Record labels have put the case for why they are still essential in the digital age.

Global music industry body the IFPI said it wanted to counter the “myth” that artists can make it on their own.

In a report, it said virtually no new artists had broken through without the backing of a record label.

Major labels invest $1m (£670,000) in each new act, who could not afford to make records and videos and go on tour without that backing, the IFPI said.

Record labels around the world spend a total of $5bn (£3.3bn) a year on developing and promoting new and established artists.

IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) chief executive John Kennedy said attempting to forge a career online, competing with millions of other acts on MySpace, was like “screaming in space”.

“There’s not really any evidence of anybody succeeding having gone direct,” he said.

Those artists all garnered early attention on the internet but did not achieve mainstream success until they signed record deals.

Others, such as Radiohead, Dizzee Rascal and Simply Red, have all struck out on their own – but only after building up their careers with labels.

The IFPI’s estimated $1m budget to launch a new star, described as “very conservative”, includes the artist’s advance and fees for recording an album, filming three videos and promoting the releases.

If that artist is successful, much of that outlay will be deducted from their royalties. But label executives point out that they take the risk and recoup their investment in fewer than one in five cases.

“I wish there were other people investing the kind of money and expertise that we do into new artists, but unfortunately that just isn’t happening.”

But Jeremy Silver, chief executive of the Featured Artists’ Coalition lobby group, said labels were signing fewer artists than ever because budgets have gone down, and artists were beginning to be able to make a living without them.

“The combination of touring, playing live and working online is really starting to make a difference,” he said.

“Increasingly we’re starting to see artists emerging that are selling out venues without having had any mainstream exposure whatsoever and without the involvement of a major record label, but having developed fan communities online who know about them.

“They indicate a future opportunity for a much more varied set of approaches for building a career as a musician.”

Source: BBC

As Rolling Stone reported in December, Yauch previously said that the album would likely arrive in early 2010. Yauch told EW that since the album was recorded well over a year ago — it was initially slated to come out September 15th, 2009 — the Beasties will likely listen to the album again and decide if they want to do any late-game editing. “We want to take a look at it and re-evaluate and make sure it is what we want to put out there and that we are still happy with it. I don’t think we will change it up too much,” Yauch said.

The Beastie Boys were forced to cancel headlining performances at Lollapalooza, All Points West and Austin City Limits, as well as push back Hot Sauce, after Yauch revealed in July 2009 that he needed to undergo treatment for cancer in the Parotid gland in his neck. “I’m feeling healthy, strong and hopeful that I’ve beaten this thing, but of course time will tell,” Yauch wrote in an e-mail to fans in October 2009.

Source: Rolling Stone

Of course, not everyone in the band bit the bullet at the end of the promotional cycle for their last album, 2005’s massive Demon Days — just guitarist Noodle, who perished at the conclusion of the band’s “El Mañana” video (she’s since returned in cyborg form), but there was a definite sense that things were winding down in ‘Rillaz land, with co-creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett even telling MTV News that the group was “retiring … we’re going to do it hip-hop style, like Jay-Z.”

But, much like Jigga, that retirement didn’t stick, and the proof is Beach which hits stores on Tuesday (March 9). Much like everything the Gorillaz do, it’s a sprawling, kitchen-sink affair, with an orchestra’s worth of musicians and an army of guest vocalists taking part in things. There’s a whole lot to keep track of, which is why we’ve prepared this cheat sheet — a list of the who’s, what’s and where’s that make the album tick.

Humble Beginnings
After spending much of 2007 working on Monkey: Journey to the West, a Chinese-style opera that premiered at the Manchester International Festival, Albarn and Hewlett announced plans for a new Gorillaz album, tentatively called Carousel. That eventually morphed into Plastic Beach (Albarn reportedly got the inspiration for the album while sitting on the beach, noticing all the trash in the sand) and recording began in June 2008. In September of last year, Albarn premiered three brand-new tracks — “Electric Shock,” “Broken” and “Stylo” — on BBC Radio 1. In December, Gorillaz appeared on the U.K. cover of Wired magazine and in January their official site underwent a face-lift, making it clear that the Plastic Beach era had begun.

