITS NO. 1 >>Appearing on Billboard’s Christian charts since 1997, Plumb notches her first No. 1 in the genre, as “Need You Now (How Many Times)” tops Christian CHR. She has previously led Dance Club Songs and Dance/Mix Show Airplay. CHART BEAT…

Rhapsody, a pioneer of on-demand streaming music services, is reinventing itself in its perpetual quest to find a key to unlock consumer wallets. Moving forward, Rhapsody will drop song download sales and advertising to fully focus on getting more people to buy into its core subscription business. The Seattle company is releasing more than a dozen stand-alone mobile apps, each offering a music-related feature like song identification, concert location or social sharing. The idea is to get people engaged with the free apps, then try to upsell them to the premium all-you-can-listen service. Rhapsody, which launched in 1999 as Listen.com, is the longest-running digital music service, but now finds itself losing mind share to newer players, in particular Spotify, which in a little more than a year amassed 1 million…

NBC’s “Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together” telethon, which featured Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Mary J. Blige and Christina Aguilera, raised $23 million for the Red Cross, including a $500,000 donation from State Farm that was made prior to the telecast. Donations can be made to the Red Cross at redcross.org/hurricanesandy. Individual artists have also donated funds, including Lady Gaga, who gave $1 million to the Red Cross. She posted on her Little Monsters website, “If it wasn’t for NYC: the Lower Eastside, Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn, I would not be the woman or artist that I am today.” MusiCares set up a fund to support members of the music community affected by Hurricane Sandy. Its assistance includes basic living expenses, transportation and medical expenses (see story, page 61).…

BALBOA FOUNDER VELASCO DIES Valentin Velasco, founder of regional Mexican indie label Balboa Records, died of natural causes on Nov. 4 in his Los Angeles home. He was 80. Velasco created Balboa in 1984 as the U.S. distribution arm of Discos Musart, the influential Mexican independent label that was home to acts like Joan Sebastian and Paquita la del Barrio. Although Balboa operated under Musart’s artistic direction, it soon became a full-fledged label known for aggressive marketing and promotion. At its height, Balboa was home to a roster of acts that included Sebastian, Pepe Aguilar and Banda Cuisillos, among many others, with Velasco aiming to increase Balboa’s market share. In an article from 2005, Billboard reported how the label attained a Latin market share of 4.9% for year-end 2004, a…

Microsoft is making a big move back into digital music. Xbox Music, launched Oct. 23 on the Xbox platform and Oct. 26 on the new Windows 8 operating system, gives Microsoft another chance to connect with music fans. But while the platforms and distribution have changed, the end result feels very much the same. Xbox Music starts with good odds of success. With its inclusion in Windows 8, Xbox Music will get in front of hundreds of millions of potential listeners through new computer shipments and updated operating systems. Startups with limited marketing budgets could only dream of reaching so many people. A hybrid of ad-supported service, subscription service, download store and cloud-based music locker, Xbox Music replaces the Zune Music Pass streaming service and download store that launched in…

In 1965, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham commissioned director Peter Whitehead to shoot the group’s two-day September Irish tour in order to, as he put it, let the lads get their “celluloid legs.” The cinema verite footage was collected into an slapdash film called “Charlie Is My Darling” (because taciturn drummer Watts was deemed most camera-friendly) that was shopped the following year but never released or aired— although wobbly bootlegs have been circulating for decades—and the reels sat in film cans for more than 40 years. As part of ABKCO’s ongoing restoration of the Stones’ early archives—not to mention the band’s 50th anniversary—the film has been laboriously cleaned up and made into a new documentary, including live segments that represent the earliest known, professionally shot concert footage of the…

FutureSound is ultimately about the future of digital music. So Billboard has created an Innovators Showcase to give five startups an opportunity to pitch their products to a panel of five judges representing a wide swath of the music industry: Walden VC managing director Larry Marcus, Digital Cowboys founder David Kusek, SFMusicTech founder Brian Zisk, Warner Music Group senior director of digital strategy and business development YiPing Ho and TAG Strategic managing partner Ted Cohen. Tipping off at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 15, the showcase will allow each startup to give a 10-minute pitch and have five minutes for a Q&A period with the judges. The finalists, selected from more than 60 nominees, will also have demonstration tables set up to show off their services to conference attendees. Here’s a…

