Innholdsfortegnelse for August 31, 2013 i Billboard Magazine

Robin Thicke’s lawsuit against the Marvin Gaye family and Bridgeport Music made waves when it was filed Aug. 15, not just because of its almost apologetic tone toward the family, but also because it was a novel legal tactic that’s likely to be repeated in future copyright battles. ¶ Thicke’s team filed suit only after offering payment to the Gaye family. Billboard has learned that a six-figure sum was proposed, in hopes of avoiding a court battle. ¶ At issue is millions of dollars—not just in sales and publishing money for a track that has already sold 4.6 million copies (according to Nielsen SoundScan), but also in synch and potential licensing fees. The goal of Thicke’s lawsuit, according to legal experts, is to clear the field for future deals. ¶…

Artists, songwriters. When Twitter and Facebook decide to start making money from Vine and Instagram video by turning to advertising, artists and songwriters who own the rights to songs used in these micro-videos could see an additional revenue stream that might one day rival what rights holders earn from YouTube. Music industry. Labels and publishers in the past have sued first and asked questions later. The NMPA’s David Israelite says the industry should work with these new business partners rather than fret over copyright infringement. “If they monetize videos with music, they will need licenses.”…

For its frst attempt at hosting 50 concerts in all 50 states on the same day, Bud Light had modest goals for the audience it wanted to reach as part of 50/50/1, a nationwide event held Aug. 1 to celebrate its Bud Light Music First program. As part of a live-stream deal for fve of those concerts with Myspace, the client told its Web partner that its most aggressive goal was to hit 2 million streams from 1 million unique users with an average of 10 minutes spent per viewer. By night’s end, Bud Light and Myspace soared past that benchmark with 2.5 million streams, close to 1.5 million unique viewers and more than 13 minutes spent per viewer, according to exclusive data obtained by Billboard. That was in addition…

Young norteño star Gerardo Ortiz, the late Jenni Rivera and ever-popular Arrolladora Banda el Limon de Rene Camacho lead the list of fnalists for the third annual Billboard Mexican Music Awards, set to air live on Telemundo Oct. 9 from the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. The list of fnalists, which also includes banda star Roberto Tapia, brash norteño trio Voz de Mando, venerable Banda el Recodo de Cruz Lizarraga, Calibre 50, 3BallMTY and Joan Sebastian, represents the eclectic nature of regional Mexican music, which has long been the top-selling Latin genre in the United States. Ortiz leads the charge with 14 nods in 13 categories that underscore his success in every arena of the business, from album sales and digital downloads to airplay and songwriting. Ortiz is up for artist,…

Crush management promotes dan Kruchkow to the newly created role of chief marketing ofcer. Based in New York, Kruchkow will continue his role as head of digital, a title he’s held since joining Crush in 2008. Prior to that, Kruchkow held digital executive roles at Island Def Jam Music Group and Universal Music Group. “When I decided to make the switch, we said, ‘Let’s drill down and build up a digital team at Crush,’” he says. “As time went on, digital made inroads to every aspect of the business in a substantial way, and ultimately it lends itself to creating a bigger marketing team here in all these areas.” Kruchkow says he’s working closely with Crush co-founders Bob McLynn and Jonathan Daniel to develop long-term marketing strategies for new music…

LATIN NOTAS LEILA COBO @LEILACOBO The Narco’s Song Early this month, the government of Chihuahua, Mexico, fned gritty corrido singer El Komander 100,000 pesos (approximately $7,746) for performing narcocorridos during a concert. It was the largest such fne and obeyed an increasingly stringent set of measures applied by local Mexican governments in an efort to curb drug-related violence and stem any public celebration of drug culture and lifestyle. Narcocorridos, the popular, danceable, accordion-laden songs that speak about drug dealers and their exploits, fall squarely into the celebratory category. Many artists have openly questioned the validity and efectiveness of such sanctions, but the ordinances just keep coming without inciting any major public outcry. That’s because Mexico is in a unique sociopolitical situation when it comes to music. This is the home…

