YouTube Soars in Popularity: YouTube accounted for 1 Out of Every 3 U.S. online videos viewed in January. Video Metrix service, revealed that YouTube accounted for one-third of the 9.8 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. during the month. The total number of videos viewed in January was down slightly from the more than 10.1 billion viewed during a record-breaking December 2007.

American Idol Reveals Sexism? Idol fans are up in arms since the show kicked Frenchie Davis off the show for posing topless but allowed David Hernandez to remain in the competition who was recently revealed as a former male stripper in a gay bar. Other critics claim Idol is guilty of political correctness. Of course this is a double standard, regardless, Idol loves the scandals brought on by the press. (more reading here)

SXSW Attendees Doubled In Size: For established recording companies, the instantaneous and often unpaid distribution of music online is business hell; CD album sales are on an accelerating slide, and sales of downloads aren’t making up for the losses. But for listeners, as well as for musicians who mostly want a chance to be heard, the digital era is fan heaven. As major labels have shrunk in the 21st century, South by Southwest has nearly doubled in size, up to 12,500 people registered for this year’s convention, from 7,000 registered attendees in 2001, not including the band members performing. In an era of plummeting CD sales and short shelf lives even for current hit makers, the festival is full of people seeking ways to route their careers around what’s left of the major recording companies. (NY Times article here)

SXSW Draw Deep-Pocket Corporate Sponsors: Citigroup, Miller Lite, and Dell pay between $100,000 and 200,000 each in exchange for having their logos plastered around town. (wsj)

The Beatles Dethroned? Move over, Beatles. Mariah Carey is on the verge of tie with the legendary British band for having the most chart-topping hits says the Daily News. Mariah’s newest single “Touch My Body” will give her 18 No. 1 singles, setting her neck in neck with the Beatles.

Backpeddling: We hear Shadows fall we be leaving Atlantic Records only to return to their former label Century Media. Atlantic gave the band a hefty sum of money during a bidding war, but the latest record only sold 90k.

Japan Gets Wise and Fights Piracy: The nation’s four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music. (full article here)

Guy Hands Officially Becoming Hands On: EMI boss Guy Hands has sent a letter to every employee in the group’s UK recorded-music division telling them that their jobs are officially under scrutiny. Those in marketing, sales and distribution will be worst hit while the A&R (artists and repertoire) division, which is responsible for finding new artists for the label, should be relatively unscathed says the Times Online.

Recommended Listening: Emo act Blameshift just finished performing 4 shows at SXSW. The band released their debut May 1st, 2007 which was produced by Michael Birnbaum and Chris Bittner (Coheed and Cambria, The Sleeping). Check out the track Fake.

New Music: Indie pop act The Hush Sound will be releasing a new record titled ‘Goodbye Blues’ on March 18th through Decaydance / Fueled By Ramen. The full stream is available here. This CD requires a couple of listens.

New Music: Indie act Alive in Wild Paint will release their debut album ‘Ceilings’ in March through indie label, Equal Vision Records. We have tons of ambient and atmospheric bands in the big jungle and I can’t say this band will rise above what’s already out there. Regardless, it’s a decent first effort. Check out the track ‘Children of Divorce‘.

American Idol Continues to Be A Monster: Leslie Moonves CEO of CBS called Fox’s ratings hit “American Idol” a “monster” and urged somebody to “kill that show.” ‘American Idol’ continues to be a monster,” Moonves said. “It’s a phenomenon. If somebody would kill that show, I’d really appreciate it. But it’s a national phenomenon, and it continues to do extremely well. It’s tough to compete with it.”

Trent on Radiohead: The Nine Inch Nails front-man has been quite vocal these days and this time he critiques Radiohead’s offering of Rainbows. “I think the way [Radiohead] parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd,” Reznor said when speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Michael Atkin.

“But if you look at what they did, though, it was very much a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Reznor continued, “but I don’t see that as a big revolution [that] they’re kinda getting credit for.” To me that feels insincere. It relies upon the fact that it was quote-unquote ‘first,’ and it takes the headlines with it.”

Are Excessive Lyrics Ruining Pop Music? The year-end top 10 songs from 1960 to 1969 have an average word count of 176. The year-end top 10 songs from 1960 to 1969 have an average word count of 176. Chris Brown and T-Pain use 742 words in their “Kiss Kiss.” While music can express what words cannot, music rarely gets a chance in contemporary pop, and certainly not in “Kiss Kiss.” Except for the first two seconds, vocals fill the song’s every moment. Read full article here.

Trent Never Stops: NIN have teamed up with YouTube to host a “film festival” around Ghosts. The concept is for the fans to submit videos for their favorite tracks.

Active Rock Charts….

