They did not blow much shit up in Moneyball.

The Year in Film

Let’s start with the coolest clip this week, a film called The 2011 Portfolio.

It’s a mashup of 166 films that came out in 2011, and it’s really well done. First watch, then we’ll discuss…

Cool, right? But here’s where we get disturbed by what we see:

1) A lot of these movies look like the same movie.
2) Violence, lots. Blowing shit up is just boring. Did Hitchcock need to blow up that much shit? Thought not.
3) I think I counted more blue people than black people. Seriously, there are four blue characters and I think I only saw two black actors, not counting Harold and Kumar, who are, of course, not black. WTF Hollywood? What country do you live in?

Tom Waits Satisfied

What happens when Bob Dylan’s kid shoots a video for Tom Waits? This does. Jesse Dylan directs…

The Black Keys

The Black Keys were all over TV this past weekend, and despite our tease for the SNL performance, they were better on Colbert as SNL continues to lag behind just about everybody in the live mix department…

Lonely Boy performance…

Gold on the Ceiling performance (web only)…

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Emerson College’s WERS/Boston, a non-commercial AAA station asked its audience the following question:

Besides WERS, what other sources are you listening to more for music in the past six months, if any?

Program Director Dan Moore took the answers from the 1044 respondents and put them in tag cloud form. The resulting image is remarkable.

It visualizes what most everyone in music radio knows, but doesn’t really want to talk about.

So dominant is Pandora as a “second choice” for music lovers, it may actually help focus terrestrial radio’s response.

WERS current PD Katie DiMartile (l) along with former PDs Lily Jeong and Dan Moore - both have graduated.

In the case of WERS, the two top up and coming competitors are Pandora and “none.” It’s basically either WERS or Pandora. What to do? Arguably, since WERS cannot out-Pandora Pandora, concentrating on what Pandora cannot do appears to be one strategic path.

In the case of CBS Radio, it’s more of an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy as they roll out Personalized Radio powered by Last.fm.

Check this quote from the Personalized Radio press release:

“Premium content from major market brands like KROQ and WXRT, for example, is in high demand and will continue to foster growth online for many years to come. But in a world where consumers expect more and more control over their audio consumption we’re pleased to provide them with the best of both worlds.”

Makes sense, but what exactly passes for “premium content” these days? An actual announcer?

Actually, KROQ and WXRT do pass the premium content test. But what about everyone else?

Seems to me that traditional music radio still has a few killer apps left. Start with Localism and the role of curator. These are two damn good killer apps — and Pandora certainly can’t deliver on one the first. Entertainment value is another killer app — the “premium content” that the CBS release references.

Unfortunately, more and more music radio stations are ill-equipped to deliver on any of these.

Public radio, with its consumer funded model, is much more in touch with the audience and has been faring better than its commercial counterpart with its “aggregate for the ad agency” model.

The introduction of Arbitron’s Personal People Meter and the ensuing risk aversion displayed by radio programmers may well be the best things to happen to the Pandora team.

Investment in programming talent? Investment in on-air talent? Development of new shows? Take a shot on a new song? A little market research? In a PPM world, these are increasingly crazy ideas.

And it’s all music to Pandora’s ears.

-Paul Marszalek

Cher This

Crummy iPhone 3G shot of the Music Meeting. Kot, DeRogatis, and Coakely.

Sean Coakely of Songlines immediately knew he was in trouble.

For years he had hosted he annual Music Meeting — a generally boisterous session where radio and music industry types, as well as local radio listeners took part in your basic “rate-a-record.”

Play about a minute of a brand new song, rate it from 1 to 10. Try to guess who it is — you get the idea.

Previous to this year, the fun was to see the scoring differences between the listeners and the insider crowd, who tended to be more critical.

The occasional trashing of a record has made it increasingly difficult for labels to even want to participate in the Music Meeting for fear of their new song being dead on arrival at radio. But on the whole, the sessions tended to be civil with just one or two outbreaks.

Not this year.