.biZ PRS for Music and YouTube have signed a license agreement, covering more than 100,000 artists, composers and publishers who are members of the performing rights organization in more than 130 territories throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The Rascals will return to Broadway in December for a second three-week run, and if all goes according to plan, their next tour will be more week-long residencies in theaters than one-nighters in concert venues. It may also spur other veteran acts to explore this new hybrid of concert, theatrical show and flm that balances stories about a band, its songs and the milieu of its heyday. “It’s a completely new genre—what could be the next evolution of the concert experience for the older artists,” says E Street Band guitarist…

.biz For photos of the music business at work and play, go to Billboard.biz. To submit photos for consideration, send images to backbeat@billboard.com. 1 Write on: Sony Music chief creative officer Clive Davis and Nile Rodgers hit the East Hampton Library’s Authors Night at Gardiner’s Farm on Aug. 10 in East Hampton, N.Y., where Davis touted his memoir, “The Soundtrack of My Life.” 2 Clive Davis kept the party going later that night at a dinner thrown in his honor by noted art dealer Larry Gagosian (center), who opened up his 26-acre East Hampton estate to a high-powered group of guests that included Jack Nicholson, Warner Music Group owner Len Blavatnik and Jon Bon Jovi. 3 Watch the throne: Paul McCartney and Clive Davis traded war stories at Larry Gagosian’s…

Name: Carlos Alvarez hometown: Miami Foot in the door: Trevor Fletcher, GM of the Hit Factory (then called Criteria), asked Alvarez to help with vocals on a Julio Iglesias album, as the assistant on hand didn’t speak English. “He gave me my big break and put me directly into the fire,” Alvarez says. “After that, Julio said, ‘You’re coming with me.’” Memories: “We would often go to Julio’s house for dinner after sessions. On one evening in 1990, Julio had his staff prep three candy-applered Camaros in his driveway. As we pulled up, he handed each of us the keys with a big smile. He had brought his production team convertibles. It was a thank you for the history books.” current projects: Mixing tracks for Jorge Villamizar (formerly of Bacilos);…

If you search for “Call Me Maybe cover” on YouTube, you wouldn’t be surprised to be hit with thousands of results. But what is a little bit unexpected is that you have to dig through hundreds and hundreds of these videos to fnd a version of the song without some advertising—even for videos with a few hundred views. That wasn’t always the case. With You-Tube usage still growing by leaps and bounds, some copyright owners have had to become proactive in claiming their songs in order to make sure songwriters, artists and the owners themselves get a chance to monetize popular usergenerated videos. The owner of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), has spent months working on a strategy to ensure its songwriters can share…

The billion-dollar blockbuster sales history of “Call of Duty” and its broad reach among young men with healthy entertainment budgets make it a prime target for music synchronization. In a demonstration of the brand’s ability to woo top-level talent, the announcement event for the forthcoming tent-pole title “Call of Duty: Ghosts” on Aug. 14 featured the world premiere of Eminem’s new song “Survival” in the game’s trailer. The track marked the rap superstar’s first new solo material to be released in more than two years. “For someone at Eminem’s level it’s a huge priority for us to find the appropriate partners and platforms to expose the music in a credible way,” says Steve Berman, longtime vice chairman/head of marketing at Interscope, noting that ActivisionBlizzard research showed Eminem as the artist…

It’s early Saturday afternoon at Lollapalooza and the rain begins coming down, driving less committed revelers to shelter. Onstage, Swedish duo Icona Pop is debuting to the rapt and faithful, who are bouncing as well as anyone can in ankle-deep mud. If festivalgoers came here anticipating typical dancing divas, they aren’t getting it. The members of Icona Pop are real musicians. There’s no backing band, no DJ. While Caroline Hjelt prances at the lip of the stage, partner in electro-pop Aino Jawo is behind a bank of synths, staring into her laptop before joining Hjelt and leading the audience in some aerobic, hands-up clapping. They save their hit for last and the mud-splashed audience drowns them out, yelling “I! Don’t! Care! I love it!” over swells of revving synths and…

Al Payne, WERQ Baltimore. Drake, “Hold On, We’re going Home.” From “Blurred Lines” to Daft Punk and Justin [Timberlake’s] releases, this is the first time in a long time where listeners can sing along with what we’re playing. Drake is my new favorite among these “feel good” songs. Schoolboy Q featuring Kendrick Lamar, “collard greens.” My music director Talya [Johnson] sent me this one with “Hello 2013 Goodie Mob” in the subject line. This one delivers. It’s like a lost track from OutKast’s Stankonia. Where’s that Toyota 4runner I was driving back then? Yo gotti, “act Right.” Gotti always sells out club gigs here. This one will finally give him the airplay he deserves. Catchy hook that bridges West Coast and the South together. Feels like it will work nationwide…

