By JOHN GEROME, AP Entertainment Writer 7 minutes ago

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Dolly Parton knows a good investment when she sees one, and these days she sees one in the mirror.

Parton, whose business portfolio includes a theme park and an entertainment production company, says she’s spending a lot of her own money trying to get back on country radio with her new CD, “Backwoods Barbie.”

“I’m looking at it like an investment,” she told The Associated Press. “I thought, ‘I’ve made enough money. I can afford to invest a little in myself.’”

She has self-released the disc on her own label, Dolly Records, and hired a seven-member promotions team.

“I purposely tailor-made this to try to get some hits,” Parton explained.

The album reached No. 2 on Billboard in its second week, her best showing in 17 years.

The first single, “Better Get to Livin’,” a country-pop song she describes as sonically similar to Keith Urban, sputtered at No. 48. But the second single, “Jesus & Gravity,” is just now arriving at radio.

At age 62, Parton remains an icon and inspiration to younger singers.

“I don’t think there’s anything that woman can’t do,” said rising country star Kellie Pickler, who calls Parton her greatest influence. “She just walks into a room and lights it up. She’s got that ‘it’ factor that money can’t buy. She’s the whole package.”

Music Row began to lose interest in Parton in the ’90s as a new crop of country stars emerged. Her last Top 5 hit, “Rockin’ Years,” was in 1991, and she hasn’t had a major label record deal in 10 years.

“When it changed I was still as serious as ever and was thinking I’m still as good as ever, if I ever was any good,” Parton said.

She has watched with interest as new technology has created opportunities without the big labels.

“Now the majors are what they used to think I was: history,” she said.

“I thought this is a good time, but I need to make an all-out effort. … Whatever it takes, you fight for it. You do what you have to do to feed your habit, and I’m a music addict.”

34 minutes ago

MIAMI - The Cuban bass player credited with creating the mambo has died at a Miami-area hospital.

Family spokesman Nelson Albareda says Israel “Cachao” (ka-CHAH’-o) Lopez died early Saturday at age 89 after falling ill in the past week.

The bassist and composer known simply as Cachao was a Latin Grammy-award winner and is widely considered a pioneer of the mambo.

50 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - It seems almost everybody wants a piece of Britney Spears, and at least six pieces are officially for sale.

Spears’ wardrobe from her guest-starring stint on CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother” will be sold at an online auction to benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization.

The weeklong auction begins Monday night, just after the episode featuring the pop star is set to air. Spears plays a flirty receptionist who falls for show’s main character.

A half-dozen Spears-worn items will be available, including a navy print Juicy Couture dress, a yellow Nannette Lepore dress and a cream Nannette Lepore cardigan with blue flower details.

CBS and 20th Century Fox Television, which produces the show, are sponsoring the auction.

By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago

MIAMI - Lawyers for the Beatles sued Friday to prevent the distribution of unreleased recordings purportedly made during Ringo Starr’s first performance with the group in 1962.

The dispute between Apple Corps Ltd., the London company formed by the Beatles that helps guard their legacy, and Fuego Entertainment Inc. of Miami Lakes stems from recordings the Fab Four apparently made during a performance at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany.

Eight unreleased tracks are said to be among the recordings, including Paul McCartney singing Hank Williams’ “Lovesick Blues” and McCartney and John Lennon singing “Ask Me Why.”

Apple Corps claims that the songs were taped without the consent of the band and that Fuego and sister companies Echo-Fuego Music Group LLC and Echo-Vista Inc. have no right to distribute them.

“This appears to us to be a garden-variety bootleg recording,” said Paul LiCalsi, an attorney for Apple Corps.

But Fuego Entertainment says the recordings were legally made. “Don’t claim that these were just bootlegged,” said Fuego president Hugo Cancio. “It’s not like today, that you just go in with a phone or a blackberry and you record.”

