Innholdsfortegnelse for December 1, 2012 i Billboard Magazine

SoundCloud wants to be your new favorite radio station. The social audio platform might seem an unlikely candidate for such a thing, but the company is extending its focus and staking out its role in the future of an age-old medium. In a space already dominated by Pandora, Spotify and Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio app, SoundCloud is partnering with terrestrial radio stations and launching a redesign that allows for continuous playback of audio. SoundCloud might not brand itself as an alternative to radio, but the company sees itself as a part of the medium’s future. The Berlin-based startup got its start as a platform designed to help musicians share tracks among one another and to a lesser extent, collaborate online. Five years, more than 20 million users and several million dollars…

Among the companies that provide marketing and promotion services for Latin music, Gabriel Buitrago’s Summa stands out as the one with the most No. 1s on the chart. Buitrago was hired by management to help work this week’s No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart, Enrique Iglesias’ “Finally Found You.” Why is a company like yours necessary, even when an artist is signed to a label? When an artist has a new single, we follow it, we take it to the top of the chart and the artist does great in every sense. But the label benefits from the sales, so it doesn’t make sense to invest a big amount of money for the kind of digital sales Latin radio generates. With our company the artist has all the control.…

Asher Monroe has been in the entertainment business ever since he booked a gig on the national tour of “Beauty and the Beast” when he was 7 years old. But it’s only now, more than 15 years later, that he’s gearing up to release his first album. As the f lagship artist signed to entrepreneur Diana Jenkins’ music company D Empire, Monroe has worked with Sean Kingston, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and the Matrix on his as-yet- untitled upcoming debut, due sometime next year. Recently, Monroe has been in the studio with Chris Brown, who will be co-writing a few songs on the album, he says. “I definitely think we’re in for not just one song,” Monroe says. “I have a lot of tracks that I’ve already produced, but if he…

Mexican sibling duo Jesse & Joy were the big winners at the 13th annual Latin Grammy Awards, taking home record and song of the year (for “Corre”), best contemporary pop vocal album and best short form music video. Although the two are veterans in a way—they won best new artist in 2007—they hadn’t been to the Latin Grammys since then and brought rare freshness to an award with few new names. “This feels like a great comeback,” Jesse said. The duo, long a Mexican pop fixture, saw its popularity rise in the past year with “Corre,” a piano ballad that was featured as the theme of a soap opera. Other winners at the Nov. 15 awards, which aired live on Univision from Las Vegas, included Juanes, who won album of…

Billboard created the FutureSound conference to encourage dialogue among the stakeholders in the traditional music industry, the nascent digital music business and the investors who find and fund new technologies. Only through understanding can the industry move forward. The conversations at Terra in San Francisco on Nov. 15 and 16 showed these parties have witnessed gains during the last 12 months. Venture capital is more active in music. Licensing deals are moving in a positive direction. Innovations in product and process are helping consumers discover music in brand-new ways. Yet, as this white paper details, there is much room for improvement. Converting casual listeners to paying fans starts with discovery—the spark that occurs when someone falls in love with the music flowing through his or her ears. ¶ Though the…

Amajor sticking point in the growth of digital music, licensing has seen improvement in recent years. More services are being licensed. Record labels are more open to the opportunities presented to them. There have been some deals finalized that didn’t require the digital service to pay a cash advance. But in spite of the progress, the gains made in the licensing process aren’t keeping up with the pace of innovation. A delay in licensing music to entrepreneurs, and to consumers, means the innovations seen in other markets will be absent in the music business. A reputation for costly and difficult licensing deals mean talented entrepreneurs will create services that don’t require licensed music—artist services apps are abundant these days—or skip music altogether. Turntable.fm offers a good case in point. The…

Australia’s live music sector is up there with the best in the world. It’s a billiondollar-plus industry with a white-hot festival market that runs year-round. And with the growth of Asia’s concert business, the region is even better positioned as a key market on the global touring circuit. “We’re the strongest market in the world right now,” veteran promoter Michael Chugg says. “Certainly sales figures have shown that. And the amount of traffic we’re getting through the country doesn’t seem to be causing death and destruction in terms of losing any money. You’d have to think of Australia as very strong at the moment. Per capita, we’re just killing it.” But is the industry killing itself? It’s a question that won’t go away. Away from the spotlight, most promoters are…