Future “Honest” (3:23) PRODUCERS: Metro Boomin, DJ Spinz WRITERS: Nayvadius Wilburn, Leland Wayne, Gary Hill PUBLISHERS: various Epic Records HIP-HOP Future Stays ‘Honest’ At the beginning of 2012, Auto-Tune’s obituary had seemingly been etched in stone: The pitch-correcting software, once a hip-hop staple, had largely been swept under the rug as a cringe-worthy tool belonging to another time. But then arrived Future, the slurry-rapping Atlanta MC, who with last year’s mesmerizing Pluto singlehandedly breathed new life into the left-for-dead art form. “Honest,” the lead single and title track from Future’s forthcoming second efort, continues his emo, talent-mixing quest, further blurring the lines between singing and rapping. In “Honest,” Future keeps exploring his own brand of ballad, previously heard on standout Pluto tracks “Neva End” and “Truth Gonna Hurt You.” Still,…

K. Michelle has endured personal and professional woes in her career, but this week the singer hits the Billboard 200 at No. 2 with her major-label debut, Rebellious Soul (Atlantic Records), with 72,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It’s the highest debut on the Billboard 200 for a female R&B singer’s frst album since March 2001, when Marsha Ambrosius’Late Nights & Early Mornings also entered at No. 2. K. Michelle parted ways with RCA in 2011 after initially signing with Jive Records in 2008. “I wanted to get out of my label contract because of things that I couldn’t control that happened to me. They didn’t understand me, and a part of me thinks that I didn’t understand myself,” K. Michelle says. During the season-one taping of VH1’s “Love…

For only the second time in history, an album and a digital song simultaneously sell more than a half-million copies in a single week. On the Billboard 200, luke Bryan’Crash My Party debuts at No. 1 with 528,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. While on the Digital Songs chart, Katy Perry’ “Roar” bows at No. 1 with 557,000 downloads. The only other time that a download song and an album have each sold 500,000 in the same frame was Christmas 2009. In the sales week that ended Dec. 27, 2009, Ke$ha’ “TiK ToK” sold 610,000 downloads in its 12th chart week, while Susan Boyle’I Dreamed a Dream sold 510,000 copies in its ffth frame. Thus, this week also marks the frst time that an album and a song both debut…

Trend Report: Songs That Sold At Least 300,000 Downloads In Their First Week key to genre dance/electronic rap pop r& country Spring Summer Fall Winter SALES Flo Rida’s “Right Round” bowed with 636,000 downloads in its first week—laying claim to both the largest debut ever and the singlebiggest week, period. Five of the 19 debuts that exceed 300,000 were logged by rap titles, but none has arrived since 2010. AIRPLAY Perhaps surprisingly, just 11 of the 19 songs above have gone on to become top 10 hits on Hot 100 Airplay. Still, Katy Perry’s “Roar,” up 29-13 this week, seems likely to reach the region soon. One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” (73-62) and Taylor Swift’s “Red” (a debut at No. 74) are also scaling the survey. GENDER With the launch…

.biz Madison Square Garden Co. posted a higher fiscal fourthquarter earnings report that exceeded Wall Street estimates. MSG said its quarterly profit of $36.4 million was from quarterly revenue of $336.4 million, which rose 1%, but cost discipline boosted the bottom line further. The music industry may be headed for a replay of the tussle it had with YouTube years ago. But this time, the battle could be with Facebook and Twitter over new video- sharing formats that emphasize extreme brevity. Twitter got a preview of what could be ahead when Prince’s label, NPG Records, issued a takedown notice in March, requesting that the company remove eight videos featuring his music posted on its Vine platform. Prince’s demand posed several questions with regard to copyrighted material when it comes to…