The lawsuit contends that the recordings are of poor quality and that circulating them “dilutes and tarnishes the extraordinarily valuable image associated with the Beatles.”

Cancio said that he had not been served with a copy of the lawsuit, but that the filing demanding at least $15 million in damages was not expected.

“I’m surprised because up to a few weeks ago, we were in good-faith conversations with Apple,” he said.

Also named in the lawsuit is Jeffrey Collins, a partner of Cancio who obtained the recordings. It’s unclear how Collins obtained the recordings.

Cancio intended to release the songs as “Jammin’ with The Beatles and Friends, Star Club, Hamburg, 1962.”

“It’s unfair to millions of Beatles fans not to allow this recording to be put out. The world deserves to hear these tracks,” he said. “The fact is that we have it; they don’t, and that is what’s bothering them.”

Natalie Finn Fri Mar 21, 1:59 PM ET

Los Angeles (E! Online) - After making a career out of spectacle, shock value and other open displays of eccentricity, Marilyn Manson is now looking to cover up.

The heavy-metalist has filed a motion requesting that all of his financial and business records be kept sealed during the discovery process pertaining to his ex-band mate's pending lawsuit against him.

Former Marilyn Manson (the band) keyboardist Stephen Bier, aka Madonna Wayne Gacy, sued Manson for breach of contract in August, claiming the milky-eyed singer had used the group's money to, among other things, finance a drug habit, pay for his wedding to Dita Von Teese and decorate his Chatsworth, Calif., home with an array of oddities, including Nazi memorabilia and a human skeleton.

Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, countersued in December, accusing Bier of failing to meet contractual touring, recording and merchandising agreements. He's been collecting royalties, Manson says of his former ivory-tickler, but during his tenure with the band frequently showed up late and otherwise "failed to render services to the best of his ability and in a practical and cooperative manner."

Because Bier's allegations directly reference Manson's cash value, his attorney argues, he should be allowed an order of protection protecting the confidentiality of his records, akin to the order Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael L. Stern granted to Lindsay Lohan in her recent civil tangle with a bus boy who accused her of being drunk at the time of their 2005 car accident.

Stern, incidentally, is also the presiding judge in this case. A copy of the order granted on Lohan's behalf was included in the latest filing.

"A protective order is necessary to protect the confidentiality of that information against competitors and from the media and to preclude the plaintiff from using Manson's confidential information for improper purposes," the motion states.

Meanwhile, Bier's attorneys say "hogwash," citing Manson's well-known penchant for public displays of… whatever.

"Manson lives his life in the public eye," a filing opposing the defense's motion states. "He communicates frequently with the press regarding his personal affairs, openly discusses his frequent drug use, his failed marriage with burlesque model Dita Von Teese, his current relationship with actress Evan Rachel Wood, and his wild, rock 'n' roll lifestyle."

He also drinks absinthe and openly discusses his friends' and band members' sexual proclivities, as well, Bier claims.

Stern heard arguments Wednesday but has yet to rule on the request.

If the order is granted as per Manson's specifications, Bier's lawyers will have access to the records but they would not be made part of the public record and his camp would not be allowed to show them to anyone else.

The order is necessary before the two sides can proceed with depositions, Manson's lawyer says. A hearing during which Bier's side is set to renew its petition to depose the "Beautiful People" rocker is scheduled for Apr. 10.

Natalie Finn Fri Mar 21, 4:23 PM ET

Los Angeles (E! Online) - Does the idea of signing autographs leave Kid Rock feeling a little punchy?

Less than two weeks after making a charity appearance at a Georgia Waffle House to make amends for a postconcert ruckus he and his entourage are accused of kicking up in October, the Rock and Roll Jesus purveyor was sued for battery Friday by three men who claim he went postal when they asked for his signature.

Michael Medlin, Carlos Bonilla and Jose Perez allege they were punched, kicked and otherwise beaten when they requested autographs from Rock and the members of fraternal hip-hop group the Boo-Yaa Tribe in the wee hours of Mar. 22, 2006, outside of Hollywood hotspot Teddy's at the Roosevelt Hotel, according to documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by E! News.