A Cast Of Hundreds
It wouldn’t be a Gorillaz production without more than a few co-stars, and Plastic Beach has ‘em by the bucketload. First single “Stylo” features vocals by Mos Def and Bobby Womack (not to mention Bruce Willis in the video), and the album features contributions from Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon from the Clash, the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, British rappers Bashy and Kano, De La Soul and Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, to name just a few. There are also musical flourishes provided by Chicago’s Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental and Arabic Music too.

Return To The Road
Gorillaz have performed live in the past — including a sold-out run of shows at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and a Grammy duet with Madonna — but longtime plans of a worldwide holographic tour never materialized. But, this time around, things may be different — the band have already been confirmed as headliners at the 2010 Coachella Festival, and if Beach is a success, the lure of the open road may prove too much to resist.

Source:  MTV News

Had Pandora died, it would have joined myriad music start-ups in the tech company graveyard, like SpiralFrog and the original Napster. Instead, with a successful iPhone app fueling interest, Pandora is attracting attention from investment bankers who think it could go public, the pinnacle of success for a start-up.

Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month. That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos that could one day, Pandora hopes, make it as ubiquitous as AM/FM radio.

“We were in a pretty deep dark hole for a long time,” said Mr. Westergren, who is now the company’s chief strategy officer.. “But now it’s a pretty out-of-body experience.”

At the end of 2009, Pandora reported its first profitable quarter and $50 million in annual revenue — mostly from ads and the rest from subscriptions and payments from iTunes and Amazon.com when people buy music. Revenue will probably be $100 million this year, said Ralph Schackart, a digital media analyst at William Blair.

Pandora’s success can be credited to old-fashioned perseverance, its ability to harness intense loyalty from users and a willingness to shift directions — from business to consumer, from subscription to free, from computer to mobile — when its fortunes flagged.

Its library now has 700,000 songs, each categorized by an employee based on 400 musical attributes, like whether the voice is breathy, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, or gravelly like Tom Waits. Listeners pick a song or musician they like, and Pandora serves up songs with similar qualities — Charlotte Gainsbourg to Feist to Viva Voce to Belle and Sebastian. Unlike other music services like MySpace Music or Spotify, now available in parts of Europe, listeners cannot request specific songs.

Though Pandora’s executives say it is focusing on growth, not a public offering, the company is taking steps to make it possible. Last month, it hired a chief financial officer, Steve Cakebread, who had that job at Salesforce.com when it went public.

It is all a long way from January 2000, when Mr. Westergren founded the company. Trained as a jazz pianist, he spent a decade playing in rock bands before taking a job as a film composer. While analyzing the construction of music to figure out what film directors would like, he came up with an idea to create a music genome.

This being 1999, he turned the idea into a Web start-up and raised $1.5 million from angel investors. It was originally called Savage Beast Technologies and sold music recommendation services to businesses like Best Buy.

By the end of 2001, he had 50 employees and no money. Every two weeks, he held all-hands meetings to beg people to work, unpaid, for another two weeks. That went on for two years.

Meanwhile, he appealed to venture capitalists, charged up 11 credit cards and considered a company trip to Reno to gamble for more money. The dot-com bubble had burst, and shell-shocked investors were not interested in a company that relied on people, who required salaries and health insurance, instead of computers.

In March 2004, he made his 348th pitch seeking backers. Larry Marcus, a venture capitalist at Walden Venture Capital and a musician, decided to lead a $9 million investment.

“The pitch that he gave wasn’t that interesting,” Mr. Marcus said. “But what was incredibly interesting was Tim himself. We could tell he was an entrepreneur who wasn’t going to fail.”

Mr. Westergren took $2 million of it and called another all-hands meeting to pay everyone back. The next order of business: focus the service on consumers instead of businesses, change the name and replace Mr. Westergren as chief executive with Joe Kennedy, who had experience building consumer products at E-Loan and Saturn. Pandora’s listenership climbed, and in December 2005, it sold its first ad.

But in 2007, Pandora got news that threatened most of its revenue. A federal royalty board had raised the fee that online radio stations had to pay to record labels for each song. “Overnight our business was broken,” Mr. Westergren said. “We contemplated pulling the plug.”

Instead, Pandora hired a lobbyist in Washington and recruited its listeners to write to their representatives. “A lot of these users think they’re customers of the cause rather than users per se,” said Willy C. Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School who has written a case study on Pandora. “It’s a different spin on marketing.” The board agreed to negotiations and after two years settled on a lower rate.