Proponents of unpaid internships in the music industry are on their heels but still holding ground as a recent spate of class-action lawsuits has called the basic legality of such programs into question. In June, Atlantic Records, along with parent company Warner Music Group, became the target of a pair of lawsuits alleging that scores of former unpaid interns at the company had been entitled to wages under state and federal labor laws. Similar suits followed earlier this month against Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment, and, just this week, Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment and its distribution partner Universal Music Group. But rather than rush to reinvent an entrenched system, representatives of a number of major and independent labels say they’re taking a wait-and-see approach as the cases work their…

In a bid to expand its reach across multiple platforms, Maker Studios has signed an agreement to purchase Blip, a producer and distributor of original Web videos, according to sources close to the deal. The agreement, which is expected to close in early September, would combine Maker’s network of 60,000 channels on YouTube with Blip’s distribution across Xbox Live, Roku, Yahoo Screen, AOL, Google TV and iTunes, as well as on Amazon’s Kindle and Android devices. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. In addition to managing a network of 5,000 independent YouTube channels, Blip distributes content for Fremantle Media, MyDamn-Channel, the Pet Collective and Rooster Teeth. The New York startup generated 119 million views from its 9.6 million U.S. viewers in June, according to comScore. Last year, Blip began producing…

Twitter Amplifys Brands For VMAs WHAT: Viacom and Twitter have inked a multiple-year pact for Twitter Amplify, a social video ad platform that will help on-air advertisers at networks like MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Spike leverage their media buys to include more targeted tweets. Kicking of this partnership is MTV’s Video Music Awards, where Pepsi, Degree and three additional clients will enhance their VMA activity by sponsoring any video tweeted from an MTV-afliated account with timely content. So if MTV tweets a clip from Lady Gaga’s opening performance of “Applause,” Degree could sponsor that video as a promoted tweet to reach MTV’s followers based on users’ geography, operating system, device or publicly shared interests. Branding in the videos themselves can take the form of anything from a pre-roll to…

Jennifer Lopez is in talks to imminently return as an “American idol” judge, according to sources. A deal is close to being signed with Lopez, who was an “Idol” judge for the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Sources say Lopez decided to rejoin the show because its production schedule will allow her to spend more time with her children. Lopez will join returning judge Keith Urban and a third judge who hasn’t been announced yet. Fox declined to comment on whether Lopez is returning to “Idol” and didn’t immediately respond to another request for comment on Aug. 19. Lopez’s agent didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment . . . Rising urban bachata star Prince royce (right) has signed an exclusive, worldwide copublishing deal with peermusic. The deal was signed…

There’s a big diference between seeing trends in a market and correctly predicting their timing and fnancial impact. Analysts and music industry executives have long seen the potential of the subscription model. But the hard part is correctly predicting revenue and revenue growth. A new report by ABI Research says the global music subscription market will grow by 31% per year, from 29 million subscribers in 2013 to 191 million in 2018, while revenue will grow 21%, from $5 billion to roughly $13 billion. ABI’s forecast probably won’t be far of, as the subscription market is much more predictable than it used to be. But for a variety of reasons, market research companies have frequently overestimated the size of the digital music market and its various components. In 2006, iSuppli…

Broadway. “Jersey Boys” proved that a historical rock’n’roll piece can work within the traditional confines of the legitimate stage. “Once Upon a Dream” needs to cross over from concert event to sitdown production, which may be the result of its second three-week Broadway run. Music publishers. “Rock of Ages” turned dust-gathering ‘80s anthems into steady revenue producers, which should encourage publishers to pursue theatrical projects. The crowded field is occupied by studios converting older movies into musicals; the historical multimedia field appears wide open. Oldies circuit. Packaged tours of acts from the ‘60s and ‘70s may look to the Rascals show to bring in a storytelling element that would help differentiate one year’s tour from the next. As successful as this summer’s Turtles tour was, imagine more stories and B&W…

“You can feel that there’s a passion for this moment that’s really special. ” —Lars Ulrich 1 Band with a view: Metallica made its longawaited debut in China with two sold-out shows Aug. 13-14 at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai. 2 John Legend (center), pictured here with “Live on Letterman” executive producer Tom Lisack and CBS Interactive’s Marc DeBevoise, played a live-streamed concert for Vevo and CBS Interactive’s “Live on Letterman” at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater on Aug. 20. “The Ed Sullivan Theater is intimate,” DeBevoise says. “Legend said to me after the show, ‘It’s almost like they’re on top of you, which makes them nervous to stand up.’ But he went out in the crowd later—it was great.” 3 Atom bomb: Troy Carter (center) was all smiles with…