1. Puddle Of Mudd – Psycho
2. Foo Fighter – Long Road To Ruin
3. Theory Of a Deadman – So Happy
4. Breaking Benjamin – Until the End
5. Avenged Sevenfold – Almost Easy
6. Seether – Fake it
7. Five Finger Death Punch – The Bleeding
8. Ashes Divide – The Stone
9. Atreyu – Falling Down
10.3 Doors Down – It’s Not My Time

How to Become Famous: Forget about routing a tour or adding friends on myspace. Instead, find yourself a high profile government official and show him a good time. Instant fame. Ashley’s first song “What We Want” hit Amie Street’s top price of 98 cents before midnight last night. She uploaded a second track “Move Ya Body”. The tracks suck but I’m sure they are selling.

Artist updates: Chasing Satellites by Hello Operator got 16 weeks on Much Music.

Kings of A&R: We need a shot in the arm. Send us new music. Email tips@kingsofar.com with a link to your myspace and a song we should be listening to.

Calling All Girls: We always knew Spitzer was obsessed with the music business and he even went on record claiming radio sucked. KOAR posted an article on Spitzer back in October 2006 when he suggested J Lo couldn’t even hum her own tune. Truth is stranger than fiction. His secret relationship involved a female who had big aspirations for the music business. Ladies and gentlemen — meet Ashley Alexandra Dupré. We checked out her song ‘What We Want‘. I don’t know who produced this, but it’s dated club beats. It seems digital retailer, Amie Street, has convinced Ashley Dupre to suspend her myspace so that people can exclusively buy her music through them. More importantly, we have to feel sorry for the girl. Enough with drama!

New NIN Album Generates $1.6M First Week: The online release of the new Nine Inch Nails album “Ghosts I-IV” resulted in just under 800,000 transactions in its first week, totaling $1.6 million in revenue according to the band. NIN will not release traditional sales figures to SoundScan.

Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs: The music biz is considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users. I don’t know how realistic this is, but I suggest reading the full article that’s filled with different opinions on the topic.

Resigned: XM Satellite Radio’s chief creative officer, Lee Abrams, resigned from the company today in order to accept a position as Chief Innovation Officer for Tribune Company.

A Success Story That’s Not So: Shayan Italia is an Indian-born singer-songwriter and has developed himself with almost no help from a record company, raising £500,000 from a group of private investors to shoot a professional video. His Reflection reached No 1 on YouTube’s music video charts last week, with 190,000 plays in the first 24 hours of its placement online.

Italia owns his material, selling 1 per cent shares in the business that controls all his copyrights, plus any tour and other music-related income for £12,000 a time. Investors own 40 per cent of all Italia’s future music output. For all his talent, the big break is yet to come and there is not yet any return for the investors.

Times Online says “people get very excited about the death of the record company and about finding clever ways to ward off its demise”.

Other media companies who pretend to play record label like the one above will lose their shirts 99 percent of the time. If you want me to write a check for 500k, you better come out of the box with a song like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.

Video Hogs Cause Congestion: There has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat comes from online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games. What kind of future awaits the internet? Read the full article here.

New Music: Check out the Nashville, Tennessee act SafetySuit. They recorded the album titled ‘Life Left to Go’ with producer Greg Archilla (Matchbox 20, Collective Soul, Buckcherry) . They just released the track “Someone Like You” on iTunes via Universal.

Kelly Abandons Rock and Goes Back to Pop: Clarkson was never meant to rock out and she knows it. Kelly is working with songwriter and producer Ryan Tedder, the lead singer of OneRepublic according to Spy Digital. Tedder, says that Clarkson’s new songs will feature “big choruses” and “heavy drum programming”. He also revealed that the songs are influenced by nineties electro-rockers Garbage, while one song, a mid-tempo rock ballad, features an experimental bridge inspired by Mozart. Kelly can’t afford to make mistakes on this record.

Live Nation Takes Over the Jersey Shore: The concert promoter, Live Nation will book Asbury Park’s three best-known music venues including the 1,600-seat landmark Paramount Theatre, the 3,600-seat Convention Hall and the 850-capacity Stone Pony.

A Jagged Relationship: Sources say that Alanis Morissette has had a strained relationship with her label, even though “Jagged Little Pill” is one of the best-selling CDs in Warner’s history. Fox’s Roger Friedman says it took negotiation and persuasion for WMG to agree to release her new album, “Flavors of Entanglement.” They actually said no and rejected it says Friedman. The air has cleared and Warner will plan on releasing Flavors May 20th.

Madonna’s Jagged Visit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Friedman also commented on Madonna’s recent visit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when she picked up her award. “Of course she couldn’t participate in the big jam session finale with actual musicians like John Fogerty, John Mellencamp, Billy Joel and Joan Jett”. During her speech she left out all the important people who made her career by giving her #1 songs including Reggie Lucas who wrote ‘Borderline’, Stephen Bray who wrote the killer dance songs ‘Into the Groove’,’Express Yourself’ and ‘Causing a Commotion’, Tom Kelly and Billy Sternberg (Like a Virgin), and Peter Brown and Robert Rans who wrote the legendary song ‘Material Girl’.

