By Jennifer Netherby 37 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Amid ongoing competitive pressure from Facebook, MySpace is taking its latest shot at entering the music business as other social networking peers, such as Last.fm and imeem, are making big audience gains with ad-supported music offerings.

According to sources, MySpace is planning a service that would combine free ad-supported music listening with paid MP3 downloads and music subscriptions.

MySpace parent company News Corp. has approached the major labels about forming a joint-venture music site, similar to its partnership with the major Hollywood studios for video site hulu.com.

The new service would be operated by MySpace and seemingly be positioned to compete against every offering from iTunes to subscription service Rhapsody to social networks. Details are still unclear on MySpace's plans, but it is expected that MySpace will build the music service on its existing social networking base, which draws nearly 70 million U.S. users each month.

MySpace did not return calls for comment.

During the last year, the four major labels have warmed to the idea of allowing users to share music on social networking sites, inking deals with Last.fm and imeem for a cut of advertising revenue. Music is the central connector on both sites: Users create and share playlists with their favorite songs, find and add friends based on their music preferences, listen to full-length songs on demand and purchase downloads through links to Amazon and iTunes.

CBS-owned Last.fm reported a 92 percent jump in U.S. users in the span of the last month, making it one of the fastest-growing music networks. Last.fm now claims 21 million unique visitors per month, close to the 23 million unique visitors of rival imeem, which has also seen strong growth in the last year.

ROOM FOR GROWTH

But only a minority of consumers use social networking sites to access music. According to NPD Group, just 14 percent of Internet users report getting music through social networking sites in 2007. Among teens and college-aged users, the proportion is 25 percent.

Execs at imeem and Last.fm shrugged off MySpace's impending entrance. "MySpace is a bit late to the table, to be quite honest," Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel said before adding, "MySpace is always a force to be reckoned with."

Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey predicted in a recent report, "The End of the Music Industry As We Know It," that in five years social network-enabled music purchases will be the primary way people buy music.

Stiksel believes the ad-supported model is an even better way for consumers to get music and for labels and artists to get paid.

"When you buy a CD, the artist and the label get paid once," he said. "On Last.fm, music gets monetized perpetually every time someone presses 'play."'

Imeem is pushing its business as an alternative to piracy for a young audience that isn't purchasing music.

"Social networking has the opportunity to be the best hope for the online music experience for the fans, the artists, the industry," imeem chief marketing officer/head of business development Steve Jang said. "If we can do it in a controlled way where we're getting marketing and promotion and also revenue, that's great. It will eat away at a lot of illegal usages online."

Music social networking still has its challenges, the biggest being whether users will put up with ads to hear their favorite songs. Execs from imeem and Last.fm say users don't mind ads so long as they don't get in the way of music playback.

"They certainly have a tremendous opportunity," NPD VP/senior analyst Russ Crupnick said. "On the other hand, nobody has really done a particularly good job so far of challenging Apple. The thing about iTunes with younger consumers is that linkage back to the iPod. It's hard to separate the device from the music storage and software application."

McQuivey points out that even if social networking does emerge as a dominant model for listening to music, it could benefit Apple by selling more music online, which could help sell more iPods.

Reuters/Billboard

By Wes Orshoski 35 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - When he founded Devotchka as an "experiment" more than nine years ago, singer Nick Urata's idea was to blur the line between the musics of East and West, between gypsy and mariachi, tubas and theremins, bouzoukis and guitars.

There was a "pining away for older times and exotic, faraway places," he says. "It was a time when I thought, 'How the hell am I ever going to get there? Why don't we try to get there in the music?"'

At the time, success meant merely being able to keep this experiment afloat, and make some money doing it. While that remains a concern almost a decade later (the group's five indie releases have sold only a combined 80,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan), a lot has changed.

If co-manager Mat Hall recalls days when he had to convince everyone from labels to writers that Devotchka's music wasn't some "world-music nightmare," he and the band now find themselves in such unlikely positions as having to decline fast-food giant McDonald's request to use a Devotchka song in a commercial.

For the majority of listeners in and outside the music industry, Devotchka's meld of unlikely musical bedfellows has proved a hard pill to swallow. But the critically lauded group and its management's long-term strategy of earning one fan at a time is inching toward pay dirt.

Nearing the March 18 release of Devotchka's sixth album, "A Mad and Faithful Telling," Urata's vision — of creating cinematic music capturing the feeling of "black-and-white movies from another country" and the accordion wedding jams of his childhood — is enjoying some of the best media attention of the band's career.