Omarion doesn’t want to be seen as a teen pop star anymore. The 28-year-old singer, who stepped onto the scene as frontman for B2K in the early 2000s, began his solo career with 2005’s O (Epic), which debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 182,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Sophomore set 21 (Epic) garnered similar success in 2006, crowning the chart with 119,000 units, but just four years later, Ollusion, released through Omarion’s imprint StarrWorld Entertainment and EMI, fell short, entering the Billboard 200 at No. 19 with only 21,000 sold. After signing with Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group earlier this year, the R&B star is ready to step into his adult shoes and release music that diverges from his previous teen-geared fare. On Nov. 29, Omarion will deliver his…

Boys Like Girls released second album Love Drunk on Columbia three years ago. The project yielded several pop singles, including “Two Is Better Than One” featuring Taylor Swift. When the band came off the road in support of the disc, which bowed at No. 8 on the Billboard 200, there was a sense of urgency to return to the studio, prompted in part by the response to third single “Heart Heart Heartbreak.” “We went into the studio a little discouraged by our most recent single,” singer Martin Johnson says over the phone between studio sessions in Los Angeles, where he now lives. “That was that wake-up-call moment about how much music is changing. That thing that we clung onto, that was so relevant in 2005 when we became a band…

Up-and-coming British singer/songwriter Gabrielle Aplin is reaping the rewards of a prime TV ad song placement for U.K. retail chain John Lewis. The 20-year-old vocalist fought off strong competition to land the coveted holiday season synch, which is among the most sought-after music placements in the United Kingdom. Previous John Lewis Christmas ads have included Ellie Goulding covering Elton John’s “Your Song.” Goulding’s rendition hit No. 2 on the U.K. chart. In 2011, Slow Moving Millie (vocalist Amelia Warner) performed a stripped-down version of the Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” for the ad, which drew more than 4.5 million YouTube views. For this year’s ad, titled “The Journey,” Aplin delivers a mournful piano-led cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s 1984 U.K. No. 1 “The Power…

>>>FAMILY AFFAIR Family of the Year (brothers Joe and Sebastian Keefe, Christina Schroeter and James Buckley) continues the indie-folk explosion fostered by Mumford & Sons (with whom the band has toured) and the Lumineers, as the hook-laden “Hero” (Nettwerk) debuts at No. 29 on Triple A, marking the quartet’s first Billboard chart ink. The Los Angeles-based band is touring with Walk the Moon in support of new album Loma Vista and is part of alternative KNRK Portland, Ore.’s “December to Remember” bill (the Killers, M83) on Dec. 12. >>>COUNTRY DARLING Iowa native Sarah Darling is making the rounds at country radio with current single “Home to Me,” which percolates just beneath Billboard’s Country Airplay tally. Since moving to Nashville a decade ago, Darling has worked part-time as a model, appearing…

WE GO TOGETHER “Grease” stars Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta are back on the Billboard 200–together. This Christmas bows at No. 81, returning Travolta to the list for the first time since 1979, when Travolta Fever hit No. 161. YEAR’S END This issue marks the first week of Billboard’s 2013 chart year. The just-finished span (Dec. 3, 2011-Nov. 24, 2012) will be recapped in the Dec. 22 Year in Music issue. All of Billboard’s year-end charts will be available on Billboard.com and Billboard. biz on Dec. 14. GOOD WORKS The Cities 97 Sampler makes its annual appearance on the Billboard 200, as the charity series’ 24th volume debuts at No. 16 (35,000 sold). The live set (featuring Jason Mraz and others) was compiled from in-studio performances at KTCZ Minneapolis. CHART…

www.billboard.biz >>>BON JOVI ANNOUNCES 2013 TOUR Bon Jovi’s Because We Can tour will hit the road in February with recessionfriendly prices. The group’s upcoming dates will feature seven price tiers in most markets, including more than 1,000 tickets priced at $19.50 before service fees in every city. This will be the fourth consecutive Bon Jovi tour promoted by AEG Live. The band’s last tour, the Circle, in 2010-11, grossed $265 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. >>> SWEDISH STARTUP RADICAL.FM TAKES AIM AT SPOTIFY Sweden, the country that brought the world Spotify, is spawning another free ondemand music service in Radical.fm. The Stockholm-based company, which launched last year as a radio streaming service in Sweden, has added an unlimited on-demand and curated streaming radio service that’s not only free, but also…