Guest panelists were veteran music journalists and critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, who in addition to writing, host a successful talk-about-music show called Sound Opinions on Public Radio. (Note moving forward that the show is not based in music criticism, there’s much more.)

At this year’s meeting, the sound guy rolled a new Jayhawks song. Up went placards ranging from 6 to 9. And then DeRogatis held up a 1. Kot followed suit with a lowball rating.

One could feel the air go right out of the room. Really? The Jayhawks? A ONE?

WTF? On the Jayhawks worst day they couldn’t produce a one. DeRogatis and Kot talked a bit about a low-rent Byrds, and that Gary Louris was capable of better arrangements and so on. Seriously.

Moderator Coakely was now in the position of preventing the session from devolving into a piranha-like feeding frenzy.

DeRogatis, in referencing that he teaches music criticism at Columbia College in Chicago, said that, unfortunately, “critic” has come to mean “someone who tears things down, but it’s not that.” Yet snarky tear-downs permeated the proceedings.

It got so rough that Binky Phillips, the New York musician/writer/scenester, chimed in from the crowd about the new Heavenly States song called Berlin Wall. Sung by guest vocalist Britt Daniel of Spoon, and a crowd favorite, Phillips complained from the audience about the chord changes and lack of creativity.

I’m not sure if he was serious. I’m desperately hoping that he was subversively mocking the whole Music Meeting concept. But I’m not sure he was.

With rare exception, Kot and DeRogatis panned songs, and as they did so, I began wondering about what it means to be a music critic in today’s environment. Increasingly I’ve wondered, “Are music critics obsolete?”

With all of the potential resources for checking out new music, are we not qualified to critique for ourselves?

I am, myself, a recovering critic. Like most of my fellow radio colleagues, for years I thought that my opinion mattered. I lived in a fantasy that my tastes and opinions could guide a radio station to success.

Eventually, I learned that my role was that of a curator and not a critic. The job was to find things that, based on feedback, the audience might enjoy — challenging them once in a while along the way. As I got better at this, my stations, shows, and productions all had more success.

I am now clean for more than 15 years – haven’t read a review. When All Things Considered rolls into one of their 5 minute time killers near the top of the hour, I’m gone. Do we really need a review of the new Death Cab for Cutie? No thanks. Not useful.

The fundamental problem I have with critics is not that they tear things down, but that it’s a fairly easy gig.

Critics do not have to act. They only react.

And this is not Newtonian, where the energies are equal. More energy is in the action. Less energy in the reaction.

With regard to the role of a music critic today, WXPN General Manager Roger LeMay suggested that the role was that of a conversation starter. I think that makes a lot of sense, and it may be one of the reasons Sound Opinions works. Among the best parts of the show is the audience reaction — sometimes letting the guys have it.

But there’s no place for criticism in a Music Meeting, and it’s easy to point out stations that rely on staff opinion and the critics within the organization to make musical decisions. Fact is, they under-perform.

I can think of five stations off the top of my head that under-perform because the PD or MD is in “all about me” mode. Meanwhile, the audience, with hundreds of sources at their disposal, is basically calling “bullshit” on these stations.

In today’s Music Meeting, the audience gets a seat at the table, and the PD and MD need to be more curator than critic.

There’s that saying, “Opinions are like assholes – everybody has one.”

What we need to prevent is, “In Music Meetings, opinions are like assholes – and everybody is one.”

-Paul Marszalek

The coveted Webby

The Webby Awards has announced the winners of it’s 15th annual celebration of all things good on the web.

Pandora won the Music category ahead of nominees NPR Music, Pitchfork, and the amazing  The Wilderness Downtown — the beautiful interactive website put forth by the Arcade Fire and Google Chrome. Also nominated was the increasingly popular and interesting Soundcloud — which provides TheTop22.com with its Song of the Week player.

Other music related nominees included the amazing JohnnyCashProject, which was nominated in several categories, including NetArt and Best Use of Video or Moving Image. The Wilderness Downtown won that category.

Radio and Podcasts are a combined category, and NPR took honors of two sites from the BBC, TED, and CNN.