Rock (real name Robert Ritchie), the Roosevelt, Teddy's, Lost Highway touring and the Boo-Yaa Tribe (Paul, Ted, Donald, Roscoe, Danny and David Devoux) have all been named as defendants. Charges also include negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and malice.

The plaintiffs are asking for at least $15 million in damages, claiming wage loss, loss of use of property, hospital and medical expenses, property and general damages and loss of earning capacity.

Per the complaint, Medlin, Bonilla and Perez were waiting for Rock and assorted company outside of Teddy's, planning to ask for autographs and pictures. They had with them autograph books and a small camera.

"Kid Rock and members of the Boo-Yaa Tribe assaulted and battered all three plaintiffs" and they were "left on the ground seriously injured as Kid Rock and his entourage drove off," the suit states. It also accuses the individual defendants of swiping the plaintiffs' cameras and bags and sticking them in the back of their limo before leaving the site.

Medlin, Bonilla and Perez also allege that the security outside the Roosevelt was so negligent, it created a "dangerous and hazardous condition" for them that allowed for the beatdown as well as the theft of their personal property.

Oddly enough, Rock was more than happy to make time for fans at the Waffle House in Duluth, Ga., where he was busted in October after his posse got into a fight with a fellow customer.

He said that proceeds from his Mar. 11 appearance, during which he posed for pics, signed autographs and auctioned off backstage passes and other items, would go to the Nicholas House Foundation, a transitional housing program for homeless families in the Metro Atlanta area.

Rock pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor battery for his alleged role in last fall's fracas.

By Jessica Letkemann 35 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Think fast. R.E.M. has banished the quiet, dream-like mood of their last two records and is about to unleash the hard, sharp-eyed "Accelerate," their first album in four years.

As Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills follow the first single's edit-it-yourself video with the album's launch on iLike and a worldwide tour, frontman Stipe spoke to Billboard.com about the set's "really fast, really raw" take on politics, teenage geekdom and the media; and how he and his bandmates "worked really hard to try to upset the things we had gotten bogged down in."

Q: Your decision to premiere "Accelerate" on iLike follows neatly from the decision to pretty much open-source the video for "Supernatural Superserious."

Michael Stipe: Good term there. I think that was my idea but it was based on stuff that (director) Vincent Moon had done that I really admired. I thought, "Well, we can take this and expand on the idea and offer something that's a little bit of fun," which I think is in keeping not only with the footage that he was able to get of the band kind of stumbling around New York, but with the song itself, which has a little bit of a sense of humor.

Q: A sense of humor, and a fun guitar riff. You've said the song was about teenage humiliation and the kinds of things that follow you through your life. I thought that was interesting because I wondered what inspired you to write that now, long after adolescence?

Stipe: We all have our geek moments that we kind of carry with us or that have some impact on us throughout our lives (laughs). I hate to use the term 'geek anthem' but it's a little bit, for me, like that. I have friends — who are adults — who move with such grace and poise through life and in fact completely embrace the incredibly stupid aspects of growing up and the humiliating teenage moments. They can totally laugh about and make fun of themselves and allow themselves to be, I think, more of a complete adult because of it. So that was really kind of the inspiration for the song.

Q: I think we have all harbored things like that years and decades later, and then we think, "Why am I thinking about this now?"

Stipe: Yeah, it's like that one horrifying school picture where you either knew or didn't know that that was the day they were taking the school picture. Okay, so now anyone in the world can now pull that up online if they want to look at you when you were in sixth grade and had, whatever, really stupid glasses. But the song inhabits an almost more internal humiliation, something that happens to all of us because we were all kids and we all have insecurities on some level or the other. This one, I kind of particularly wrote it around a seance gone horribly wrong at a summer camp that then manifested itself later in life as kind of a sexual deviance, but a fun one.

