If you listened to any Top 40 radio station for more than 10 consecutive minutes this year, chances are you heard a song by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, or Taylor Swift. Those four women dominated the airwaves in 2010, led by Perry’s “California Gurls,” the song of the summer, if not the year (though Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” gets our vote). Swift’s third album, Speak Now, set all kinds of sales records when it was released in October. (At 3 million copies sold, she’s running neck-and-neck with Eminem for the year’s top-selling album.) When Rihanna wasn’t making her own hit singles, she was guesting on smashes with Eminem and others. Without releasing any new material this year, songs from Lady Gaga’s last album have proven to have legs longer than her own. Outside of the recording studio, pop’s power princesses captured the imagination of the chattering classes as well. Perry’s marriage to comedian Russell Brand, Swift’s response to Kanye West and her recent relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, Rihanna’s appearance as a battered woman in Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” video, and the meat dress Lady Gaga wore at the MTV Video Music Awards provided endless fodder for the tabloids and kept us watching all year long.
L-R: Richard Drew / AP Photo; Matt Sayles / AP Photo (2), Jason DeCrow / AP Photo
Not since The Beatles invaded Ed Sullivan have teenage girls gone as crazy for a mop-topped singer as they did this year for Justin Bieber. Little dude harnessed the power of social networking to become the biggest breakout star in music since… well, there really hasn’t been a star in music quite like Bieber. He has racked up more than 250 million YouTube streams, 8 million Facebook friends and 4 million Twitter followers. The precocious Canadian heartthrob converted that following into album sales of roughly 3 million, single sales of 3.5 million, and concert tickets sales of nearly 600,000. Not bad for a 16 year old.
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This year, two of the big four record labels—Universal Music Group and EMI—had a change in leadership, but for vastly different reasons. At 72 years old and after a legendary career that rivals any in the music industry’s executive ranks, Doug Morris stepped down as CEO of Universal Music Group, beginning in earnest a new era under Lucian Grainge. Saddled with debt after an ill-timed buyout in 2007, EMI owner Guy Hands forced CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti to resign and named longtime executive Roger Faxon the label’s new boss. Hands just lost a legal battle with Citigroup, and if he fails to meet debt obligations owed to the bank it could end up taking control of EMI. Meanwhile, Sony Music’s top two executives, Rob Stringer and Barry Weiss, spent the year jockeying in the press for the CEO role that is expected to be open once current boss Rolf Schmidt-Holtz’s contract expires. Stringer appears to have won the power struggle, as Weiss announced this month that he would be leaving Sony for UMG when his contract expires in March, clearing the way for Stringer to take over for Schmidt-Holtz. Compared to the others, Warner Music’s executive ranks appear remarkably stable. But the company does have some blood on its hands, ousting the well-respected leader of its Warner Bros. label, Tom Whalley, who lost a power struggle with Lyor Cohen.
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Books about the financial crisis and Wall Street meltdown were the dominant genre this year. But those books are boring to read! Who wants to learn about credit default swaps when there are displeased women griping to Keith Richards about Mick Jagger and his “tiny todger”? Moreover, Jay-Z’s Decoded probably has as intelligent a discourse of the effects of Reaganonomics on the inner city than any academic work, only with much more swagger. Formidable as those two books were, they weren’t even the best in the category. That honor goes to Patti Smith, who won the National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids. And let’s not forget about Rosanne Cash’s well-received autobiography, Composed.
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Can American Idol survive without Simon Cowell? Yes. How much it will be wounded in terms of lost viewers and buzz because of Cowell’s departure is another question altogether. The 10th season of the singing competition, which has ranked as the highest-rated show on television for years, will look a lot different than the one viewers have become accustomed to over the past nine seasons. Producers used Cowell’s departure as an opportunity for a wholesale remake of the judges' table, also ushering out Ellen DeGeneres and Kara DioGuardi, leaving only Randy Jackson from the former team (Ryan Seacrest is still onboard as host as well). Joining Jackson this season will be Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez. Though Idol remains TV’s most-watched show, its viewership has waned in recent years, as has the show’s ability to produce breakout stars like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Wanting to put the focus back on breaking big acts, producers also named Jimmy Iovine, the influential hitmaker at Universal Music Group as “in-house mentor. Idol is also under a fresh threat from Cowell’s new show, X Factor, as well as a host of other music-competition programs that have been born out of its success. The chemistry of the new team will determine whether Idol can continue its dominance or be unseated.
Dan Steinberg / AP Photo
After spending three decades swapping trademark infringement lawsuits, Apple the computer company, Apple Corp., the umbrella company for The Beatles’ interests, and record label EMI put aside their differences and reached a deal to bring the Fab Four’s music to iTunes. The deal was portrayed as a milestone in the evolution of digital music, a joyous occasion for a downtrodden industry, finally converting the most celebrated band in the history of music to digital. Early adopters scoffed, however, noting that the band’s music has been widely available—and pirated—in digital format through the ripping of CDs for years now. So far the results are mixed. As of early December, no songs by The Beatles ranked among iTunes Top 100 Singles list. But the group placed six records on the store’s Top 100 Albums list, including Abbey Road, The White Album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rubber Soul, a greatest hits collection, and a box set of its entire catalog of albums.