I hired Webby Awards creator and founder Tiffany Shlain years ago to be our internet correspondent for the KFOG morning show. A hell of an entrepreneur and increasingly strong film-maker, I thought I was doing her a favor with her little internet awards party. Little did I know at the time I should have been hitching my career wagon to her!

The Webby Awards is an excellent resource for webmasters, or any content creator, for that matter, as the site not only schools us on how it should be done, but offers countless ideas that ignite brainstorming and creativity.

Check out the various categories, such as the Best Home Page winner (Lego.com), and then quitely weep about how lame your own site looks.

More than 70 categories in total, including Weird, which this year featured the very funny Awkward Family Photos and the genius recipe aggregation site What the Fuck Should I Make for Dinner.

Find at least an hour at WebbyAwards.com, and come away amazed and inspired.

In a surprise to no one, MySpace is officially for sale. Price tag: $100 million.

After buying the site for more than $550 million, NewsCorp failed to keep up with competitors and lost millions annually. With few upgrades an innovations, users drifted away.

A halfhearted re-design and relaunch last year has done little to revitalize the site. NewsCorp just took another $275 million charge against the loss of goodwill for the site. Translated: The brand is worth less — if not worthless.

Our opinion? Worth about $1 plus assumption of liabilities. Read more in Mashable.

Lollapalooza will rock Chicago’s Grant Park August 5-7, 2011.

Leading the lineup this year will be Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, and Muse.

See the complete, massive lineup for the three-day festival here.

Peter Bjorn and John go long-form with a documentary that’s worth a look…

Peter, Bjorn & John: Digging Deeper from CATJAM Studio on Vimeo.

And speaking of long-form video, you’ve probably heard about if not spent 30 minutes watching it, here’s the star-studded Beastie Boys video featuring Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, John C. Riley, Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Ted Danson, Danny McBride, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson, and about a dozen others injuring their careers…

In this edition of Linkage, let’s start with the happiest place on earth.

Cambridge PhD student Alex Davies analyzed frequently used words on Twitter to determine the world’s happiest country. And that country is…Germany? BTW, Tennessee is the happiest state. Davies’ Twitter Happiness Map is brilliant.

Story in All Twitter…

We’re not sure if MTV’s O Music Awards is a cool idea or if it’s an admission that the network is now musically irrelevant. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, it was Florence and the Machine’s performance on MTV’s Music Video Awards that sealed the deal for her.

The nominees are… thanks to Mashable.com

The reason the every guy loves Sarah Silverman is simple: She’s basically a guy. Foul mouth, fart jokes — a real guy’s guy. But she’s actually a girl, and also beautiful.

Sarah possesses the very rare trifecta of smart-funny-beautiful.

Just out is a viral video starring Sarah that proves that pot is alive and well on Madison Avenue. In it, Sarah is in love with the Serenading Unicorn. The short film is a viral video promoting… Juicy Fruit Gum?

Daryl Hall with Sharon Jones

Daryl Hall is no stranger to music television.

When MTV launched in 1981, Hall and Oates manager Tommy Mottola saw the future. Not only did he see the potential for the music videos a promotional tool, he saw that the nascent music network was very short on content.

Mottola began cranking out Hall and Oates videos, and they in turn, soaked up airtime.

Hall is back in music television — but this time it’s as producer, creator, host, performer, and sometimes caterer. Guests have ranged from Todd Rundgren to Fitz and the Tantrums.

Live from Daryl’s House has been a web fave — winning a Webby Award — and an increasing number of fans.

New Year’s Eve, WGN aired a special edition of the program, and it looks like there may be more.

At the NAPTE conference, Hall and WGN’s Sean Compton talked about the show, with the story covered by Diana Marszalek, writing for TVNewsCheck.com.

Check the trailer for the latest episode, featuring Guster:

More than once we’ve decried the lack of innovation and the lack of R&D at radio. But for the medium to move forward, innovation is a must.

And if you’re going to innovate, you’re going to have to tolerate failure. And that’s not something commercial radio or even many public stations have a stomach for. Fear of failure is the choke point for innovation.

