Music Industry

Sorry, old chum. Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and Live Nation Inc. may have to divest assets in the United Kingdom to go ahead with their proposed merger, British regulators said Thursday. The Competition Commission, which investigates mergers for the British government, issued a provisional ruling that the merger of ticketing giant Ticketmaster and concert production company Live Nation could "severely inhibit" German ticketing company CTS Eventim. CTS signed a deal before the proposed merger was announced in February to sell tickets to music events for Live Nation in Britain.

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.

Leave it to brash punk-pop icon Green Day to inject some much-needed life into the U.S. pop charts. The band's latest concept-driven collection for Reprise/Warner Bros., "21st Century Breakdown," which was released off-cycle on a Friday rather than the typical Tuesday, sold 214,000 copies through Sunday, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Silver Lake's Silversun Pickups are now in the same league as superstars Miley Cyrus, Rascal Flatts and Lady GaGa -- or at least in the neighborhood. The independent rock quartet has scored its first-ever top-10 album, landing at No. 7 with "Swoon," which places the fuzzy guitar rockers between Jadakiss and Lady GaGa on the U.S. pop chart. It just goes to show what a little promotion can do.

The shaky economy is rattling the summer music festival. In the months leading up to the Southland's premier concert event, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival -- which kicks off its 10th edition in Indio today with performances by such pop luminaries as Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen -- recession-era fiscal realities have led to a string of cancellations by respected festivals. Florida's Langerado Music Festival was canceled because of poor ticket sales.

The stark realities facing the independent music sector threatened to cast a pall over the hard-partying revelry as the South by Southwest music festival began its second full day Thursday. Executives who gathered for the confab said they were grappling with the same sorts of fallout from the worsening economy and breakdown of traditional business models -- declining album sales, online piracy and rampant layoffs -- that have been afflicting their corporate counterparts for the last decade.

Starting today, the Anaheim Convention Center becomes ground zero for guitar geeks. It's the annual four-day trade show of the music products industry, and hotshot musicians from around the country will be there to check out the latest guitars, amps, electronic keyboards and digital recording gear. Staged by the Carlsbad-based International Music Products Assn., the event (and the trade group itself) still goes by its old acronym, NAMM, for National Assn. of Music Merchants.

Broadcasters call the Performance Rights Act a tax. To the music industry, it's more like a royalty fee. But the legislation, which is gaining momentum in both the House and the Senate, is making radio stations nervous. For more than 80 years, commercial stations have aired songs without paying royalties to musicians.

Digital music downloads reached a milestone in 2008, exceeding 1 billion songs purchased online, according to a newly released report from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales. That represents a 27% gain over the previous year. But the soaring popularity of the 99-cent download is not enough to offset continued declines in CD sales, which still account for the bulk of the music industry's revenue. Physical disc sales fell nearly 20% to 362.

Once upon a time, A&R were the sexiest letters in the music industry's alphabet. Executives in the artists-and-repertoire division of every major record label were charged with discovering and nurturing new acts, setting them on the path toward gold and platinum albums and Grammy Awards. These high-powered talent brokers would spend their nights scouring nightclubs and street corners after days combing through stacks of homemade recordings in their quests for pop music's next big thing.