TASTEMAKERS TAKE NOTE

In addition to binders of glowing press, Devotchka has been anointed a band to watch by the likes of NPR and Santa Monica, California, public radio station KCRW. Such noncommercial radio fans as KEXP Seattle and KCMP Minneapolis will spotlight the group on the air next month from its performances at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas.

The band will make its first appearance at Southern California's annual Coachella festival this year and will appear on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" before embarking on U.S. and European tours. And with its new album being released by indie label Anti-, the Colorado band joins such highly regarded artists as Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Neko Case.

Things are congealing for Devotchka for a variety of reasons. A turning point was the appearance of its music in the 2006 film "Little Miss Sunshine." That created a spike in sales for Devotchka, but not as much as the band and its management would have liked. The soundtrack did lead to increased media attention and supporting slots for acts as varied as Donovan and Marilyn Manson.

The Anti- deal follows an attempt by Seymour Stein to sign Devotchka to Sire, which Urata says was stymied by the "suits" at parent company Warner, who viewed the band as unmarketable. It's the type of thinking that tested Urata's faith through the years, as rent bills neared and the band slept on floors.

"It just seemed like labels, agents and talent buyers were like, 'What am I going to do with this wacky band with a tuba?"' Urata says. "I think that end of the business has gotten kind of narrow-minded. If you look at any period of time when music has changed for the better, it was always someone coming out of left field."

With fellow East-meets-West ensembles like Gogol Bordello also enjoying higher visibility, manager Hall is leery of listeners attacking Devotchka for jumping on a bandwagon. "They've been doing this for nine years," he says. "I see them as pioneers."

Reuters/Billboard

By Leila Cobo 34 minutes ago

MIAMI (Billboard) - Sometime in the coming months, a single music label, Universal Music, will control almost half of the U.S. Latin music marketplace.

The shift follows Universal's agreement to acquire Univision Music Group, the leading Latin music company in the United States. Univision, whose holdings include Univision Records, Fonovisa, Disa and La Calle, has a 35.9 percent share of the U.S. Latin market, according to Nielsen SoundScan year-end numbers. No other label has had that kind of market-share clout in the Latin realm.

Adding the U.S. Latin market share of Universal's Latin labels — Universal Music Latino and Machete, with 8.83 percent and 5.26 percent, respectively — to Univision's will place Universal's Latin market share at 49.9 percent. It shouldn't, however, drastically change the Latin landscape; Universal's distributing arm, Universal Music Group Distribution, already controls more than 50 percent of the U.S. Latin market and has distributed Univision's product since the inception of the label. In Latin America and Spain, Universal is consistently the No. 1 or No. 2 label in the market.

Univision Music Group was put up for sale last year, after Univision Communications was acquired by a private investor group.

Universal quickly emerged as the front-runner on a list of candidates; in addition to the Univision distribution deal, Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Doug Morris and president/COO Zach Horowitz have long expressed an interest in the burgeoning Latin marketplace and made strides to develop business in that market.

Universal/Univision talks stalled in past months, sources say, over discussions on the promotional role to be played by the Univision TV networks. Under the final agreement, the Univision networks will continue to provide promotional airtime to Universal artists, much in the way they did with Univision artists.

Founded by CEO Jose Behar in 2001, Univision Music has been the longtime U.S. Latin market-share leader. Previously head of EMI Latin, Behar was hired by former Univision Communications CEO Jerry Perenchio to create a music division as part of Univision's media empire. Behar built the company from scratch, signing new and established acts and, later, acquiring leading indie Fonovisa Records, a regional Mexican music powerhouse. To this day, Univision's top sellers are in the regional Mexican realm.

In turn, Universal's forte has long been its pop division, with stars like Juanes, Enrique Iglesias and Paulina Rubio. More recently, the company has become an urban music leader via its upstart label Machete Music, whose roster includes reggaeton duo Wisin & Yandel.

Universal's Latin operations are overseen worldwide by Jesus Lopez, chairman/CEO of Latin America and Iberian Peninsula. An industry veteran who has focused on restructuring his companies' operations and who is developing new business models, Lopez will now oversee the joint worldwide operations of the two labels. Univision will continue to be run by Behar until the acquisition is complete.

Reuters/Billboard

By Ayala Ben-Yehuda 35 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - A Vans Warped tour franchise in Mexico and an Argentine DJ collective are among the international Latin groups looking for stateside exposure at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival, which runs March 7-16 in Austin, Texas.

On March 15, a Warped tour Latin America showcase will feature Mexican bands Allison, Delux and Lipstick Terror. (A lineup for a one-off June 14 rock festival in Mexico City this year under the Vans Warped brand has yet to be set.)