This excellent short film from Honda explores failure– how it benefits the company, and how it is handled in within the corporate culture. Watch and ask, is this how my company is run?

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#2 Tim Westergren: Pandora

Pandora's Tim Westergren explains the algorithm that makes the same songs play over and over.

In April, Pandora crossed the 50 million user mark. Today, the census told us that there are 308 million people in the United States.

Let’s do the math. 300 million people divided by 50 million users… carry the one…um… do we have to show our work? Should we subtract everyone’s grandma?

Show me someone who has not used Pandora, and I’ll show you someone who really isn’t into music that much.

What’s ahead? Pandora has been advertising jobs for people who know video and have experience in artist relations. Yeah, we applied but haven’t heard back yet. They’re probably waiting ’til after the holidays to call. Keep an eye on our Facebook status!

#3 Lisa Sonkin: Columbia Records

Famously difficult to photograph, Lisa Michelson circa 1974, in third grade. If we could do math, we could figure out her age.

Columbia was the number one label in terms of AAA radio airplay this year — a fact that Lisa is sharing only with her closest friends and family– so please keep this information to yourself.

John Mayer, Train, Avett Brothers, Courtyard Hounds, Band of Horses, Broken Bells, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend and the Roots, and Bob Dylan.

We’re probably missing something. Maybe it’s that most of AAA radio totally blew it on the Court Yard Hounds album. Never too late, though!

What’s next? Adele is already #2 — and the album isn’t out ’til next year. Plus a new one from Raphael Saadiq.

#4 Everyone at WXPN

David Dye, Helen Leicht, and Roger LaMay of WXPN

Here’s the problem we had with WXPN: too many players in one place. There’s GM Roger LaMay, PD Bruce Warren, OM Dan Reed, World Cafe’s David Dye, and a very strong bench.

We could either litter the Top 22 with XPN staff, or we could combine them into a supergroup, which is what we did. And now that we’ve done that, we’re thinking they should be closer to #1.

World Cafe has hundreds of affiliates, the 11th Annual Non-Commvention May 19-21 in Wilmington, DE will have hundreds of attendees (nice plug), and XPN has hundreds of thousands of fans.

And while we hated to see the Y-Rock project take the hit it took in 2010, we congratulate them for making a go of it, and doubt it will be the last big idea they try.

Just goes to show what can happen when you take non-comm core values and combine them with aggressive entrepreneurial thinking. WXPN is writing the playbook for how to run a radio station.

#5 The Coalition of Independent Music Stores

Every year, jerks in “the media” write more stories about how record stores are going out of business.

Wrong again, “media.” So what if some of the stores need to sell a few bongs to make the rent?

Not only is Record Store Day one of the coolest days of the year, we were green with envy when Mom & Pop stores got together to do an awesome Black Friday event with plenty of exclusive vinyl.

We should all be so lucky to live in a town with one of these stores. If you don’t, visit their online site ThinkIndie.com.

#6 Daniel Glass: Glassnote

Daniel Glass

Daniel Glass makes our list for doing something no one else has ever done — he made history by breaking a French rock band.

Don’t even bother arguing Daft Punk or Air — they’re Electronica. And don’t try us with Plastic Bertrand or the Singing Nun — they’re Belgian.

But in Phoenix we had three words you never thought you’d hear together: French Rock Band.

And if you throw in Mumford & Sons and Temper Trap, you have a hot streak that hasn’t been seen since the SBK Records trifecta of Jesus Jones, Vanilla Ice, and Wilson Phillips.

#7 Jack Barton: FMQB

If you Google Jack Barton, a lot of Jack Barton's turn up -- including Jack Barton "The Original Dry Cleaner to the Stars"

When Radio and Records went belly up in 2010, Jack Barton convinced Friday Morning Quarterback to become the third proud owner of the annual Boulder AAA Summit.

Jack had literally just days to make a diving catch, and he delivered one of the best conferences in memory.

In 2011, FMQB will extend its reach into live events by partnering with Michele Clark for not one but two different Sunset Sessions.

