Music Industry

Merry Clayton's spine-chilling vocal on the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" is one of the most famed in '60s rock. But the 1969 classic brings painful memories to Clayton: The physical strain of the intense duet with Mick Jagger resulted in a miscarriage after the session. So audiences' frequent requests for "Gimme Shelter" might sting like salt in an old wound. Clayton, who performs at the Gardenia Room on Friday, says she was buoyed by her religious upbringing in combating the loss.

Twitter Inc. says its new music service helps users discover songs and artists. But the music industry isn't sure it's something to sing about just yet. The #Music app recommends songs based on the artists Twitter users follow. It also shows what tracks friends are tweeting about. And it lets users browse songs that are popular or up-and-coming on the service. The user can preview the tracks from iTunes or subscribe to Spotify or Rdio to listen to full-length versions of the suggested songs.

"WE go until it happens," rap producer Dr. Dre says about all the time he spends in the recording studio searching for hits, once as long as 79 hours in a single stretch. "When the ideas are coming," says the man who is one of the half-dozen most influential producers of the modern pop era, "I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time." Some hip-hop fans, however, must be wondering if this particular train isn't off the track.

Twitter is finally jumping into music discovery . The influential microblogging site has released a new service, Twitter #music , that will allow its more than 500 million users to explore the tracks that people are buzzing about in 140 characters or less. The new app, which is separate from its primary social network, was made available to iPhone users through the iTunes App Store (sorry Android owners) and online Thursday. Last week, Twitter rolled out the service exclusively to musicians to test out. So how does it work?

A top PolyGram executive has been demoted after suggesting in a court deposition that if record companies were prevented from hiring people with criminal records, no African Americans would be working in the music industry. The remark triggered a furor within the Dutch-owned entertainment conglomerate that is expected to continue today with a meeting at PolyGram's New York headquarters between company Chairman Alain Levy and civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The invention of the phonograph was going to discourage people from going out to see live music. The introduction of music radio was a surefire way of killing record sales. "Home taping is killing music" screamed the magazine ads when the cassette tape was introduced to the marketplace. Of course, each of those sky-is-falling alerts from the music industry over the last century was a false alarm. With each technological innovation, music became more accessible and more lucrative than ever.

The collapse of the old music industry — the happy business of spotting talent, pressing millions of LPs or CDs and wondering how to spend the profits — is so well documented that it is almost a surprise to find a new book on the subject. If you were starting now, you might tell the story by dissecting Guy Hands' disastrous buyout of EMI, studying the Lady Gaga-to-Amy Winehouse hit factory at Universal Music or even revisiting the Japanese-German culture clash that followed the Sony-BMG merger.

I am a frequent user of Napster, which I see as a valuable service. Others, however, see it as a way to steal music. They think of it as circulating music without giving proper compensation to the musicians, producers and record companies. What people who are opposed to this service fail to understand is that Napster really isn't about songs that you hear on the radio all the time or the videos you see on MTV.

What is euphemistically called trading music online is theft, most of it petty. Songs downloaded free deny artists and record companies their due. Even so, the recording industry has abetted the robbery with its own greed and ineptitude. Though the industry is showing a glimmer that it understands there are better ways to deal with the problem, it also is employing a legal blunderbuss to pursue small-time downloaders as big-time criminals.

Jac Holzman, who founded Elektra Records 60 years ago with $600 — half from his bar mitzvah money — should by all rights be sipping mai tais on a tropical island at this point in his career. Instead, the 79-year-old is exactly where he likes to be: in the thick of a technological tidal wave that's crashed over the very industry he helped to build. Holzman is senior advisor to Edgar Bronfman Jr., the chief executive of Warner Music Group Corp. who asked the veteran to return to the label that bought Elektra in 1970, along with Nonesuch Records, which Holzman launched in 1964.

Will a song be worth more than 140 characters to Twitter users? After testing out a new music discovery service with celebrities such as Ryan Seacrest, Blake Shelton, Ne-Yo and Moby, Twitter is clicking play on Twitter #Music . The free service will be available starting Thursday at  https://music.twitter.com and as an app for the iPhone in the App Store in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Twitter said....