Jeff Chiu / AP Photo; Paul Sakuma / AP Photo
This year marked the beginning of the next wave in the short history of digital music, with hopes high among the record labels that subscription-based services such as Spotify and Google’s impending offering that feature access to any song any time for a fee will emerge as a serious competitor to Apple’s iTunes and its download-to-own model. The major record labels have been unhappy for quite some time with Steve Jobs’ outsize power and the fact that they aren’t making enough money from digital sales as they originally hoped. Couple that with the fact that digital sales are flatlining, and there’s motivation to help nurture a new model. The conceit behind services such as Spotify is that consumers aren’t going to spend $10,000 to buy 10,000 songs (99 cents per digital song being the average going rate) but they will spend $15 per month for anywhere anytime access to an unlimited number of songs that they merely borrow when they want to hear them. Now all the labels need to do is reach licensing deals with these new services that provide them with enough revenue while also allowing the new services to grow and thrive.
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Bono, named “Worst Investor in America” this year by 24/7 Wall St, ensnared U2 bandmate The Edge in the hopelessly tangled web of Spider-Man the Musical. Plagued with problems from the start, estimates suggest that the $65 million production needs to make $1 million a week for the next two to three years just to break even.
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Live concerts, long the healthiest part of the music business, had a dismal year. After years of growth in both attendance and ticket sales, that the touring industry will be down about 15 percent this year, according to concert sales tracker Pollstar estimates. The effects of the decline were particularly acute at Live Nation Ticketmaster, which watched $300 million in stock value vanish after the company, which combines the nation’s largest concert promoter in Live Nation with the country’s biggest ticket seller in Ticketmaster, had to revise financial projections downward because of the touring industry’s lackluster performance. At the end of the third quarter, total tickets sold by the Top 100 tours were down by 20 percent, or 8.6 million tickets, according to Pollstar. Rock act AC/DC ranked as the top-selling act on the road this year, moving 1.82 million tickets. (Full year numbers won’t be released until after the New Year.)
Jan Pitman / AP Photo
American Idol crushes Glee in the ratings, but when it comes to driving music sales, Glee has clearly supplanted Idol. The raw numbers are staggering: Glee soundtracks have sold more than 3 million albums combined and individual singles from the show have been downloaded more than 14 million times. Artists whose work is featured on Glee experience a halo effect from the show on their sales as well. For instance, albums by Katy Perry and Train experienced sales bumps of 178 percent and 160 percent, respectively, in the week after songs were featured on Glee. That makes Glee the place for record labels to showcase their acts on TV. Credit goes to Sony Music’s Rob Stringer for not only foreseeing the Glee phenomenon and inking a deal for albums from the show, but also for getting Sony of out its deal with Idol as that franchise loses steam. Stringer also inked a deal with former Idol host Simon Cowell’s new show, X Factor, ensuring that if that program supplants Glee or AI as TV’s music hitmaker Sony will still benefit.
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If The Sopranos finale sparked renewed interest in ‘80s rock band Journey, then a powder keg ignited after “Don’t Stop Believin’” was used in Glee and covered in the U.K. by X-Factor winner Joe McElderry. The song now ranks as the top-selling digital classic rock song in history, with sales of 4.1 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The Glee cast version of the song has moved more than 1 million tracks, and the Glee/Journey album has outsold the Glee/Madonna album by almost 100,000 copies. After “Don’t Stop Believin’” reached No. 6 on the U.K. singles chart this year—it never made the top 40 when it first came out in 1982—Journey won “Event of the Year” at Classic Rock magazine’s annual awards ceremony (it’s a big deal in London!). The band’s resurgence has led to a new album set to be released in 2011 and a world tour.
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Former MTV, AOL, and Time Warner executive Bob Pittman shocked the media business world last month when he agreed to invest in and become a senior adviser to Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio operator. Since leaving corporate life, Pittman has become something of a mentor to hip, young digital executives running cutting-edge websites like Daily Candy, Stereogum, and Thrillist. Pittman’s arrival was preceded by the departure of Clear Channel’s former digital guru, Evan Harrison, in August. Though he began his career as a radio announcer, media observers were at a loss to explain why Pittman would want to get into radio, the one media business that is arguably as challenged and unsexy as newspapers? So far he isn’t saying, but stay tuned, as this experiment should be quite interesting.
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It is perhaps more indicative of how slowly old media dies off than how fast new media is adopted that Sony announced only in April that it will no longer produce the Walkman cassette player. Keep in mind, that’s just the tape player; the company will still manufacture CD Walkmans even though those seem downright prehistoric to many already. Born in 1980, the Walkman was named by Time magazine as one of its 100 best gadgets of all time.
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The music industry gets made fun of for doing a lot of things wrong digitally, but one thing they got right was Vevo. In just one year, the video site owned by Universal Music Group, EMI, and Sony Music—Warner Music is the lone major label holdout—has emerged as the dominant place for online music videos. According to comScore, Vevo racked up 55 million unique visitors in October, more than MTV Networks Music, MySpace Music, Yahoo Music, and AOL Music to name a few competitors. More importantly, the site is already profitable, with a source at one of the participating labels saying Vevo should make between $60 million and $70 million this year.