This year’s AAA Radio Conference hits Boulder August 10-13. Learn more about it here.

See #8-#12 here.

See #13-#17 here.

And #18-22 here.

]]> http://www.thetop22.com/2010/12/the-top-22-players-in-adult-rock-for-2010-7-2/feed/ 0 http://www.thetop22.com/2010/12/the-top-22-players-in-adult-rock-for-2010-12-8/ http://www.thetop22.com/2010/12/the-top-22-players-in-adult-rock-for-2010-12-8/#comments Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:43:33 +0000 The Top 22 Editor http://www.thetop22.com/?p=6322 Our year-end recap of people and companies that broke records, innovated, moved AAA forward, or otherwise had a stellar 2010 continues as we count down from #12 to #8…

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#8 Dave Cox: MiMTiD

Dave Cox, inventor and CEO of MiMTiD

Dave Cox had a bit of a wild 2010.

The producer and owner of small indie label Blues Destiny Records became so frustrated with Rapidshare aiding and abetting the theft of his copyrighted material, he not only went after Rapidshare, but named Google and Microsoft in the lawsuit — charging that they helped too.

Ballsy.

While the suits have settled down, Dave, who also happens to be a software engineer, created a tool to help labels, movie studios, and other content creators slow down the theft.

Called MiMTiD (for “mine is mine, take it down”), it’s a search engine that crawls the web specifically looking for download sites and infringing parties. When found, it automatically serves a DMCA takedown notice — a huge benefit over manual search and serving of notices.

MiMTiD also tracks the advertisers on those sites, and anyone else that is involved.

Learn more about MiMTiD at MiMTiD.com, and hit ‘em up with more questions at 713-657-0165.

#9 Bob Boilen and NPR Music

Bob Boilen of NPR Music

It started a few years ago as a place for NPR sycophants to find out more about those little musical interludes on All Things Considered.

It gained steam as it started aggregating content from non-comm stalwarts like WFUV/New York, WXPN/Philadelphia, and KUT/Austin (don’t forget this as you give NPR credit).

In 2010, it’s fair to say that NPR Music has arrived.

NPR reported 1.6 million monthly visitors in mid-year, and the median age is 40 — 15 years younger than the NPR listener.

It’s a smart move for NPR — creating a vehicle to bring younger (yes, even at 40, they’re younger) people into the tent. For labels, it’s a godsend — a place to reach a lucrative and otherwise hard to reach audience.

#10 Jennifer Ferro: KCRW

Jennifer Ferro, GM of KCRW/Santa Monica

The longtime #2 at KCRW took over for the retired Ruth Seymour in 2010, and the questions immediately started — just how would Jennifer Ferro guide the station that insiders called K-Ruth?

KCRW is among the most complex non-comm stations in the country. To hear it from public radio experts, they do everything wrong — they have a mixed format of music and talk, their fund-raising features too many premiums, and they can be a real thorn in the side of the establishment — the NPR’s of the world.

Yet for some reason, KCRW works. The station boasts some big brands, ranging from Morning Becomes Eclectic on the music side to Warren Olney’s nationally syndicated To the Point on the news-talk side.

There may be a method to the madness.

Most public radio news outlets are little more than repeaters for nationally syndicated programming, and some music outlets may be inadvertently helping NPR become a competitor (See #9).

It’s too early to tell for certain what Ferro has up her sleeves, but early indications suggest she wants a bigger KCRW. To make that happen she’ll have to convince the staff to think bigger, stay entrepreneurial, continue to be L.A., and maybe even kill a sacred cow or two.

#11 Jill Weindorf: Concord Music Group

Jill Weindorf of Concord Music Group

With a fantastic suite of labels, a Starbucks connection, and the signings of several music legends, Concord Music Group entered 2010 as a formidable mid-major.

But the mid-year acquisition of Rounder Records took them to a whole new level. In terms of adult rock, they’re a full-blown major.