Hours before Pink's recent show at Staples Center, creative director Baz Halpin is crouched beneath the stage in the dimly lighted corridor he calls "the underworld. " That night, Pink's fans would witness the star scale a giant gyroscope, somersault from bungee cords, dangle precariously from silk ribbons and fly over the audience at dizzying heights. Halpin points to crash-landing pads that swell from a trap door to protect the singer, an ornate silver rig for one of five aerial numbers and a small tank filled with water for a finale that blurs the line between circus and pop performance.

AUSTIN, Texas - Tuesday afternoon at South by Southwest was dedicated to electronic mavens and digital gatekeepers, arguably the new rock stars of the music industry in 2013. Spotify founder Daniel Ek was given a space at a 2,400-capacity auditorium at the Long Center for the Performing Arts for an interview, while later, electronic artists Deadmau5 and Richie Hawtin spoke while hundreds were locked out of their panel at the Austin Convention Center. “Your best bet is to watch it when it's online in about a month,” said a SXSW staff member to those of us near the back of the line.

Clive Davis will make a promotional swing through Southern California over the next several days in conjunction with the publication of his new book, “The Soundtrack of My Life,” written with veteran Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis. Davis will do a book signing at Book Soup in West Hollywood at 4 p.m. March 15; and on March 20, participate in a sold-out Q&A session with Grammy Museum Executive Director Robert Santelli in the museum's 200-seat theater that bears Davis' name.

After dozens of meetings and a few orphaned ideas, the Getty has settled on a theme for a 2017 sequel to the 2011-12 museum exhibition extravaganza known as Pacific Standard Time. It will be "Los Angeles and Latin America," or "L.A./L.A. " for short. "The fact that nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America is so profound that it warrants a major exhibition and research project with accompanying publications," said Getty Trust head James Cuno. About 60 arts institutions in Southern California participated in Pacific Standard Time, receiving some $11 million in grants from the Getty to research and develop exhibitions on post-war art in Los Angeles, 1945 to 1980.

When is 13 a lucky number? When it's the number of years it's taken for the music industry to post its first yearly increase in global recorded music sales, which is what happened in 2012, according to new figures from the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry . The group's annual Digital Music Report , issued Feb. 26 in London, noted that overall music sales rose from $16.2 billion to $16.5 billion, or 0.3%, from 2011...

A rock-music industry investigation will be the storyline of a seven-episode arc on CBS' "Wiseguy" beginning March 1. The stories will feature guest stars Tim Curry ("Amadeus," "Rocky Horror Picture Show"), Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac) and Deidre Hall ("Our House," "Days of Our Lives").

Roughly a quarter-century ago, Whitney Houston's peers crowned her pop's new princess when they awarded her the Grammy for best female pop vocal performance. At Sunday night's Grammy Awards, many of the same people came together to mourn her untimely death. Barely 24 hours after Houston died in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, as the music world's glitterati massed at the Staples Center, it was evident that Houston's spectral presence would hover fitfully over the evening.

Musicians - and the people who work closely with them - really know how to party. That's why Grammys night, unlike other high-end awards nights like the Oscars or Emmys, usually means one thing: unadulterated decadence. Actors hate to be seen acting rowdy, but musicians pride themselves on it. The parties started Tuesday and lasted until the wee hours Sunday. Solange Knowles and fellow alt-soul singer Lianne La havas were honored Wednesday at Essence's Fourth Annual Black Women in Music at posh West Hollywood nightspot Greystone Manor Supperclub.

One would think Skrillex would be used to nabbing Grammys by now. Having scored three statues last year, the former best new artist nominee was awarded another big night Sunday, taking home three awards and beating out Deadmau5, Kaskade and surprise nominee Al Walser along the way. The dubstep spinster sheepishly emerged backstage (who doesn't like dozens of reporters staring at you?), where he chatted about scoring Harmony Korine's upcoming film “Spring Breakers,” working with ASAP Rocky and maintaining his underground credibility now that he's dipped into the mainstream.