The new Gov’t Mule album, Shout!, would be noteworthy just because it’s the frst new studio recording by the wellloved blues-rock band in four years. But the album is also garnering attention as the group’s frst release on Blue Note Records, and for the wealth of guest vocalists who take part in alternate versions of all 11 songs on a bonus disc. Shout! is an important release for both Blue Note and its president, Don Was, who calls Gov’t Mule frontman Warren Haynes “as great a rock’n’roll guitar player as I know of. I never had any questions about wanting to do this record.” Gov’t Mule—Haynes, drummer Matt Abts, keyboardist Danny Louis and bassist Jorgen Carlsson, started writing for Shout! in February 2012 with a sense of renewed vigor after…

ONErpm, a multichannel network in Brazil that works with high-profile artists as well as indie bands, recently expanded into the United States. Indie artists can upload content to ONErpm’s website, which it will in turn upload to YouTube with the correct copyright information so it can be fingerprinted and then be monitored by having advertising placed against the video. Moreover, if indie artists so chose, they can join ONErpm’s multichannel network on YouTube, which provides a premium percentage of advertising revenue and cross-channel promotion. In return, ONErpm keeps 30% of the revenue it collects from YouTube on behalf of the artists. ONErpm claims its network gets 120 million views a month from 11,000 artists with 50,000 albums. AdRev has been operating in the YouTube space administering the rights of sound…

“all of Duty: Black Ops II” isn’t the only way Avenged Sevenfold is incorporating gaming culture into the marketing of Hail to the King. The band has teamed with Machinima for an animated series to air this fall on the online videogame network’s Happy Hour channel, directed by Jon Schnepp (Cartoon Network’s “Metalocalypse”). Co-fnanced by Warner Bros. Records, the series aligns the band with one of YouTube’s top 10 channel partners (Machinima ranked No. 7 in July, according to comScore, with 18.1 million unique viewers) and the Web’s leading destination for gamingrelated video content. The Avenged series marks a frst-of-its-kind show built around a musical act for Machinima, and one with a high precedent. In 2010, Warner Bros. tapped the site to create a user-generated music video for the band’s…

ARTIST: Joe Nichols ALBUM: Crickets LABEL: Red Bow Records RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8 MANAGEMENT: George Couri and Damon Atkinson, Triple 8 Management PRODUCERS: Mickey Jack Cones, Derek George, Tony Brown BOOKING AGENT: John Huie, Creative Artists Agency CHART HISTORY: Man With a Memory (2003), No. 9 Top Country Albums, 910,000; III (2005), No. 2 Top Country Albums, 746,000; three No. 1s on Hot Country Songs: “Brokenheartsville” (2003), “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” (2005), “Gimme That Girl” (2010) TWITTER: @JoeNichols It’s a Thursday afternoon in Nashville and Joe Nichols is escaping the summer sun in the cool, dark confnes of Westwood Studios. Ensconced there with producers Mickey Jack Cones and Derek George, as well as some of Music City’s top session musicians, Nichols is likely feeling a diferent kind of…

ARTIST: Elvis Costello & the Roots ALBuM: Wise Up Ghost RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17 LABEL: Blue Note PRODuCERS: Elvis Costello, Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Steven Mandel, Ray Angry MANAGERS: Steve Macklam and Sam Feldman, Macklam Feldman Management (Costello); Richard Nichols, Coolhunter Management; Shawn Gee, SEFG (The Roots) PuBLISHERS: various BOOKING AGENTS: Marsha Vlasic, ICM Partners (Costello); Cara Lewis, Creative Artists Agency (The Roots) CHART HISTORy: Costello has had 16 top 40-charting albums on the Billboard 200; the Roots have had nine. TWITTER: @ElvisCostello, @theroots Elvis Costello has appeared three times on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” each time enlisting Fallon’s house band the Roots to join him. The musicians have reimagined old Costello tracks, explored new ones and ofered innovative interpretations of Bruce Springsteen and Nina Simone. During the past four…