Some music lovers dislike Pandora’s approach to choosing music based on its characteristics rather than cultural associations. Slacker Radio, a competitor with three times as many songs but less than a third of Pandora’s listeners, takes a different approach. A ’90s alternative station should be informed by Seattle grunge, said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president for marketing at Slacker. “It’s not just that this has an 80-beat-a-minute guitar riff,” he said. “It’s that this band toured with Eddie Vedder.”

Yet in 2008, Pandora built an iPhone app that let people stream music. Almost immediately, 35,000 new users a day joined Pandora from their cellphones, doubling the number of daily signups.

For Pandora and its listeners, it was a revelation. Internet radio was not just for the computer. People could listen to their phone on the treadmill or plug it into their car or living room speakers.

In January, Pandora announced a deal with Ford to include Pandora in its voice-activated Sync system, so drivers will be able to say, “Launch my Lady Gaga station” to play their personalized station based on the music of that performer. Consumer electronics companies like Samsung, Vizio and Sonos are also integrating Pandora into their Blu-ray players, TVs and music systems.

“Think about what made AM/FM radio so accessible,” said Mr. Kennedy, Pandora’s chief. “You get into the car or buy a clock for your nightstand and push a button and radio comes out,” he said. “That’s what we’re hoping to match.”

Source: The New York Times

He shot himself in the heart in an alley outside a friend’s home, said his manager, Shelby Meade. Lt. Greg Hoskins of the Knoxville Police Department confirmed that the police responded to a call at 1:20 p.m., and that Mr. Linkous was pronounced dead at the scene. According to his family, Mr. Linkous owned the gun that he used.

On four Sparklehorse albums, released between 1995 and 2006, and in numerous collaborations, Mr. Linkous developed a style that sent sunny, Beatles-esque melodies through a filter of crackling, damaged folk-rock, and his songs were filled with entropic imagery. “Everything that’s made is made to decay,” he sang in a whispery tenor on Sparklehorse’s debut album, “Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot” (Capitol).

Frederick Mark Linkous was born in Arlington, Va., in 1962 to a family with roots in the coal-mining country of southwestern Virginia. After graduating from high school he moved to New York City and started the band the Dancing Hoods, which relocated to Los Angeles in pursuit of mainstream rock success. But disillusioned with the music business, Mr. Linkous returned to Virginia and reinvented his sound as Sparklehorse, a name that he applied to himself as well as his band.

“We were trying so hard to get signed, and I just quit and came back home and just gave up on all those aspirations of being a rock star,” he said in an interview in 1999. “That’s when I started making good music.”

Although Sparklehorse’s music never had wide commercial success, it found respect among critics and other musicians. Rolling Stone called its 1999 album, “Good Morning Spider,” a “homemade tour de force of psychedelic Appalachian folk slop,” and the third Sparklehorse record, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” released in 2001, had guest appearances by Tom Waits and PJ Harvey.

While on tour in 1996, Mr. Linkous collapsed in a hotel room after taking Valium and antidepressants. He briefly went into cardiac arrest before being revived, and he sustained injuries to his legs that put him in a wheelchair for six months. His legs never fully recovered their strength. His convalescence inspired “St. Mary,” a song on his second album named after the hospital where he recuperated. “Come on boys,” he sings, “please let me taste the clean air in my lungs.”

Mr. Linkous was also in demand as a producer, working with the singer Daniel Johnstonand the Swedish singer (and member of the Cardigans) Nina Persson, among others. He collaborated with Danger Mouse and the director David Lynch on “Dark Night of the Soul,” an album and photo book whose scheduled release last year was delayed by legal entanglements; last week Danger Mouse announced that those problems had been worked out and that the album would be released soon.

Mr. Linkous had recently completed most of the work for a new Sparklehorse album and was in the process of moving to Knoxville and setting up a studio to complete the record, said Ms. Meade, his manager.

His survivors include his wife, Teresa Linkous; his mother, Gloria Hughes Thacker; his father, Frederick Linkous, and stepmother, Leta; and three brothers, Matt, Paul and Daniel Linkous.

Source: New York Times

The 63-year-old rock icon last released a new album in 2003, and stopped touring in 2004 after suffering a heart attack during a European trek. The early Internet enthusiast has not even updated his official blog since October 2006, when he proudly revealed he would voice a character on the kids cartoon show “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Last year, he attended a few red-carpet events to help promote his son Duncan Jones’ movie “Moon.” But otherwise the musical chameleon seems to be savoring his latest metamorphosis into married father of a 9-year-old daughter in New York.