Even though a caucus of Republican congressmen reversed itself and pulled down a policy brief urging a radical reset of copyright law within 24 hours of its posting, some see this incident as showing momentum favoring a much more liberal “copyleft” position on the issue. When the brief was first posted, it was the digerati dream that appeared too good to be true. The brief, authored by Derek S. Khanna, and posted on the Republican Study Committee (RSC) site on Nov. 16, suggested truncating copyright to 46 years from the current term of life of author plus 70 years. It also imposed a heavy disincentive penalty tax that would have made it prohibitive to file for the last 10-year renewal and in effect shortening life of copyright to 36 years.…

For those of you sma r t enough to be among the recordbreaking attendance at the ninth annual Billboard Touring Conference Nov. 8-9 in New York, you might have wondered who those nice ladies were offering chair massages frontof-house and in the green room. That effort, particularly enjoyed by rockers like Warren Haynes and Mark Farner and soul powerhouse Tre Williams (who zoned out and almost had to be dragged off the chair to make it to his panel), was spearheaded through the grace of Darcy Lynch and Hands That Rock, a fund-raising offshoot of her Stage Hands touring massage therapy business. HTR’s mission is to bring music programs to underserved communities throughout the United States. It’s not really surprising that HTR received a profile boost this year through Kevin…

ON AUG. 31, 2011, Clifford “T.I.” Harris Jr. walked out of Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Forrest City, a low-security federal prison in Forrest City, Ark., not quite a free man. The day marked the end of the chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning rapper/actor’s second stint in Forrest City in as many years. And T.I., who had served 10 months of an 11-month sentence for probation violation stemming from a September 2010 traffic stop in Los Angeles, was elated. He boarded a private tour bus to make the 375-mile trip from Forrest City to a halfway house in Atlanta where he was scheduled to serve the remainder of his sentence, and he took to Twitter to celebrate his release: “The storm is over & da sun back out. IT’S OUR TIME TO SHINE…

COMPLETE YOUR BAND PROFILE BandPage CEO J Sider said artist profiles have five basic components: music, photos, videos, bios and shows. Artists who have all five drive much more meaningful engagement than those with fewer elements. “If you want to make those conversions, fill out those profiles,” Sider said. DIVE INTO THE WIDER WEB For some bands, their Facebook pages represent their primary online presence. That’s not enough. “When you add one additional site, you get 50% more traffic,” Sider said. “Adding two sites boosts your traffic by 75%. Facebook is a very powerful driver, but there are a lot of other places fans can interact with you. What surprised us is how much traffic there is on the open Web outside of Facebook.” Other places to build one’s Web…

Australia’s music community is as deep with talent as it is dynamic. And thanks in part to the phenomenon that is Gotye, more ears are tuning in to the music scene Down Under. Melbourne-raised Wally de Backer, aka electronic pop star Gotye, has sold 6.7 million downloads in the United States of “Somebody That I Used to Know,” according to Nielsen SoundScan. And he continues a long tradition of distinctive acts from Australia gaining global acclaim. Each has overcome the “tyranny of distance” between Australia and the music market in the rest of the world. Once again, “there’s a lot of interest in Australia,” veteran promoter Michael Chugg says. “A lot of young A&Rs, agents and managers are coming down and checking it out. Any excuse they can get to…

Despite being an established star in her home country, British songstress Paloma Faith had only modest hopes when she embarked on her first U.S. tour in September. “I was expecting to go and play to a lot of empty rooms,” the Londonborn singer says of the six-date trek, which included sellouts in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. “I was shocked. There were a lot of people who had been waiting for me to come over since the first record. It was uplifting and good for the soul.” Having won over early adopters with her brassy take on neo-soul, Faith’s U.S. following is only set to grow when domestic debut Fall to Grace arrives Dec. 4 on Epic. Produced by Nellee Hooper (Madonna, No Doubt) and…