.biz Flo Rida has dodged paying roughly $400,000 in damages to the organizers of an Australian music festival he failed to show up to. The promoter of the show, Mothership Music, sued the artist and his management, VIP Entertainment and Concepts, in the District Court of New South Wales for breach of contract and damages totaling Australian $417,345 ($377,000). After an initial ruling in the festival’s favor, the artist challenged the decision in the NSW Court of Appeal, which was upheld. Luke Bryan’s banner year just keeps getting bigger and better. In March, his beachy compilation Spring Break . . . Here to Party debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums, and in April, he won entertainer of the year at the Academy of Country…

3 MONTHS AGO Parachute delivered the final mastered LP to the marketing and A&R teams at Island Def Jam in late May, and the A&R team, including Island Records president David Massey and A&R rep Evan Lipschutz, “worked to identify what our focus tracks and our single would be,” Island director of marketing Sharon Timure says. Timure’s team premiered first single “Can’t Help” on Buzznet on May 21, with an audio clip debuting May 28 on Vevo. Using footage from the group’s Irving Plaza show in New York on April 2 (supporting Andy Grammer), the team then assembled a live video for the track, which appeared on the band’s Vevo channel on June 27. 1 MONTH AGO To further raise the group’s online profile, Timure and her team created a…

Thrice Is Nice as yoko ono’s “walking on thin ice 2013” rises 22-18 on dance Club songs, the track makes its third trip up the tally. the original reached no. 13 in 1981, while it returned to the chart for a week at no. 1 in 2003. the composition joins the list of songs to appear three times on a survey, which, on dance Club songs, also includes alison limerick’s “where love lives” (1991, 1996 and 2003). on the billboard hot 100, the righteous brothers charted three times with “unchained melody,” while dolly Parton has scaled hot Country songs three times with “i will always love you.” —gary trust THE BIG NUMBER 155K luke bryan will likely hold at no. 1 next week on the billboard 200, industry forecasters say.…

UMPG And WB Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner Bros. Entertainment have reached a deal to renew a worldwide administration contract. The pact will cover new releases as well as the back catalogs of Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Productions and Warner Bros. Television productions. Among those companies’ holdings are music from “Casablanca” and the “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings” franchises. On the TV front is “2 Broke Girls.” Apple’s Investor FaceTime Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn has reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to meet for dinner next month and discuss his proposal over the size of the Cupertino, Calif.-based giant’s share-buyback program. Icahn, who has taken a sizable stake in Apple, believes the company’s stock is undervalued and is pushing the board to expand…

.biz Ole’s joint venture with Timbaland’s Blue Stone Music Publishing has signed Garland Mosley, Timbaland’s brother, to a worldwide administration contract. The signing of Mosley, whose stage name is Sebastian, represents the first deal for the ole-Blue Stone partnership. I Tunes Radio is coming soon. The Internet radio service will not only give Apple, the world leader in music sales, a competitor to Pandora and iHeartRadio, but also an opportunity to boost its underperforming advertising unit, iAd. Apple has been lining up advertisers for a September launch in the United States, according to sources familiar with its plans. These advertisers include McDonald’s, Nissan, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble. Sources also confrm that Apple plans to run around one advert every 15 minutes—much less than traditional radio, but seen as a…

As one of the most recognizable and infuential people in regional Mexican, Pepe Garza has his hands in radio, TV, concert promotion and music publishing. He’s primarily known as PD of radio stations KBUE Los Angeles and KRQB San Bernardino, Calif. He’s also general producer of “El Show de Don Cheto,” the stations’ signature morning show that’s syndicated to 23 other outlets. He’s a consultant for Estella TV, the Spanishlanguage network owned by Liberman Broadcasting, and a judge on its talent show, “Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento.” Garza also founded publisher Arpa Musical, this year’s publisher of the year at the Billboard Latin Music Awards. And to cap it all, he’s a composer who occasionally records his own fare. 6.30 am Wake up and take my German shepherd for a walk.…

Live events. Major TV events like the World Series (where Phillip Phillips performed in 2012) and the Grammys have big-budget commitments from sponsors looking to reach viewers where they view or discuss the shows. Twitter Amplify allows brands to insert ads closer to timely content, with custom targeting. Twitter. As the social network’s ad model expands and speculation grows about a potential initial public offering, leveraging TV ad dollars to boost its own platforms should further accelerate the company’s growth. The VMAs. Historically a show with disproportionate tweets-to-ratings volume, the VMAs can now monetize their buzz with clients like Pepsi and Degree. TWITTER BY THE NUMBERS 15m Tweets generated by 2012 VMAs telecast 6.1m Viewers who tuned in to the VMAs in 2012 $288m Twitter’s estimated 2012 ad revenue (per…