R.E.M. Thinks Outside the Box: R.E.M. will debut their new album on the iLike internet application used on social networking site Facebook. They will release ‘Accelerate’ as a stream available for sharing on March 24 – a week before the album hits shop shelves. They are the first major music act to debut a full album using the iLike application – a widget used widely on Facebook. Frontman Michael Stipe told Billboard that the band made the decision to debut their 14th studio album online because the music industry has changed — Oh! yes it has Mike, yes it has!

Spitzocritical: N.Y. Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned today. Spitzer was obsessed with the music biz particularly for its practices for influencing what songs are heard on the public airwaves.

Signings: New York’s alternative pop artist Charlotte Sometimes signs to Interscope. This is a hit or miss, meaning you will either like it or find her annoying. I’m not personally a fan, but then again I wasn’t a fan of Fiona Apple. I would be interested to see a video for the track
‘How I Could Just Kill A Man‘, maybe it would change my mind.

New Music: Check out the indie pop act Farewell Flight who hails from Pennsylvania. Listen to the track Begin Again. This doesn’t stray to far from Death Cab.

Selling Out: Once upon a time artists refuse to sellout or refused to sacrifice his morals, values or people close to him purely for personal gain. Careers were built by saying NO, not YES to things. Indie rockers prided themselves by railing against the corporate machine. Today, no such thing exists. It’s impossible to sellout. Because of illegal downloading, indie rock group Band of Horses licensed a song for a Wal-Mart online campaign only to reverse their decision after they experienced a fan backlash.

Pop stars now embrace “Nascar-style,” logo-splattering sponsorships and must get used to promoting their favorite boxer briefs to help make up for the industry’s shortfall says Advertising Age. “For new artists, it’s become nearly impossible to develop a major following without a branded tie-in. Many of the major breakout music stars of the past year, from Paramore to Sara Bareilles to Feist, have benefited from corporate tie-ins or licensing of their songs via ads. “All brands have become music-promotion houses,”
Mr. McQuivey said.

Spitzer Has 48 Hours to Leave Town: If music biz nemesis Gov. Eliot Spitzer who cracked down on record labels opts to roll the dice and not resign, state Republican leadership will force him to go all-in and call for his impeachment from office, according to a state Assemblyman. The clock is ticking, resign now!

Universal Holds Up Myspace Deal: CEO of Universal, Doug Morris always knows how to crash a party, but sometimes that’s a good thing. MySpace has accelerated discussions with the major music labels about creating an online music service, but Universal Music is holding out, which is insisting that MySpace first resolve a lawsuit that it filed against the site over alleged copyright violation says Financial Times. “One person familiar with the talks said that MySpace was considering launching the service without Universal”.

FCC Chairman Tips Hand On Comcast’s Net Neutrality: FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that he may find Comcast guilty of violating the agency’s network neutrality principles. Net Neutrality is a principle that says a broadband network must not restrict content, sites, or platforms and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams would be considered neutral by most observers.

Martin said that he found it troubling that Comcast had initially denied it was slowing or blocking its broadband Internet customers’ access to a file- sharing peer-to-peer software application.

Both myself and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin are both deeply troubled. We both feel a principle has been violated, except he is talking about net neutrality and I’m talking about illegal filesharing. So where does the rubber meet the road? How can we be friends? He doesn’t want to discriminate against filesharing sites and I don’t want artists’ discriminated against. Maybe Kevin Martin can reach in his deep pockets and pay for the loss of music sales.

Cheapskate: Apple paid a total of $80,000 for master and sync rights for Feist’s “1234” and another 80,000 for Ms. Naim’s song. Some say the exposure is well worth the lower fees.

An ear attuned to sounds of greatness: “In the morning of last month’s Grammy Awards, Tom Whalley, chief executive of Warner Brothers Records, seemed to have everything going his way. Warner Brothers had just finished 2007 in first place in the US market, the second time it had done so in the last three years. Its holiday album, Josh Groban’s Noël, was still topping the charts long after the Christmas lights had come down”. “Yet Mr Whalley, dressed in jeans and a fitted blazer, was hardly celebrating. Such is the mood of record mogul these days.” Check out the full article written by Joshua Chaffin, it’s a must read.

New Music: Who wants to weed through 100,000 new record releases and 200 million videos on Youtube? You don’t, but we will. With that said, check out the video and song titled ‘Morphine‘ from Tupelo Honey which is currently making its rounds at Canadian rock radio. The vocalist belts like Chris Cornell, although his voice is a bit thinner…. That’s ok, he pulls it off nicely. What the heck is Tupelo Honey? Tupelo Honey is an album by singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in 1971. For more information contact here.

Recommened Listening: New Low by Middle Class Rut. Sounds like Refused and Jane’s Addiction. The band’s first major tour was in Fall 2007 with Receiving End Of Sirens and Envy On The Coast. Sacramento’s Live 105 & KWOD have been playing “New Low”.