"International bands sometimes come to South by Southwest and get kind of overshadowed," said Warped founder Kevin Lyman, who also throws an unofficial SXSW party for bands from as far away as Japan and Europe.

But "now it's a real conscientious effort to have different types of music from the U.S. as well as from around the world," said Lyman, who has been freshening up his stateside tour by booking such foreign bands as Spain's the Pinker Tones.

In 2007, Allison played several Warped U.S. dates after the band's Warped showcase at SXSW, and Lyman said that this summer Delux will do the same.

Pako Zepeda, co-CEO of Mexico City-based management company Soundguich, is licensing the Warped name, pursuing sponsorships (Vans and Monster Energy are already onboard) and building a database of potential attendees via MySpace and the Warped tour Mexico Web site.

Meanwhile, a collective of Buenos Aires-based DJs has built a five-city U.S. tour around its March 13 SXSW showcase.

Besides Austin, the Zizek tour — named for a twice-weekly gathering at Buenos Aires' Niceto nightclub — will stop in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

The 18-month-old club's success in the Argentine capital — co-founder Grant Dull, a Texas-born expatriate, said it packs in as many as 1,000 people on Saturdays — led to the recent founding of label ZZK and an effort to book the DJs at U.S. and European festivals.

The six Zizek acts blend electronic and breakbeat with cumbia and reggaeton, in a style the tour's MySpace site describes as "electro cumbia," "cumbia crunk" and "cumbia rave." (Traditional cumbia is the music for a dance of short sliding steps that originated among African slaves on Colombia's Atlantic coast.)

"The experimental cumbia scene has been around for six or seven years," said Dull, who along with the talent he manages is self-financing the tour. The Zizek DJs "want to see their careers advance and get more gigs … everything that happens when one goes from Argentina abroad."

Reuters/Billboard

By Deborah Evans Price 39 minutes ago

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - With the 2006 release of "Sound of Melodies," Texas-based rock band Leeland became the critical darling of the Christian music community. Its debut disc earned the group a Grammy Award nomination for best pop/contemporary gospel album as well as four Dove Award nominations.

Now Leeland is hoping to deliver big with its sophomore album, "Opposite Way," released February 26 via Essential. The first single, "Count Me In," is No. 28 this week on Hot Christian Songs.

In addition, the songwriting prowess of the band's 19-year-old frontman, Leeland Mooring, caught the attention of Christian music titan Michael W. Smith, and the teen co-wrote several tracks for Smith's 2006 Reunion album "Stand."

Mooring began writing songs about his faith at an early age. He signed his first publishing deal with EMI's Christian publishing arm when he was only 15. By the next year, the band had signed a recording deal with Essential, a label under Sony BMG's Provident Music Group umbrella.

For the new album, Mooring says the band "wrote some on the road and finished most of the songs in the studio when we recorded them. I think it's a good thing. I'd rather be recording in a fast mode than a slow mode."

It has indeed been a case of life in the fast lane for Mooring, whose bandmates are elder brother Jack, Mike Smith, Jake Holtz and Matt Campbell. The band has been on the road opening for Casting Crowns on the Altar and the Door tour, and Mooring says that interacting with other young Christians while touring helped fuel the new material.

"One of the things we've seen is how our generation wants to be a part of something that is bigger than themselves," Mooring says. "There are so many types of pleasures the world has to offer, but everything in this world ultimately leaves you empty and alone. Nothing in the world will satisfy that kind of spiritual void in your life."

Mooring says the band's goal with the new record was to encourage young people to stand up for their beliefs. "(We want to) raise up a new generation of worshippers," he says, "who do whatever it takes to make that 'opposite way' a reality in their lives. We really hope this will change a lot of kids' lives."

Reuters/Billboard

By Ed Christman 34 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The major music companies have been resistant to lowering their price on CDs, but now they may be dragged to that point: Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of music with an estimated 22 percent market share, has proposed a five-tiered pricing scheme that would allow the discounter to sell albums at even lower prices and require the labels to bear more of the costs.

According to sources, the Wal-Mart proposal would allow for a promotional program that could comprise the top 15 to 20 hottest titles, each at $10. The rest of the pricing structure, according to several music executives who spoke with Billboard, would have hits and current titles retailing for $12, top catalog at $9, midline catalog at $7 and budget product at $5. The move would also shift the store's pricing from its $9.88 and $13.88 model to rounder sales prices.