“He’s just being Dad, I think, laying low,” said bass player Gail Ann Dorsey, who started working with Bowie almost 15 years ago. “I can’t imagine he’s not writing or doing something, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Dorsey said she e-mailed him a birthday greeting in January, but resisted the temptation to ask if he was working on any projects.

“I never pry into an artist’s life, or process either,” Dorsey said. “I don’t write to him and go, ‘What are you doing?’ Or call and go, ‘Why aren’t you playing?’ You let people be and you see where it falls.”

Bowie biographer Marc Spitz is slowly losing hope that the singer will make a comeback, even as peers such as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop keep recording and touring.

“CLOSE TO THE ABYSS”

His absence is all the more striking given that Bowie had released an album or single almost every year since 1964. It would be akin to the equally prolific Woody Allen stepping back from filmmaking, Spitz said.

He also noted that people are used to celebrities such as David Letterman and Robin Williams bouncing back after heart ailments, not to mention former Vice President Dick Cheney.

But given that Bowie often performed songs about death and the mysteries of life, Spitz said he might have lost his appetite after getting “that close to the abyss.”

He also interviewed people for his book, “Bowie: A Biography,” who told him: “Maybe he’s just done, maybe he’s said his piece,” Spitz recounted. “Some people don’t go forever and ever and ever, like the Rolling Stones.”

Bowie’s managers declined to comment on his current pursuits. The singer has long dabbled in film, painting and photography. Bowie and his second wife, Somali model Iman, are the parents of 9-year-old Lexi.

His 38-year-old son Duncan, formerly known as Zowie Bowie, kept the family in the news this past year with his sci-fi movie “Moon,” which recently won a British Academy Film Award.

While it’s entirely possible that Bowie is occupied with parent-teacher meetings and playing the house-husband role that John Lennon assumed for the last five years of his life, he has kept his representatives busy with archival projects.

EMI last year released a CD and DVD derived from his 1999 appearance on VH1’s “Storytellers,” as well as a bonus-packed 40th anniversary reissue of his “Space Oddity” album.

Universal is about to reissue his self-titled 1967 debut album, also with bonus tracks, and Columbia has just issued a live CD from a 2003 tour.

The latter release, “A Reality Tour,” is a double-disc set culled from a pair of shows in Dublin. A DVD version was released in 2004.

Still, Spitz is more interested in what Bowie has to say now. His last studio album, “Reality,” came out in July 2003, spending just four weeks on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.

“His real value was how he synthesized the times and ran it through his psyche and then offered it back to us,” he said. “I’m not as interested in what he had to say in 1976 as what he thinks of the state of the now, because he is so sharp and his insight is so valuable.”

Source: Billboard

The intimate Rolling Stones: photos from the band’s 1969 tour.

Richards also addressed reports he had stopped drinking. “Listen, the rumors of my sobriety are greatly exaggerated,” he says. “And we’ll leave it at that.”

See the new issue of Rolling Stone for much more on the new Exile on Main Street reissue, Keith’s forthcoming memoir, the documentary that Johnny Depp is currently prepping about his life, and the next Stones album.

Source: Rolling Stone

In a shift from prior years, AEG/Goldenvoice opted to forgo the single-day ticket option for the 2010 edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Only a three-day pass retailing for $269, which ultimately comes to $303.60 once various service fees have been added, is being offered for this year’s festival.

In an earlier interview with Pop & Hiss, Goldenvoice leader and festival architect Paul Tollett said his primary goal was bettering the experience for those who opt to buy three-day passes, pointing to a lack of hotel rooms in the Indio area as well as increased festival traffic for those coming down for just one day.

“We’re really trying to make it great for the fan,” Tollett said. “We understand it will affect some people who want to go for one day, but we have to protect the three-day people. It was a complex decision. We put some thought into it, and we’re trying our best to make it a good experience.”

Lozano started his “Coachella 2010 Single-Day Pass/Wristband Petition Group” after reading the Jan. 27 Pop & Hiss item, as he had intended originally to go to the event only on Sunday, when alt-rockers Pavement will reunite and Damon Albarn’s adventurous Gorillaz project will headline. Within the first two days of launching the group, the San Diego Mesa College student said he had about 500 members. As of this posting, the number has increased to more than 5,000.