Q: Most of the songs on the record, like "Supernatural," sound like the band re-exploring rock and a harder sound. Did you set out to do that?

Stipe: No, I think more than anything we wanted to stay on point. We wanted to do a record really fast so there was no way for us to overthink it. In terms of the material, we kind of went to the most obvious place. We wrote really fast songs and we tried to keep them really raw and in-your-face, and that's what we wound up with.

Q: This record is also out in an election year. Is the character in "Mr. Richards" a politician? Are you talking about the state of the country there, like Dylan's "Mr. Jones?" Is "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" a call to action?

Stipe: "Living Well Is the Best Revenge," to me, is more aimed at a figure in the media. "Mr. Richards" is definitely a political figure. It's really about the injustices that we face under a system where somebody can, can … can disregard … Let me pull my thoughts together. I always stammer when I get really upset (laughs). It's about injustices and one of those great injustices — and you'll find plenty of examples of it in the current U.S. administration — is people that get away with something that is almost inhuman. Rather than that being shameful, they wear it like a badge of honor. The fact that they did something so corrupt and actually got away with it, rather than just dropping it into the bottom drawer of their desk, it's like, "I'm even more Teflon than you think I am." Like, "Look at what I can do."

Q: Mission accomplished?

Stipe: Yeah, exactly. And that's so insulting to me. I don't know if it comes from a Christian upbringing or what, but one of the core foundations of my ideas of morality and ethics is about justice, and when injustice happens and it can be traced back to a person or a group of people, how very upset that makes me.

Q: Did you write the lyrics for the album while Mike and Peter were writing the music?

Stipe: My promise to them was that I would show up on the first day of recording with finished lyrics. So, the first stint that we did was in Vancouver, and the first day I showed up, I had seven songs. We were recording every day, probably eight or nine hours a day. I finished another song while we were there and started another half of a song. By the time we got to Dublin, (where) we did these live shows, these kind of live rehearsals before we went into the studio, I finished the song that I had started in Vancouver and had written another one.

My part of it was to not have to have Peter sitting on the couch for four weeks waiting for me to finish lyrics; (to not) have Mike not knowing how to sing a background vocal or where to take the bass part or the keyboard part because he didn't know where the vocal melody was going to go.

It was kind of like there was an agreement between the three of us that we were all going to try to work really hard to try to upset the things that we had gotten bogged down in the past. And to try to make a record really fast and really in-your-face and really raw and make our decisions quickly and then live with them rather than picking apart every single thing and overworking it, which is what had happened on the last record.

Q: Who picked the opening bands, the National and Modest Mouse, for the summer leg of your upcoming tour?

Stipe: All three of us. I had seen the National and met the guys really briefly at the Oxygen Festival. Peter knew the band and I took Mike to see a show they played in London. Mike was completely blown away by them live. Peter is friends with Johnny (Marr, Modest Mouse's guitarist) and we all like the band a real lot (laughs). We thought, "Well, this is going to be a really great bill." I've never seen Modest Mouse perform before, (so) for me it's going to be super exciting to have that kind of daily inspiration. That's really what having great opening bands can provide.

Reuters/Billboard

37 minutes ago

ARTIST: GNARLS BARKLEY

ALBUM: THE ODD COUPLE

NEW YORK (Billboard) - If Gnarls Barkley's debut, "St. Elsewhere," was the sound of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green tinkering around with the creation of their bizarre surf-pop/psychedelic hybrid monster, "The Odd Couple" is the sound of that monster escaping from the lab. It's also about a thousand times darker. Danger Mouse goes from gospel to pop to spooky, often in the same track, and Green sets a new vocal bar on the desolate, acoustic-flavored nightmare ballad "Who Will Save My Soul." Zippy first single "Run" and the vaguely romantic rubber ball "Blind Mary" are the only things here that approach the sonic territory of "Crazy," and there are times when Green's quavering falsetto gets downright evil. It seems that the more comfortable the principals get with Gnarls Barkley, the more haunted Gnarls Barkley gets. Stronger, too.