The labels include: Hear Music (Starbucks), Rounder, Concord, Concord Jazz, Telarc (Classical, Blues, Jazz), Stax, Fantasy, Pablo, Prestige, and others.

On the artist side, there’s Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Alison Krauss, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Madeleine Peyroux, and many others.

Concord is now in the position to potentially dominate genres such as folk, Americana, blues, and jazz — with 40 years worth of catalog to boot.

Out of the box in 2011 for Concord is another vet — Gregg Allman. Jill’s gonna be busy.

#12 V107.3 Cleveland

Arbitron’s Portable People Meter measurement system has been responsible for a number of casualties in radio.

Among them, almost the entire Smooth Jazz format. Sensing that the format was a PPM loser, the independent owners of WNWV, which serves Cleveland and Akron from the west, Smooth Jazz was killed in favor of AAA.

The respectable start got a jolt in November, when the station posted a 3.5 share for the month — which would make it one of the biggest debuts of an adult rocker both in market size and ratings in recent memory.

See #22-#18 here, and #17-#13 here.

#13 Trina Tombrink: Universal Republic

Trina Tombrink. Photo Credit: Very Likely Sean Coakley of Songlines

Remember that dude from Greek Mythology named Sisyphus?

He was the guy who rolled the boulder up the mountain every day, only to watch it roll back back down again. For eternity.

Every record rep has experienced this — it’s part of the gig. But breaking new acts, once commonplace at commercial AAA, has become harder and harder in a consolidated environment with PDs fearful of Portable People Meter ratings measurement.

Rather than play the role of Sisyphus, it’s just easier for labels to walk away from an artist if the music doesn’t catch right away.

More than a year ago, Universal started rolling a boulder called Florence + the Machine.

Last week Dog Days are Over went #1. Trina’s smile says it all.

#14 Sean O’Connell: Music Allies, Creative Allies

Good Ol' Fashioned Entrepreneur

Sean O’Connell’s Music Allies started off on the traditional path — do some independent promotion work.

The first innovation was to become possibly the first “outsourced” promotion staff for labels, starting with Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe.

Music Allies then teamed to help promote Bonnaroo, by facilitating live backstage broadcasts to a host of AAA stations. Fast forward and Music Allies now works for Brushfire, SuperEgo, and Time/Life on the record side, and Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, and the now Asheville-based Moogfest on the festival side.

Add to this the new Creative Allies project, which essentially crowdsources creative solutions for artists, and you see what an entrepreneur looks like.

#15 Dave Benson: KMTT/Seattle

Does this man look like a Cumulon to you?

At a time in the radio industry when jobs are literally impossible to come by, people will throw their grandmother under the bus to get a gig, Dave pulls a Johnny Paycheck.

The job he shoved was at the venerable KFOG/San Francisco, for reasons we all understand. But not all of us would do the same — bailing on a job, those call letters, and the City.

In an extremely rare showing of justice, KFOG, programmed from corporate headquarters in Atlanta, slid, and Benson ended up in Seattle.

We keep waiting for the big radio chains to understand the phrase “false economy,” but it just doesn’t seem to be coming.

#16 Alligator Records

Celebrating it’s 40th anniversary this coming year, Alligator has been not only the keeper of the flame in terms of blues, they’re damn near dominant in the genre.

But here’s what we like most: in addition to bringing us blues genius in the form of James Cotton, The Holmes Brothers, and Charlie Musselwhite, the crossover signings of JJ Grey and Mofro, Anders Osborne, and Buckwheat Zydeco show that they can act like a mid-major if they want to.

Alligator can easily be synonymous with not just blues, but the best of American music.

#17 WERS/Boston

MD Katie DiMartile, PD Lily Jeong, and APD Dan Moore

Remember when college radio mattered? Remember when it was cool — like when we were doing it?

Although more rare, it still matters, and one of the best kept secrets in Adult Rock/AAA is WERS – the college station licensed to Emerson College in Boston.

With a daytime format of indie rock/AAA, and nightime dayparts featuring reggae, urban, and hip-hop, WERS cumes 170,000 to 180,000 people every week. Now if you’re ranking non-comm full-time music stations that play AAA, WERS is the third largest in the country, behind WFUV and The Current in Minneapolis.