When Grammy Award-winning rock band Linkin Park founded nonproft organization Music for Relief and its Power the World initiative, frontmen Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington wanted to do their part to help the more than 1 billion people in the world without electricity. Partnering with Hard Rock International, Shinoda designed a limited-edition run of T-shirts, dubbed the Linkin Park Signature Series: Edition 31, joining Hard Rock’s Signature Series initiative, where musicians create merchandise that supports worldwide causes. “The most exciting part of our partnership with Hard Rock is that it helps people,” Shinoda says. “There are people in the world who cook dinner over fres and people who have to perform emergency surgery at night via candlelight.” The line debuted Aug. 9 at the Roppongi Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo.…

Touring Conference Register now for the 10th annual Billboard Touring Conference & Awards. Use code BIZ13 and save. There’s no shortage of venues in North America. Virtually any market of 100,000 people has at least one viable venue, and they’re all seeking content. In fact, it’s an accepted fact that there are more places to play than there are artists to play them. Yet Mike luba, former manager and former partner in S2BN with Michael Cohl, is out there looking for “weird places to play” in his role as producer for Mumford & Sons’ Gentlemen of the Road tour, now in its second year. And he has found a cool one: the 90-yearold Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in Queens. Mumford & Sons, along with the Vaccines and bear’s den, will…

What did you wake up thinking about this morning? I woke up this morning looking forward to a six-day break with my wife, son and daughter. We’re at my friend’s lake house on Long Island. It’s been a hectic summer. Right after my f rst cup of cof ee, I got a call from Marc Brickman and Steven Van Zandt, the producers of the Rascals show we had in Toronto. Describe a lesson you learned from a failure. This is almost a right of passage that one goes through in the agency business. You discover a band at their embryonic stage, develop them from 10 people in a nightclub to 5,000 or 10,000 people nationally, and then get f red by that band for no reason due to the quality…

Philadelphia may be known for its prominent role in early American history, but its music history runs almost as deep. “American Bandstand,” Chubby Checker, Hall & Oates and Frankie Avalon have all called the City of Brotherly Love home. But its longestrunning legacy may be the inf uential Philly soul scene, which nurtured Gamble & Huf (see story, right), Patti LaBelle and Boyz II Men, and lives on today with Jill Scott and the Roots’ work with John Legend. And now Philly has a marquee festival to match its musical prowess: Budweiser’s Made in America. The festival’s second edition (Aug. 31-Sept. 1) runs the stylistic gamut from Beyoncé to Nine Inch Nails, and will once again take over the streets of central Philly. (The main stage is in front of…

Rock’n’roll iron man Warren Haynes is known for efortlessly shifting musical gears, “stepping of one tour bus and on another,” as he puts it, touring constantly with such bands as the Allman Brothers Band, the Dead, his own Warren Haynes Band and the blistering bluesrock outfit he founded nearly 20 years ago, Gov’t Mule. With Haynes’ schedule, one could understand how four years could go by since the Mule independently released By a Thread on their Evil Teen imprint in 2009. The new Shout! arrives on Blue Note Records Sept. 24, packed with some of the most powerful songs the band’s ever recorded and sporting a bonus CD with those same tracks rearranged and resung by guest vocalists, including Dave Matthews, Dr. John, Toots Hibbert, Elvis Costello, Grace Potter, Steve…

Last October, metal five-piece Av enged Sevenfold scored perhaps the biggest booking of any musical act outside of the Grammys. It wasn’t an awards show, it wasn’t a festival date—it wasn’t even a physical appearance. Instead, the band appeared in animated form during the end credits of Activision’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” performing a custommade song called “Carry On” and becoming part of videogame history in the process. In its f rst 15 days of release, “Black Ops II” became the fastest-selling game to pass the $1 billion mark and the largest entertainment launch in Hollywood history, exposing Avenged Sevenfold to millions of fans in the process. A YouTube clip of the band’s cameo has racked up 6.2 million views. Not bad for a band that refuses to…