Despite the title, Soundgarden’s comeback single “Been Away Too Long” is not “specifically about my band getting back together,” frontman Chris Cornell says. But the title made it an obvious choice as the leadoff track and first single for Soundgarden’s sixth album, King Animal, due Nov. 13 on Loma Vista Recordings. (Mercury will release the album in the United Kingdom, and Vertigo will handle all other territories.) The set, the first studio album from the veteran Seattle rock band since 1996, arrives nearly three years after Cornell announced Soundgarden’s reunion on Twitter. The group broke up in 1997 following the release of Down on the Upside, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 1.6 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Since then, Cornell has released…

Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and Alabama rapper Yelawolf certainly share some passions: hiphop; tattoos; fast, aggressive music; and fashion—Yelawolf runs his own line, Country Fresh, through Barker’s Famous Stars and Straps brand. Until recently, the artists also shared an executive in Paul Rosenberg. (Yelawolf is signed to Rosenberg and Eminem’s Shady Records, and Barker was long repped by Rosenberg.) So sharing an EP shouldn’t come as a surprise. On Nov. 13, the duo will release Psycho White, a collection ranging from reggaerap to mosh-pit hip-hop to near-dubstep, all in just five songs. The project will arrive through Barker’s LaSalle Records/Killer Distribution. While the music often blasts with teeth-rattling intensity, it couldn’t have been a more casual affair. And Yelawolf and Barker intend to keep it that way. While Barker has…

ROCK NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Psychedelic Pill Producers:Neil Young, John Hanlon, Mark Humphreys Reprise Records Release Date:Oct. 30 Driving factors behind recent Neil Young albums have been largely apparent—war, America’s folk heritage, an old car— and Psychedelic Pill is clearly tethered to Young’s review of his personal history for the memoir “Waging Heavy Peace.” Young’s albums challenge his fan base to follow his lead rather than sink into the familiar. Psychedelic Pill is a heavy dose of the crunchy guitar rock that he and Crazy Horse trademarked at the end of the ’60s. Reunited with Crazy Horse for their second album this year, they provide a heavy thunder to surround Young’s invigorating guitar solos, nasally whine and group vocals to give the feel of a barn jam session. He…

Toby Keith continues his impressive streak of reaching the top 10 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, as Hope on the Rocks launches at No. 3 with 48,000 sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The set marks Keith’s 20th top 10 on the tally. He’s missed the top tier only once, with his self-titled debut album, which peaked at No. 17 in a 97-week run in 1993-95 (and yielded his first of 20 Hot Country Songs No. 1s, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy”). Keith boasts the longest active top 10 streak on Top Country Albums. With three more, he’ll tie George Strait for the longest top 10 run in the chart’s 49-year history; Strait linked 23 in a row from 1987 to 2003. Buck Owens (1964-68) and Elvis Presley (1973-77) follow with…

Half of the 18 performers booked for the 40th edition of the American Music Awards are nominees. The rest are taking advantage of the promotional opportunities the show offers for artists with fourth-quarter releases, from Pitbull to Ke$ha to Kelly Clarkson. Billboard has exclusively learned that the trio behind “Everyday Birthday”—Swizz Beatz with Chris Brown and Ludacris—will perform its 2-week-old single on the show, and Clarkson, whose Greatest Hits will be released the day after the Nov. 18 telecast, is promoting the album’s single “Behind These Hazel Eyes.” An announcement of their participation is expected Nov. 12. Constraint-free when it comes to booking, AMA producer Larry Klein booked the “Birthday” boys because he liked the song. “To me, it’s the Rat Pack of the hip-hop world,” he says. “It’s something…

7 With another 44,000 sold this week, Babel becomes the fifth album to surpass 1 million in sales this year. At this point a year ago, there were six million-sellers. 8 Following his top 10 start with Americana (No. 6 on June 23), Young charts his second top 10 within a year’s time. He’s managed that feat once previously, with Comes a Time (No. 7, 1978) and Rust Never Sleeps (No. 8, 1979). 19 The DJ/producer/singer’s third studio album dances onto the list with 17,000 sold (his best week ever) and also starts at No. 1 on Dance/Electronic Albums. The set includes pairings with Rihanna (“We Found Love”) and Florence Welch (“Sweet Nothing”). 48 The rock supergroup (comprising Joe Bonamassa, Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian) nets its third…