“My heart was broken,” Lozano said of when he read that single-day tickets would not be available. “I saw that, and I thought, ‘Well, I guess we’re not going to go.’ I’m not really able to make it Friday or Saturday, and I was only looking forward to going on Sunday. So what can I do?”

Lozano’s Facebook page continues to provoke discussion on the topic, as do the Coachella forums. An earlier Pop & Hiss post has generated close to 50 comments on the matter. For his part, Lozano has been surprised at how many people disagree with him, posting on his Facebook group that it’s a good thing the 2010 edition of Coachella is now for die-hards-only.

“Who are all these people that are just hating on people who love music? Everybody would love to attend all three days. It’s one big party. But the negative messages? We don’t delete them. People can’t spend $269, especially in times like these.”

The comments section on Lozano’s Facebook group is filled with pleas from fans who say they either can’t afford the three-day pass, or the time off work. Lozano himself hopes that as the festival draws closer, Goldenvoice will offer single-day tickets. Yet that appears unlikely. An email to “info@coachella.com” generates an immediate auto-response, with the note that only three-day tickets will be available for 2010. Tollett has said it is likely that those who buy tickets at the gate will find them pro-rated, but a Coachella spokeswoman had no further details at this time.

Lozano admits he may ultimately spring for the three-day pass. “Yes, I am considering it,” he said. “At first, I just didn’t want to go, just to spite them. Out of anger, I didn’t want to give them my money.”

Tollett earlier noted here that the vast majority of Coachella attendees opt for the three-day pass. Since Coachella expanded to three days in 2007, more than 80% of concert-goers have bought multi-day passes, Tollett said. While cutting out the single-day, $99 ticket may result in alienating a number of fest-goers — a financially sizable 20% – Coachella, Tollett said, should be known as a three-day event.

“The thing is,” Tollett said, “there’s a lack of hotels in the Coachella Valley, and most have a three-day minimum. Many times what happens is people get a hotel for the three days, and only go to Coachella for one or two of the days. They hit Friday and Saturday, and go home or rest at the hotel on Sunday. That’s no problem, but the problem with that is that there are people who want that hotel and are going for three days.”

Source: Los Angeles Times

A new car commercial featuring archival footage of John Lennon is currently causing a bit of an uproar in the U.K., and some Beatles fans are questioning why Yoko Ono permitted French automaker Citroen to use footage of Lennon discussing the creative process. The backlash has prompted Sean Lennon to respond via Twitter, where he defended his mother’s attempt to keep his famous father in the “public consciousness.”

“Look, TV ad was not for money. It’s just hard to find new ways to keep dad in the new world. Not many things as effective as TV,” Sean tweeted. “Having just seen ad I realize why people are mad. But intention was not financial, was simply wanting to keep him out there in the world… No new LPs, so TV ad is exposure to young.”

This isn’t the first time the posthumous use of John Lennon in a commercial has sparked controversy: As Rolling Stone reported in December 2008, a digital version of Lennon was used in a commercial for One Laptop Per Child.

In the commercial for Citroen’s “anti-retro” DS3 model, Lennon says in the interview footage, “Once a thing’s been done, it’s been done. So while this nostalgia, I mean for the ’60s and ’70s, looking backwards for inspiration, copying the past, how is that rock n’ roll? Do something of your own, start something new. Live your life now.”

Source: Rolling Stone

After wrapping up the tour, Gordon will finish up his next solo album, the follow-up to 2008’s The Green Sparrow. Gordon says the new record will be more groove-oriented, with an emphasis on drums and bass. “With my last album, the focus was on the electric guitar. I want this one to be a more pared down than before with less sounds per second,” he says. “It’s more introspective.”

As for Phish, Gordon says it’s likely that the jam-band kings will head out for a tour this summer. “It’s looking like that kind of thing is in the talks,” he says. “We knew we wanted to wait until summer to do something. Nothing’s set in stone yet but I think it’s a promising thing.”

Mike Gordon Tour Dates:

March 5 – Troy, NY @ Revolution Hall
March 6 – New Haven, CT @ Toad’s Place
March 7 – Stroudsburg, PA @ Sherman Theatre
March 9 – Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live!
March 11 – Charlottesville, VA @ Jefferson Theatre
March 12 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of the Living Arts
March 13 – Northampton, MA @ Pearl Street
March 14 – Lebanon, NH @ Lebanon Opera House