Revival: Following 1996’s Down on the Upside,Soundgarden reclaims the rock throne with new LP King Animal (Nov. 13, A&) and a 2013 tour in January. Beginning at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. (Jan. 18), the group will stop at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York (Jan. 22-23) and the Riviera Theatre in Chicago (Jan. 29-30) before closing at Los Angeles’Wiltern (Feb. 15-16) . . . Cake walk: Glam-rock band the Darkness has announced its Let Them Eat Cakes world tour, following the release of Hot Cakes (Canary Dwarf/Wind-up), offered this month at a $5 discount on Amazon. Booked by Creative Artists Agency, the tour starts in North America at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (Jan. 10), continuing to Paradise Rock Club in Boston (Jan. 19), the Majestic Theatre in…

JAZZ MARCUS ROBERTS Deep in the Shed: A Blues Suite Producer:Marcus Roberts J-Master Records Release Date:Nov. 13 More than two decades after the initial release of Deep in the Shed, pianist Marcus Roberts revisits the 1989 album. This time around he has a new nonet that tackles the original’s six tracks in a different running order and a new one, “Athanatos Rythmos.” It’s spiritual and swinging, a winning re-examination of a work that has aged quite well despite being out of print. In 1990, Roberts was part of the Young Lions movement with Wynton Marsalis at the head of its class. There’s no discounting the Marsalis influence on this suite, rooted in Duke Ellington’s vision of the blues, but with maturity comes a greater sense of unified playing that generates…

One Direction has scored its second No. 1 album in less than a year, as Take Me Home explodes atop the Billboard 200 with 540,000 copies sold in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That’s the third-largest sales week of 2012, surpassed only by the debuts of Taylor Swift’s Red (1.2 million) and Mumford & Sons’Babel (600,000). Take Me Home, the group’s second effort, follows its Up All Night debut, which bowed atop the Billboard 200 on March 31 with 176,000 sold. That set marked the first time a U.K. group’s debut album started at No. 1 in the 56-year history of the chart. One Direction is also the first group to debut at No. 1 with its first two albums since Danity Kane strutted into the penthouse with…

Janelle Monáe may be the on-camera face of Sonos’ current “Listening Is Back” TV ads, but a high-energy song soundtracking the spot has quietly become the campaign’s breakout star. “We’re Far Enough From Heaven Now We Can Freak Out,” a track by rock-soul duo Deep Cotton, has sold 20,000 downloads (according to Nielsen SoundScan) in its first three weeks of release thanks in large part to a high volume of social- media activity among fans trying to identify the song. Since the Sonos spot debuted in early October, “Heaven” has yielded more than 300,000 hits for the band on YouTube and more than 50,000 hits on Shazam, and has been swimming around the upper tiers of iTunes’ R&B sales chart. It’s also prompted a high level of A&R interest in…

5 The re-formed band’s first studio set in 16 years launches with 83,000 and debuts at No. 1 on Hard Rock Albums. The quartet’s last effort, 1996’s Down on the Upside, spent 43 weeks on the list, debuting and peaking at No. 2. 7 The pop diva posts her sixth top 10 album, bowing with 73,000. She last visited the top tier with 2010’s Bionic—her last studio set—which launched at No. 3 with 111,000. 19 Celebrating its 50 years in music, the band’s best-of was issued in a variety of configurations. This entry (31,000) combines its two-CD and three-CD versions, while a super-deluxe five-CD boxed set charts separately. 34 This week the album surpasses 1 million in sales, making it the sixth to do so in 2012. A year ago,…

In September, Latin pop star Ricardo Arjona did something he hadn’t done in 12 years: He performed at a radio festival. Notoriously averse to such events, Arjona had long turned them down because he felt the equation was lopsided. “Because the artists have to do everything, don’t they? Radio promotion, radio shows, 25 meet-and-greets,” he says wryly. But last year, the Latin pop star went indie, releasing his latest album on his own label and financing his own marketing and promotion. Suddenly, the benefits of doing radio festivals were clear. While Arjona is a rarity as a major Latin star who releases music independently, he’s part of a growing number of Latin acts—signed both to indies and majors—that have taken the reins of their own radio promotion, hiring independent firms…