And did we mention that it’s run and hosted by college students with constant turnover due to graduation? Yeah. Think about that for a little while.

Congrats to PD Lily Jeong as she moves on to med school.

See #18-#22 in our previous post.

#18 Michele Clark

Michele Clark, with Jason Mraz

Now in it’s 14th year, Michele Clark has not only kept Sunset Sessions alive, but given it new life by deftly re-positioning it from a radio schmooze to a showcase for music supervisors.

Music supervision and song placement continued to be a strong tool for breaking artists in 2010 — much less getting some of those artists a nice payday.

The annual AAA Sunset Sessions returns in February, but Clark will double-down in 2011 with a second event in June that will focus on rock — Active and Alternative.

Learn more about the Sunset Sessions here.

#19 Don Strasburg: AEG Live

AEG Concert Promoter Don Strasburg

The unseen hand behind the annual Boulder AAA Radio conference, Don Strasburg handles venues ranging from the Boulder Theater to the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

By booking and facilitating the Boulder Theater and Fox Theater for the conference, Strasburg plays a larger tastemaker role than one might think.

In 2010 he scheduled the Mile High Music Festival to coincide with FMQB’s Triple A Radio Conference, making it much more sensible for labels and managers to route through, allowing bigger acts, such as Jack Johnson, to play Boulder.

In 2011, Strasburg may rekindle his Michigan-based Rothbury music festival.

#20 Hawk Mendenhall: KUT/Austin

KUT Associate General Manager Hawk Mendenhall

In 2009 and 2010, Mendenhall took considerable heat as he tweaked the schedule of the venerable non-comm station. The moves were the right ones, and the station marches on.

But the real reason Hawk makes the list is his shepherding of Texas Music Matters, a unit of music journalists led by former Marketplace host David Brown who cover Austin’s music scene the way the Bloomberg covers business. And with SXSW, Austin City Limits, and the Fun Fun Fun Festival, there’s plenty to cover.

Best project this year is an oral history that focuses on the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. Genious. This kind of thing is exactly why we give non-comms money.

In 2010, KUT broke ground on a new broadcast center. Also, Hawk wears shorts to work. Every day.

#21 Sky Daniels: Fontana Label Group

Fontana Distribution's Sky Daniels

We used to listen to Sky Daniels when he was a jock on WLUP/Chicago — when we were in high school. Seriously. High school.

Daniels has re-invented himself more than once and is now the rare player who can speak to both the radio and record sides of the business.

Fontana now plays a hand in no fewer than 144 different labels, including hot indies such as Vagrant (home of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Fistful of Mercy). Fontana also scored with The Dirty Heads, and is currently setting up a January release from Queens of the Stone Age. Personally, we can’t wait for the new one from Peter Green.

When you look at what Sky has to play with, you realize the mid-majors can be a fun place to be.

#22 Adrian Moreira: RCA Records

RCA Records' Adrian Moreira

It might be the best head-shot in the business, but that’s not why Adrian makes our list.

It’s because he’s kept the Dave Matthews Band on the AAA charts for two years, and frankly, did the same with the last Kings of Leon record.

With the new Kings CD at #1, and Ray Lamontagne getting a well-deserved Grammy nod, RCA looks to have a great 2011 in front of it.

Assignment: Break Imogen Heap.

Black Friday — the holiday shopping kickoff — has become synonymous with heavily marked down loss-leaders used to entice shoppers into the stores.

Since it’s all about price, the stuff is usually commodity-level, disposable consumer goods.

Indie record stores are doing just the opposite — offering up stuff that you’ll hold on to for life.

In a complement to their once-a-year “Record Store Day,” mom and pop retailers have worked with labels, artists, and management to put together some amazing collectibles.

Among them: Metallica Live at Grimeys — a secret Bonnaroo warmup show attended by about 150 people in the basement club. Another is U2’s answer to the Wide Awake in America EP. The first ever commercially available version of the new song Mercy is one of three tracks on the individually numbered 12″ Wide Awake in Europe.