ARTIST: PANIC AT THE DISCO

ALBUM: PRETTY. ODD. (Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen)

Panic at the Disco's sophomore set has a lot more cheery moments and fewer busy elements than its smash debut, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out," and, much like the exclamation point now absent from the band's name, the superfluous noise is hardly missed. In a Beatles nod, the album begins with the crowd-noise-enhanced intro "We Were Starving" before "Nine in the Afternoon" bursts with upbeat power chords and a singalong chorus. There's plenty of twee to go around, including tracks like "That Green Gentleman," "Behind the Sea" and ballad "Northern Downpour" — surprising, considering the band's previous penchant for darkness on "Fever." 15 tracks of welcomed live drum sounds, symphonies and stacked harmonies.

ARTIST: FLO RIDA

ALBUM: MAIL ON SUNDAY (Poe Boy/Atlantic Records)

In 50 years, it'll be a curious thing that the best-selling digital single of all time once belonged to Flo Rida and that the song, "Low," powered the phones of hip-hop heads and sorority girls for months and months. "Low" is a well-deserved monster, and Flo Rida's relatively long-in-coming debut album sports precisely all the ingredients required of a rapper these days: production that sounds like money, exuberant materialism, several verses by Lil' Wayne and a singular desire to keep people's attention for very brief periods of time. Flo Rida's flow is an engaging/ringy-dingy/he-sounds-like-Nelly thing. But his hooks can be rock-solid, and his interest in gleaming synthesizerism (opener "American Superstar" comes into "Tubular Bells" territory, really) helps set him off from the legions of rappers clawing over one another to break out of the South.

ARTIST: LIONEL LOUEKE

ALBUM: KARIBU (Blue Note Records)

The Blue Note debut of Benin-born guitarist/vocalist Lionel Loueke arrives as an ear-opening delight after his five-year span of creative bloom. Not only did Loueke record two fine CDs for indie ObliqSound (one as a member of the collective Gilfema), but he was also enlisted to perform and record with such top-tier jazz artists as Terence Blanchard, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. All three praised Loueke's singular style of jagged geometric shapes, shifting time signatures, ebullient African-pop groove and sweet lyricism, which are on full display here. The nine-track journey, which opens with the sunny, syncopated title track and ends with the juju-like "Nonvignon," marks this year's first major jazz revelation.

ARTIST: SHE AND HIM

ALBUM: VOLUME ONE (Merge Records)

Indie-movie princess meets indie-rock prince in this collaboration between Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, featuring a bland name and even blander album title. Luckily, they're the most awkward things about this surprisingly rewarding collection of dusky, mesquite-flavored torch songs. She and Him ducks the celeb-novelty thing thanks mostly to Deschanel, who penned nine of the album's 11 tracks and spends much of it channeling Neko Case in a voice that's just fine, if occasionally (though endearingly) rough. It's best heard on the wonderfully brittle "Change Is Hard" and a slow, sexy take on the Miracles' "You Really Gotta Hold on Me." And if Ward knows anything, it's how to work up spare frontier shuffles, all covered in echoing dobro and dust. She and Him feels like a class project Ward and Deschanel get to do because they're famous, but "Volume One" is a fine use of their privileges.

ARTIST: RICKY SKAGGS & KENTUCKY THUNDER

ALBUM: HONORING THE FATHERS OF BLUEGRASS: TRIBUTE TO 1946 AND 1947 (Skaggs Family Records)

The concept here is nothing short of brilliant and, as is usual with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, the picking and singing are outstanding. Skaggs wanted to introduce the music of the founding fathers of bluegrass to his fans and, hopefully, a new generation, so he and his band covered a dozen classic songs first recorded by Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys during the years 1946-47. The period represents an important snapshot because Monroe's band of that era included singer/guitarist Lester Flatts, banjo player Earl Scruggs, fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Howard Watts. Skaggs and his crew treat the music with the respect it deserves, giving new life to old gems. Scruggs, the only surviving member of the pioneering band, guests on "Goin' Back to Old Kentucky."