Were this the 1970s—when the Nashville sound leaned heavily on polished productions dense with orchestration—“ Waterproof Mascara” would be the lead track on side two of Sheryl Crow’s new album. And, for that matter, it probably wouldn’t be Crow singing this tale of heartbreak. The singer expressing sorrow for a son who has been abandoned by his father would be Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn or Bobbie Gentry. Instead it’s Crow, stepping deep within a genre that has always been on the fringes of her work. Her frst album for Warner Bros. is her frst to specifcally target the country marketplace, and “Waterproof Mascara,” the frst song Crow wrote with the two crucial advocates behind her attempt to crack country playlists, Chris DuBois and Brad Paisley, is a bold step…

MAGIC! Nasri Atweh is one-half of the Messengers, the songwriting/production team responsible for hits by Justin Bieber and Chris Brown. On the side, Atweh, who penned Pitbull’s “Feel This Moment,” has been writing reggaeinspired rock songs. Last year the musician enlisted fellow Toronto musicians Mark Pelli, Alex Tanas and Anthony Lavdanski to form an actual band, Magic! “We wrote this song called ‘Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool’ and that was the sonic beginning of it,” Atweh says. “It was this neat, throwback, Policestyle record.” The foursome recorded a slew of tracks with the Messengers’ Adam Messenger producing in Los Angeles and released a buoyant single titled “Rude” online in January. Charles Chavez, CEO of Latium Entertainment and Pitbull’s manager, caught wind of Magic! and reactivated the label side of his…

CHASE RICE Rising independent country star Chase Rice will take his Ready Set Roll tour nationwide in support of his self-released LP Dirt Road Communion. Aiding him in his jaunt are Jim Butler and Meredith Jones of Creative Artists Agency, who partnered with Chase last May. Routing: Live Nation partnered for a select number of Rice’s dates for its One to Watch tour. “We used that as our anchor, and we built up around it with other markets we’d either been to or wanted to try out,” Butler says. Since he hadn’t previously focused on Texas or the West Coast, Rice told CAA that he had demand in those markets. He’ll hit venues with capacities ranging from the 300-seat House of Blues in Cleveland (Oct. 17) to the 1,500-capacity House…

Lana Del Rey’s breakout single “Summertime Sadness” continues to zoom up an array of Billboard charts, as its retooled dance remix fnds new fans. Produced by Cedric Gervais, the song’s rerub has been embraced by radio programmers and is winning the lion’s share of the song’s sales online. This week, it bullets 16-15 on the Billboard Hot 100. 15% 117K In the week ending Aug. 18, the song’s sales rose to 117,000 (up 15%), according to Nielsen SoundScan, for its best sales frame yet. Of its sales this week, 59% came from the Gervais remix. 35% “Summertime Sadness” is smiling on its parent album, Born to Die. This week, the set climbs 29-20 on the Billboard 200 with 13,000 sold for the week (up 35%). It’s the album’s best sales…

‘Strong’ Start Will Hoge makes his first appearance on Hot Country Songs at No. 46 with “Strong” (Prospector), which appears in Chevrolet’s advertising for the 2014 Silverado. The campaign debuted July 15 on ESPN, where a long-form version of the ad ran during the network’s broadcast of Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby. It repeated the following day on Fox during the MLB All-Star Game. “Strong,” which previews Hoge’s album Never Give In (Oct. 15), sold 18,000 downloads (up 159%) in the week ending Aug. 18, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Its official video has racked up 280,000 YouTube views. A New Day Like Hoge, Andra Day is receiving exposure in an ad campaign: Her “Coolin’ in the Street” (featuring Ziggy Marley) serves as the soundtrack to Bud Light Lime’s “Switch…

LEGEND Bullets indicate titles with greatest weekly gains. Album Charts ● Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 500,000 albums (Gold). ▴ RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 1 million units (Platinum). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. ◆ RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 10 million units (Diamond). Numeral noted with Diamond symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. ◯ Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 50,000 units (Oro). △ Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 100,000 units (Platino). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multi-platinum level. Digital Songs Charts ● RIAA certification for 500,000 paid downloads (Gold). ▴ RIAA certification for 1 million paid downloads…