NYT Profiles Country Youth Movement
Whitney Duncan
New York Times writer Jon Caramanica puts the crosshairs to Nashville’s country music youth movement in an article titled, Country’s New Face: It’s Young and Blond.
Ms. Swift, 19, who has sold more than seven million records in the last four years, has proved to be seismic in Nashville. And thanks to the pop crossover success of Ms. Swift and Carrie Underwood, 26, who has sold 10 million albums, notions of where a country star might fit in are being rewritten almost daily.
Ms. Swift was among the first country artists to aggressively use online media to promote herself. “That helped apply a lot of pressure to radio, or helped them notice her, depending how you look at it,” Mr. Ross said. But country music still lags behind other genres in its use of the Internet. Music Row recently began publishing a chart tracking Twitter followers of country acts. Apart from Ms. Swift, Ms. Cyrus and her father, Billy Ray, no country artist has more than 100,000 followers, a threshold crossed by several major and minor stars in other genres: Justin Timberlake, Moby, Matisyahu, Jim Jones, even Jon Secada.
Read the full story [New York Times; Country’s New Face: It’s Young and Blonde]
Taillight, one of the Southeast’s most successful production companies in entertainment and music television, is expanding its operations with the creation of a new commercial division. Executive Producer Brooke Boling will head the new division, which will represent directors David Jellison, Timothy Kendall (TJK) and Kristin Barlowe.
Apple has just released an iTunes update (8.2.1) and among the “issues and improvements” it addresses is the music program’s ability to sync music with the Palm Pre phone. One of the new Palm smartphone’s selling points was that ability to seamlessly move music between iTunes and the phone, but obviously, Apple preferred that only official Apple products be endowed with that ability. Palm responded saying, “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider.”
Jason Aldean‘s “Big Green Tractor,” is plowing its way toward the Top 10 of MusicRow‘s Country Breakout chart; currently No. 16 and the fastest rising single of the Georgia-native’s career. The song has fueled over 40,000 digital downloads a week, helping his already Gold certified third album Wide Open move an average of 22,000 units per week. Aldean is in the Top Five of SoundScan’s Country Albums Chart.