Pharrell Williams has many titles to his name—producer, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, fashion designer. But there was a brief period in late 2011 where he almost added “cable network chief” to his résumé Karmaloop, an R&B/hip-hop entertainment and e-commerce company that will do $200 million in revenue in 2012, was in advanced talks with major cable operators, including Comcast, to turn Karmaloop.com’s vast library of lifestyle and music content into a 24-hour network. “It was a real project for a year-anda-half,” Karmaloop CEO Greg Selkoe says, noting that the company had raised $70 million to get the cable network off the ground to cover marketing and production costs. “There was paperwork going back and forth but we never got to the point where we signed a carriage deal. If Oprah Winfrey’…

Alliance Entertainment, the second-largest music wholesaler in the world, is being shopped by the investment banking arm of Guggenheim Partners (which also owns Billboard parent Prometheus Global Media), according to sources. Meanwhile, Audio and Video Labs (AVL) Holding, which owns Disc Maker and CD Baby, is also on the block, shopped by investment bank Stephens, sources add. Executives at both Alliance and AVL declined to comment. Alliance, which had net revenue of $690 million from CD and DVD wholesaling in 2011, was acquired two years ago by private equity firms Platinum Entertainment and the Gores Group. At the time, sources told Billboard that the two firms paid about $85 million for Alliance, putting $25 million in equity and borrowing the rest from a new revolving credit account from Wachovia Bank.…

MUSIC AS ARTIST 9.5 million albums, according to Nielsen SoundScan 34 million tracks AS EXECUTIVE TOP GRAND HUSTLE ARTIST B.o.B B.O.B ALBUMS 855,000 B.O.B TRACKS 15.4 million FILM STAR AND PRODUCER “Takers” (Screen Gems, 2010) $57.7 million box-office gross, according to Box Office Mojo ALSO APPEARED IN “ATL” (Warner Bros., 2006) $21.2 million “American Gangster” (Universal, 2007) $130 million “Identity Thief” (Universal, 2013) “Road to Redemption: 45 Days to Go” (MTV) “T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle” (VH1) 4.1 million viewers for season-two premiere “Boss” (Starz) 391,000 viewers, season-two premiere (recently canceled) BOOKS “Power & Beauty” (HarperCollins) 10,000 sold, according to BookScan “Trouble & Triumph: A Novel of Power & Beauty” (HarperCollins): released Sept. 18 2,000 sold CLOTHING AKOO, Striver’s Row $20 million in sales for AKOO in 2011, according…

“ig data” has become a well-used catchphrase in business journals, on blogs and at conferences in the last couple of years, and the music industry is no different. ¶ Given the rapid digitization of music in the last decade, there are now terabytes upon terabytes of data from artists, labels, retailers, social media platforms and, of course, the fans themselves. The need to understand data has moved from being a back-office afterthought to a front-end tool in making many crucial decisions. ¶ Yet the findings at this year’s FutureSound conference collated from two days of public and private discussions with key executives in the day-to-day digital music ecosystem suggest there is still a long way to go for the business. HOW WE DEFINE DATA Several discussions around data focused specifically…

If the streaming revolution had been beating at Australia’s door in recent years, it broke that door down in 2012. All the big digital music players arrived here in less than 12 months, a frenzy that record label sources say has now made the slice of digital revenue in the market fatter than that of physical product. “Australia is unique in that no market has had so many services come in so quickly,” says Charles Caldas, CEO of London-based digital rights agency Merlin, and a former executive of Shock Music, an Australian independent music company. “There’s definitely a timeline of growth if we look at the way markets develop once streaming services become available,” he says. “There are a lot of positives coming out of Australia right now.” Market-leading CD…