ARTIST: CARIBBEAN JAZZ PROJECT/AFRO BOP ALLIANCE

ALBUM: CARIBBEAN JAZZ PROJECT/AFRO BOP ALLIANCE (HeadsUp

The Caribbean Jazz Project, led by marimba and vibes wiz Dave Samuels, put together this album with Maryland-based outfit Afro Bop Alliance. The vibe here is a distinctly Latin, big-band trip on songs by John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and several Samuels originals. Nineteen musicians played on these tunes (most of them sax and horn players), giving the set a powerful brass/reed sound. Their stellar cover of Coltrane's "Naima" comes our way via a highly syncopated arrangement, nicely layered horns and solid solos from Samuels and saxophonist Steve Williams. Another intriguing number is the Samuels original "Afro Green," a more darkly colored piece with an interesting, dissonant dynamic at work, particularly between the horns and Harry Appelman's piano.

ARTIST: THE B-52S

ALBUM: FUNPLEX (Astralwerks Records)

The B-52s have always operated in a retrofuturistic galaxy where the watusi meets interplanetary synths. On their first album in 16 years, the "Love Shack" has morphed into a mall-like "Funplex." Shellacked with Keith Strickland's surf guitar, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson's honeyed harmonies and Fred Schneider's campy exclamations, just about every track's obsessed with sex. Sex is dancing! Sex is a road trip! Sex is a cocktail party! Schneider's horny hollering soon turns cringe-worthy. But the club-ready hooks are the real point here. Just like everything since 1979's "Rock Lobster," "Funplex" works best when the voices blend into the momentum.

ARTIST: COUNTING CROWS

ALBUM: SATURDAY NIGHTS & SUNDAY MORNINGS (Geffen Records)

"I'm just trying to make some sense outta me," Adam Duritz tells us early on in "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings" — an angsty quest he's stretched across five Counting Crows studio albums. Fortunately, Duritz and company know how to make that conundrum rock with anthemic ferocity or treat it with melodies so plaintive they positively shimmer. All those virtues are intact here, a concept piece of sorts on which the first, hard-rocking half of the album revels in sin, or at least sinful intent, and the second exhibits the contrition of Sunday morning. The band stretches out in some new directions on the trance-y "Washington Square" and incorporates psychedelic overtones into "Insignificant" and "Le Ballet d'Or." "You Can't Count on Me" sounds like the flip side of a Bruce Springsteen love song, and such tracks as "1492," "Cowboys" and "Come Around" rock with sweeping dynamic energy.

Reuters/Billboard

By Mitchell Peters 19 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Some could label her a rebel, but Robyn might best be described as a teen pop survivor of the music industry.

In the years after her U.S. breakthrough in the late 1990s, the Swedish singer had nearly abandoned hopes of maintaining a successful career. But more than a decade later, Robyn will return to the American music scene with a self-titled album that's hits shelves April 29 via Konichiwa/Cherrytree/Interscope.

"It is definitely like getting a second chance," Robyn says. "I had scrapped all my ideas of being an international artist again, because I was scared of the music industry."

The 29-year-old singer's 1997 U.S. debut, "Robyn Is Here" (RCA) produced such hits as "Show Me Love" and "Do You Know (What It Takes)." But when it came time to release a follow-up studio album in the States, to the dismay of record labels, Robyn insisted on moving away from her pop-focused sound. In turn, the labels declined to release her new material.

During the next several years, while signed to BMG in Sweden, Robyn was able to live comfortably by releasing a handful of overseas-only albums. But something was missing in the music. "I was always forced to conform to the structure of the major industry," she says. "I just wanted to detach myself. I wanted to start over."