Executives at the Bentonville, Arkansas-based discounting giant wouldn't comment on the specifics of their promotion, but Wal-Mart divisional merchandise manager for home entertainment Jeff Maas acknowledged the proposal. "When you look at sales declines with physical product, and you have a category declining like it is, you have to make decisions about what the future looks like," he said. "If you have a business that is declining and you want to turn it around, it really takes looking at it from all angles."

Maas referenced the DVD business as a model for tiered pricing. "(It) has been around for years and has worked very well," he said.

While Wal-Mart's negotiations with the labels have yet to take place, the proposal is already causing agita at the majors. Some consider the proposal a non-starter, others say further negotiations might eventually yield a workable solution, and a few see it as appropriate, given the big picture.

"I don't think this is a Wal-Mart discussion," one top executive at a major label said. "I think this is a future-of-the-business discussion. Right now everyone is paralyzed."

Some executives raised the question of whether the Federal Trade Commission would take issue with such a program were it rolled out only to Wal-Mart. But one executive said, "Making it legal is not the difficult part. The difficult part is coming to terms with it."

Another top executive said, "The decision might come down to: Do we give up 20 percent of our business (i.e., Wal-Mart) in order to not lose the entire business?"

That question assumes that Wal-Mart would either penalize or stop doing business with a major that decides not to participate in the pricing program. Moreover, if all majors take a pass, some speculate that Wal-Mart could pull music entirely from the store.

This type of speculation abounds, although the Wal-Mart proposal was presented only as a starting point. One label executive said, "This sounds like the Hail Mary pass, and if it doesn't work, they could be out of the music business; or maybe they reduce music down to a couple of racks" from the 4,000 titles carried by Wal-Marts with larger selections.

Maas declined to rule out those possibilities, but said he'd rather look at how Wal-Mart can help a declining category. "The customer votes every single day in our stores, and based on what they want is how we merchandise our stores."

Reuters/Billboard

30 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The Black Keys, the Ohio duo famed for their hard-hitting blues-influenced rock'n'roll, charge into new sonic territory on their fifth album, "Attack & Release," which is due in stores April 1.

The 11-track Nonesuch Records set was produced by Gnarls Barkley member Danger Mouse and recorded at Cleveland's Suma Studio, the Black Keys' first time tracking outside their own Akron-based facilities.

Fans of the Keys' traditional sound will feel most at home on the 141-second stomper "Remember When (Side B)," which features a ripping Dan Auerbach guitar solo.

But nearly every other track is enhanced by novel production and instrumental elements, including the banjo- and organ-flecked opener "All You Ever Wanted," the rave up "Strange Times," which features piano and ghostly backing vocals, and the bare-bones "Same Old Thing," which sports bongo drums and flute.

Elsewhere, the Keys hone in on the slower side of the blues, particularly on the off-kilter "Psychotic Girl" and the slide guitar- and organ-laden closer "Things Ain't Like They Used To Be," a duet with Auerbach and his protegee, Jessica Lea Mayfield.

Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney will begin a spring North American tour March 27 in Tucson, Ariz. The group will also play at the annual South by Southwest festival and conference in Austin, Texas (March 12-16).

Reuters/Billboard

By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer 20 minutes ago

NEW YORK - When 12-year-old Farah Taslima started composing in the third grade, she never dreamed her music would someday be performed by the New York Philharmonic. Even if she had, she never could have imagined it would happen in North Korea.

Four members of the orchestra and four North Korean musicians performed Taslima’s piece on Wednesday, a day after the 106 members of the Philharmonic performed a historic concert broadcast to the world.

On Saturday morning, Farah, her sister and their parents sat in their Manhattan home talking about an congratulatory e-mail from Jon Deak, a Philharmonic double bass player who runs the orchestra’s teaching program for child composers.

Her little piece, “Serenity Unleashed,” was “a big hit” in Pyongyang, he wrote.

“I was just, like … I was amazed!” Farah said. “I never thought something like this would happen. It was awesome.”

The orchestra returned to New York on Thursday from the rare visit to North Korea, which is locked in frosty negotiations with the United States over its nuclear weapons program. It was the biggest American delegation to visit the communist country since the Korean War.

Farah’s music almost didn’t get played, says Deak, who waited to see whether Korean authorities would allow the child’s piece to be added to a long-planned performance in a packed hall.

“It was a wild-card thing,” said Deak, who called the piece, written by the daughter of an NYPD traffic enforcement agent, “a tiny gem.”

Farah had originally written it for the entire Philharmonic two years ago, and it was played at one of the orchestra’s Young People’s Concerts at Lincoln Center. But she scaled down the work for a smaller group of musicians — clarinet, violin, cello and double bass, including the Philharmonic’s top violinist, concertmaster Glenn Dicterow.

