Recording Industry

Tom McCauley didn't plan on making house calls when he started in the music business. As a recording engineer, McCauley made a good living working out of the many commercial studios that had grown up throughout the Los Angeles area to serve the music, film and television industries. But with the advent of software that allows high-end recording from a personal computer, the 53-year-old Sherman Oaks resident has traded the quasi-industrial atmosphere of the commercial studio for his customers' garages or living rooms.

A business associate who is suing Michael Jackson over a $1.6-million financial dispute tried to go behind the pop star's back and sell rights to a charity record to a Japanese company, Jackson's former lawyer testified Monday. The charity record, which was to benefit victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was supposed to be in Jackson's name only, lawyer Zia Modabber testified. But unbeknownst to Jackson, F.

They were singing the blues in the legendary Studio A at Hollywood's Capitol Records tower. "Losing this place would be a big deal. There's nothing better than this anywhere in the world," said recording engineer Al Schmitt. Schmitt, a 19-time Grammy winner, was standing over the banquet-table-size mixing board in the Vine Street studio's control room. Punching a button on the console, he played back a silky smooth track recorded minutes earlier by jazz singer Roberta Gambarini.

As partygoers circled around, Tim Tankosic watched a beautiful woman expertly smuggle a pack of drugs to the movie star. It was exactly the kind of temptation that Tankosic, a highly paid "sober companion," was hired to ward off. Soft-spoken and cerebral, with a homey, unaffected air, Tankosic prefers to see himself as a motivational helper rather than a drug cop, so he was relieved when the actor handed him the unused drugs as they left the party--no hassle, no fuss.

Susan Philips has a conscience so sensitive to ethical failings that she feels guilty if she leaves her shopping cart adrift in the grocery store parking lot. Her influence is reflected in her elder daughter's career choice: Miriam Philips, 22, wants to be a rabbi. On at least one moral dilemma, though, mother and daughter are on opposite sides. To Susan, downloading music on the Internet without permission is wrong. To Miriam, it's just what you do when you go to college.

The three burly, skin-headed members of the hip-hop group Woodpile want a bigger audience, but they know the odds are long. They have no hope of cracking mainstream radio or MTV with songs like "They Hate Us" or "I'm a Wood," in which they rap menacingly about blasting enemies with shotguns. Further limiting their commercial prospects, their August album, "The Streets Will Never Be the Same," boasts of the group's affiliation with the Woods, a white power prison gang.

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.

(More than five nominations in a category are as a result of ties.) General Categories Record of the Year: "I'll Make Love to You," Boyz II Men (Babyface, producer); "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," Mary Chapin Carpenter (Mary Chapin Carpenter and John Jennings, producers); "All I Wanna Do," Sheryl Crow (Bill Bottrell, producer); "Love Sneakin' Up on You," Bonnie Raitt (Bonnie Raitt and Don Was, producers); "Streets of Philadelphia," Bruce Springsteen (Chuck Plotkin and Bruce Springsteen, producers).

The cramped nightclubs and theaters that play host to funk star George Clinton these days can't accommodate the gigantic silver spaceship that was his signature stage prop in his heyday. But the 59-year-old singer-composer keeps touring, typically on the road 200 nights a year. He says he needs the money to pay his lawyers.

Warner Music Group, in a sign that the struggling recorded music company is seeking to bolster its ranks of artists, has tapped producer Rob Cavallo for the newly created position of chief creative officer. In that role he will help develop acts across all of the Warner music labels including Atlantic, Asylum, Electra and Warner Bros. Cavallo, a multiple Grammy winner, has a strong track record with credits that include Green Day's "American Idiot," Kid Rock's "Rock N Roll Jesus" and most recently the top-10 release "Brand New Eyes" from the rock band Paramore.

One in a series of occasional articles The Troubadour, awash on a recent night in indigo light and chiming guitars, doesn't look all that different than it did in the 1970s, when music history plugged in to the club's stage amps and earned the tiny West Hollywood venue the audacity to relentlessly advertise itself as "the world-famous Troubadour." The description still fits but, well, the world isn't as big as it used to be, not for the recording industry or the young musicians who come to Los Angeles with dreams of gold and platinum.

Tom McCauley didn't plan on making house calls when he started in the music business. As a recording engineer, McCauley made a good living working out of the many commercial studios that had grown up throughout the Los Angeles area to serve the music, film and television industries. But with the advent of software that allows high-end recording from a personal computer, the 53-year-old Sherman Oaks resident has traded the quasi-industrial atmosphere of the commercial studio for his customers' garages or living rooms.

Warner Music Group, in a sign that the struggling recorded music company is seeking to bolster its ranks of artists, has tapped producer Rob Cavallo for the newly created position of chief creative officer. In that role he will help develop acts across all of the Warner music labels including Atlantic, Asylum, Electra and Warner Bros. Cavallo, a multiple Grammy winner, has a strong track record with credits that include Green Day's "American Idiot," Kid Rock's "Rock N Roll Jesus" and most recently the top-10 release "Brand New Eyes" from the rock band Paramore.

There may be no second acts in American lives, but there's always another act for an American idol. "American Idol's" first champ, Kelly Clarkson, returned to the top of the U.S. pop charts, with her new album, "All I Ever Wanted," bowing at No. 1, an encouraging start after disappointing sales of her 2007 effort, "My December." The new album sold 255,000 copies in its first week in stores in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan data released to Billboard.

Brushing aside character references from an array of Swedish pop musicians, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge refused Friday to lower the $1-million bail for a hip-hop artist accused of killing a jazz pianist in a Hollywood crosswalk. Judge Monica Bachner said she had reviewed 21 letters submitted on behalf of David Jassy, including a dozen from friends in the recording industry, but found no "unusual circumstances" to change his bail. She said Jassy's Swedish citizenship made him a flight risk as did his foreign family ties, which include an 11-year-old son in Sweden, a brother in Italy and other relatives in Gambia.

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.

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.

Paul McCartney said Monday that negotiations on a long-awaited deal to make the Beatles' catalog available on the online music service iTunes have stalled. "The last word I got back was it's stalled at the whole moment, the whole process," the former Beatle said. "I really hope it will happen because I think it should." The band's holding company, Apple Corps Ltd., has so far declined to allow the Fab Four's music on any Internet music service, including iTunes. Record label EMI, which owns the Beatles recordings but needs Apple Corps' permission to release the music in new formats, said it was still trying to resolve the matter.

Back in the day, you weren't anyone in the blues world unless you were signed to Chess Records, the label that made stars out of a generation of rough and tumble musicians, notably Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf.

Talk about a peculiar way of celebrating a worldwide smash hit. In 2006, Downtown Records was just a scrappy indie start-up label with a skeletal staff of four working out of the chief executive's downtown Manhattan apartment. Enter hip-hop-rock-soul duo Gnarls Barkley, whose work was Downtown's first release. Inside of a few months, the group's infectious single "Crazy" had become the feel-good hit of summer, hitting No. 1 in the U.K.