Second chances are rare for most artists, but not impossible, as Robyn has set out to prove. More than a decade has passed since the U.S. release of "Robyn Is Here," which has sold 922,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Even so, her American fan base is as vibrant as ever. Interest was reignited after the 2007 U.K. release of Robyn's electro-heavy self-titled album, which first came out in Sweden in 2005 via the artist's Konichiwa Records.

"All of these international blogs and music sites quickly started to pick up on the music," Robyn says. "It really gave me the courage to believe there was an audience out there for me."

The new set finds Robyn collaborating with members of fellow Swede acts the Knife and Teddybears, among others. After shopping the self-titled disc to U.K. labels and then being rejected, Robyn decided to release the album through Konichiwa, which she founded in 2004. After the love-addled single "With Every Heartbeat" went to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Singles chart, "all of the labels that said 'no' in the beginning came back," says Robyn, who eventually signed a joint venture with Island in the United Kingdom.

Robyn recently contributed vocals to a track by rapper Snoop Dogg, singing the chorus on the remix of his single "Sexual Eruption."

A three-week U.S. theater tour is scheduled to begin April 26 in Miami and wrap May 17 at the Wiltern in Los Angeles.

Reuters/Billboard

By Antony Bruno 19 minutes ago

DENVER (Billboard) - Search for an artist on any of the popular search engines, and the top three results are practically guaranteed: the artist's official Web site, Wikipedia entry and MySpace page — often in that order.

But while artists and their handlers devote massive attention to the Web site and MySpace, the Wikipedia page is often overlooked. Recent data suggests they may want to reconsider their priorities.

According to data provided to Billboard from Yahoo — the second-most popular search engine on the Web after Google — those searching for artist information are selecting the Wikipedia entry link over artists' MySpace pages by a factor of more than 2-to-1. The Wikipedia entries are also more popular than artists' Web sites.

"The interest that people had to go to MySpace to find out more about their favorite band is waning in favor of going to Wikipedia," Yahoo head of programming and label relations John Lenac says. "In the last six months, it's surpassed it."

Yet when compared with the number of artist profiles on MySpace, Wikipedia entries are noticeably fewer. MySpace claims 3 million artist profiles. Wikipedia does not have an exact count of artist entries, but estimates that it's in the "tens of thousands," according to Wikipedia Foundation head of communications Jay Walsh.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

What's more, because of Wikipedia's low profile relative to the MySpace hype machine, many artists and their managers remain ignorant of the resources available to them.

"There's been many people I've talked to that didn't even know they could upload a Wikipedia page," Lenac says. "There's been some managers that didn't even know what it was."

For those in the latter category, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that relies on everyday users to submit the information listed about a given topic, using a collaborative software system known as "wiki." It contains more than 7 million articles in 200 languages and receives some 300 million page views per day. Anyone can contribute to a given article, BUT they must first past muster from a team of volunteer editors with a particular passion about the subject before the text appears live.

The result is a rather tight, focused and vetted overview of the subject, which some online marketing experts feel is why fans are selecting Wikipedia over other options.

"Wikipedia is a fantastic landing page," says Jason Feinberg, owner/president of On Target Media Group, a Web promotions consultancy. "It's so clear, so concise, and it's standardized. That's something I think is a draw over MySpace, where you never quite know the experience you're going to get. Is it going to be a horrible jumble of images and video and text that's difficult to read? Also, (Wikipedia is) rooted in fact. It's not promotional. Especially these days when the Internet is full of artists trying to essentially ram their message down your throat, I think a fan is a lot more receptive to a simple, no-hype approach."

But don't expect to see Wikipedia offering full-song streams or links to buy digital songs anytime soon.

"That's not what we're about," Walsh says. "We're about knowledge. We're about bringing the reader to other free content … content they can use and enjoy without worrying about violating any copyrights."

Reuters/Billboard