It was no small achievement for the daughter of Khondaker Hossain, who moved to the United States from Bangladesh 11 years ago when Farah was a baby. Her last name is different from his, following a Bangladeshi tradition for naming girls.

“I didn’t know what composing was, but I loved it right off the bat,” said Farah, who got her first taste of writing music after the program visited her public school four years ago.

Her family lived in Queens, and he worked odd jobs. Last year, Hossain became an NYPD traffic agent.

His wife, Shaheen, stays home and takes care of the family, whose members now live in a luxury high-rise behind Lincoln Center that offers some apartments at affordable rents; they won theirs by lottery.

Another daughter, 18-year-old Sarah, attends Columbia University on scholarship.

Farah’s electronic piano stands right outside the bedroom the sisters shared until Sarah went to college. An image of Hannah Montana hangs above the desk with other pop stars, but since she started writing music, Farah also listens to Beethoven and other classics with her family.

The budding composer, barefoot and in jeans, walked up to the black-and-white keys to improvise some new melodies, with some Asian-sounding intervals echoing the music of her roots.

She has not been back to Bangladesh since her family left Dhaka, the capital, but said that “Serenity” was inspired by her parents’ stories about her native land in their Bengali language.’

“It begins quietly, then it gets crazy and out of control, like the busy feeling of Bangladesh, always on the move,” she said. “And then it goes back to quiet.”

Farah, who attends a gifted children’s school at Manhattan’s M.S. 54, started composing at P.S. 199, where Deak — also a composer — introduced his Very Young Composers program, sponsored by the orchestra.

The kids played their recorders to try out tunes, and even if they didn’t know how to read or write music well, they were helped by composer Paola Prestini to write down what they sang, played and clapped out.

“Real music is happening on the streets every day — kids pound, they sing, they dance. I want to bring that in — the raw sounds that come out of children’s voices,” says Deak, 64. “I’m looking into their hearts. That’s the miracle.”

17 minutes ago

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The children of the late Conway Twitty have sued Sony/ATV for a share of royalties and publishing copyrights for the country artist’s music.

The lawsuit filed in chancery court this week claims the children didn’t understand the agreement when Twitty sold his music publishing and sound recording interests to Sony-Tree in March 1990, three years before he died.

But his widow, Dee Jenkins, disagreed with Twitty’s children, who are from a previous marriage. They fought a 14-year legal battle over his estate after his death, which the children eventually lost.

She said Friday that the family knew what they signed 18 years ago and that their lawsuit has dishonored their father’s memory.

But his daughter, Joni Jenkins Riels, said that nothing was explained and that they didn’t know what rights they were giving up.

“Dad had a long relationship with Sony. We tried to work with them, but it didn’t work out. So, we had to file the lawsuit,” Riels said Friday.

The children could get more than $100,000 a year from the recordings if they were to get the copyrights back, says Rose Palermo, a lawyer for his estate, who added that she was concerned about the claims in the lawsuit.

“I’m somewhat astounded that they make an allegation that they didn’t know what they were doing,” Palermo said. “He (Twitty) was supporting his children. And at the time, he was giving some of them $50,000 a year in salaries and a free place to live.

“To make this allegation is a direct slam at Conway, who was one of the most honorable and decent guys that I’ve known in the music business,” she said.

Duff Berschback, representing Sony/ATV, declined to comment, saying he hadn’t reviewed the lawsuit.

Twitty, whose real name was Harold Jenkins, died after a 30-year career with 40 No. 1 hits, including “Hello Darlin’” and “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man,” a duet with Loretta Lynn.

30 minutes ago

FRANKLIN, Tenn. - Wynonna Judd knows what the people of Tennessee went through the night the tornadoes hit — because she took cover from them herself.

Her children Elijah and Grace hid in a storage area under the stairs when the storms swept through this month, and she hung on outside their cubbyhole as the winds shook the house, the country singer said.

“Our road looks like a war zone. It’s pretty bad,” said Judd, who headlined a benefit concert Friday for residents affected by the tornado.

The concert was held in Leiper’s Fork and raised more than $17,000, said organizer Lynn Fox, who also performed with his group The Fox Brothers.

The tornadoes swept across Tennessee on Feb. 5-6, killing 32 people and injuring more than 190. A total of more than 50 people were killed across the South.

Judd, who lives on an 800-acre farm, said the storm damaged her home, knocked down several trees and tore off part of a barn roof.

Judd, 43, sang with her mother, Naomi, as The Judds before launching a successful solo career. Her solo hits include “No One Else on Earth” and “I Saw the Light.”