There’s 7″ vinyl from Bruce Springsteen (Save My Love b/w Because the Night from The Promise), a picture disc from The Black Crowes, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass on 180 gram vinyl, and a lot more.

A list of titles can be found here, and you can find an indie record store near you by using the search box here.

Check the video of Chris Brown of Portland, Maine’s Bull Moose Records walking us through some of the offerings…

Eric Clapton is doing well at retail with his self-titled CD, as well as the DVD of his Crossroads Guitar Festival

The Blues, among the country’s greatest original art forms, continues to endure.

In a down economy, the blues festival scene — estimated by some at more than 12,000 different festivals each year — reported strong business. Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival sold out nearly 30,000 tickets in a matter of hours. The recording scene, largely indie at this point, continues to be robust.

Yet hearing a blues song on adult radio is a rarity.

I’ve heard some pretty bizarre excuses over the years, ranging from one program director telling me that he doesn’t “like the look of the blues audience” to a major market player who flat-out will not play anything from a white blues musician (beyond Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, of course).

Yet the blues sneaks onto AAA radio playlists when no one is looking. KT Tunstall, a huge Howlin’ Wolf fan, had a #1 hit with Black Horse and The Cherry Tree — an undisputed blues based in a Bo Diddley style. The Black Keys’ stadium anthem Howlin’ For You became so widespread that it will actually force radio to play it.

Watch an NFL telecast and the disconnect between The Blues and adult radio becomes apparent — because apparently Madison Avenue didn’t get the memo. Ad agencies are embracing The Blues in targeting men.

In just one afternoon of NFL telecasts, examples of blues placement included:

* Mitsubishi’s Online Test Drive features an unidentified blues riff
* Viagra is using Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning
* Autotrader.com has a campaign featuring George Thorogood’s version of Who Do You Love
* Wrangler is using ZZ Top’s LaGrange
* The film Due Date with Robert Downey, Jr. has a spot featuring Big Head Todd & The Monsters covering John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom
* Cadillac has just released a spot with aforementioned Black Keys’ track Howlin’ For You
* Nissan has a spot for the Maxima that features what sounds like a version of Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy

Now this could just all be some coincidence, but our hunch is no. With these ad flights costing millions each, Madison Avenue knows what works with men.

On a closing note, this Axe ad starring Ben Affleck is not running in the U.S., but it does feature Johnny Guitar Watson’s Gangster of Love, and it is pretty funny:

-Paul Marszalek

A great video that’s been making the rounds for the past few weeks is a clip from manager Peter Malkin called Managing Musical Artists in the New Digital World.

In it, Peter rapidly walks us through a soup-to-nuts tutorial of the digital DIY music business. There are scores of applications — too many for anyone to actually use. But there’s gotta be pay dirt in there somewhere — or the pay dirt will come from someone who innovates these applications further.

It’s a great riff, packed with dozens of applications and ideas to improve your business…

Digital Overload (All You Need To Know) from Peter Malkin on Vimeo.

Visit Peter Malkin’s blog here, and thanks to Mike Henry of Paragon Media Strategies for bringing it to our attention.

In the film Downfall, problem child Adolph Hitler is informed that the Soviets are knocking on the door.

The 2004 Academy Award-winning film Downfall tracks the final week of Hitler’s Third Reich. It’s an amazing film that portrays Hitler as human, while also attempting to make the point that he had plenty of help unleashing his terror.

What the filmmakers never saw coming was a wave of internet pranksters who would parody the climactic scene in which Hitler loses it as his inner circle delivers the bad news.

There are literally thousands of Downfall parodies floating on the web, with Hitler being told about everything from iPad shortcomings to an untimely Brett Favre interception.

Now comes a very clever version featuring The Tribune, Randy Michaels, and Lee Abrams.

(The reference to Paladino is to the New York Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino, who allegedly had a bad habit of sending out emails featuring, among other things, bestiality to employees.)

The last line is pure genius…