Veteran hip-hop producer and Eminem tour DJ Alan “Alchemist” Maman has had a busy 2012. The Los Angeles native has helmed projects for Odd Future’s Domo Genesis (No Idols), Action Bronson (Rare Chandeliers) and his group Gangrene (Vodka & Ayahuasca). He also released the critically lauded solo album Russian Roulette (Decon), instrumental LP Rapper’s Best Friend 2 and free mixtape Yacht Rock. And he has two more already in the can—Step Brothers, with Evidence, and an untitled LP with Boldy James—that he hopes to release by year’s end. With plans to launch a label in 2013, Maman, who’s worked with everyone from Rick Ross to Mobb Deep to Dilated Peoples, doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. 1 You were exceptionally productive this year. Why? I don’t know what the…

Latin pop star Thalía has lived alternately in times of deep darkness and sheer joy for the past three years. It was during this period when her mother died—something the singer describes as difficult to accept—and also when she gave birth to her two children she’s raising with music executive husband Tommy Mottola. Those experiences helped shape her new ballad-driven album Habitame Siempre (Always Live in Me), but also provided her a new outlook. “These last three years were filled with happy and sad moments,” the 41-year-old artist says. “But it also allowed me to see life differently.” On her new album, executive-produced by Mottola, Thalía broke out from her trademark solo songs and sought more collaboration and duets. “When you are an artist you grow in tandem with your…

HIP-HOP BIG SEAN Guap (4:31) Producer:Key Wane Writers:S. Anderson, D. M. Weir II Publisher:not listed G.O.O.D./Def Jam/IDJMG On last year’s Watch the Throne, Kanye West and Jay-Z elevated the braggadocio rap game to new heights, detailing luxurious lifestyles where one’s eyes are fixed on Belgian threads and rare Bohemian poetry. Big Sean, West’s G.O.O.D. Music protégé, is thankfully is a bit more realistic in his desires. “My iPhone need a charge right now,” the Motor City MC confesses on “Guap,” the steel-drumanchored, Caribbean-flavored first single from his forthcoming sophomore album. Sean does spend most of the buoyant track praising his mad guap stash (that’s money, for the uninitiated), yet the listener senses that the lyrics come with a much-appreciated wink. After all , when Big Sean raps, “I need a…

Atlantic Records broke its string of releasing soundtracks to the “Twilight Saga” films 10 days prior to the film opening by issuing Breaking Dawn Part 2 the same week as the film. “Knowing it was the last movie [in the series],” Atlantic marketing VP Chris Stang says, “we wanted to have a big soundtrack impact the same week it opened.” The soundtrack to “Breaking Dawn Part 2” sold 93,000 copies in the week ending Nov. 18, according to Nielsen SoundScan, opening at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. Predecessor “Breaking Dawn Part 1,” which opened at No. 4 on sales of 105,000, set the prior low mark for the franchise. The first “Twilight” debuted at No. 1 with sales of 165,000 and “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” opened at No. 2 with…

For every mega-selling Christmas album by the likes of Josh Groban (Noel) and Michael Bublé (Christmas), there are countless misfires. Anyone remember Christmas on Death Row? We canvassed a cross section of industry sources for their thoughts on what acts could produce a blockbuster Christmas album in the vein of Groban and Bublé. The responses ranged from the expected (Adele) to the surprising (Kid Rock). Adele: Suggested by multiple respondents, the chart-topping superstar is the most obvious candidate for a Christmas set. She appeals to essentially every demographic and her name is instantly recognizable around the world. And as we’ve seen previously, those artists (like Adele) that can connect with an older demographic often move major holiday units. It’s no surprise that the best-selling Christmas albums every season are usually…

Send submissions to: exec@billboard.com RECORD COMPANIES: Universal Music Group International appoints Chaz Jenkins VP of international marketing for core classical. He previously headed up LSO Live. [PIAS] Group announces a new organizational structure: Peter Thompson becomes managing director of [PIAS] Recordings, and Adrian Pope takes on the role of managing director of artist and label services across the group. Thompson was managing director of [PIAS] U.K., and Pope was managing director of digital and business development of [PIAS] Entertainment Group. TOURING: Jeremy Joseph is promoted to managing director of Live Nation Merchandise International and becomes president of artist relations at Live Nation’s global merchandise division. He was managing director of De-Lux Merchandise, the company he founded in 1996 with members of U2, which was later acquired by Live Nation. Creative…