Justin Biebers manager Scooter Braun went on a Twitter rant following Wednesday night’s Grammy Awards nominations announcement. Writing to his over 2 million followers, the 31-year-old Braun defended his No. 1 client Justin Bieber who received no Grammy nominations. “I just plain DISAGREE,” he tweeted. “The kid deserved it. Grammy board u blew it on this one.” Other artists that were snubbed include Psy, Coldplay and Nicki Minaj.

The sequencing of tracks on an album may have long been subject to artists’ creative muses, but, according to A&R and streaming services decision-makers, the order in which songs appear on a set can have far-reaching effects on an acts’, and labels’, bottom lines, especially in an era of digital music consumption.

Throughout the rock era, an album’s track order has often been based on what has caught an artist’s fancy, shaped by such elements as feel and flow. “I never like to put two happy songs in a row or two of the same kind of sadness in a row,” Taylor Swift explained in the Oct. 27 Billboard cover story about how she decided the order of cuts on her recent Billboard 200 chart-topper “Red.” “It’s just about establishing [a sequence that] sounds like that’s the order of things. It’s a gut-feeling thing.”

In other cases, it’s even simpler; Billy Joel reportedly set the sequence for his 1993 Billboard 200 No. 1 “River of Dreams” based on the order in which he wrote each song (with “Famous Last Words” serving as a logical closer for the album). Read more here.

The New York Times published an article “‘Thriller’ and the Lessons of the Mega-Super-Album”.

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” turns 30 this year. It is still the biggest-selling album ever, worldwide, by a lot. As is the case with most biggest-evers, actual or perceived (“I Love Lucy,” say, or “Star Wars”), it’s hard to imagine a world in which “Thriller” didn’t exist. And who would want to remember the pre-“Thriller” days anyway, at least the stretch of months right before it was released, which were nasty ones for the music business? To paraphrase Don McLean’s “American Pie,” the year that “Thriller” came out, 1982, was the year the music almost died. Read more here

The modern music industry’s version of a four-leaf clover is the diamond-status album. Sure, some releases still reach that vaunted 10 million mark after several years (or in the case of Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory a dozen) on the charts, but it’s an increasingly rare feat.

But in an era when YouTube views, concert ticket sales, magazine covers, endorsement deals and product lines, TV appearances and digital single downloads have become the new measures of an artist’s success, how did Adele pull it off? And is she the last of a dying breed of mega-sellers? Read more

Although Adele had quite an amazing year she did get some bad news. Her ’21’ album dropped out of the UK Top 40 for the first time since it was released in January 2011.

According to BBC News and several other news sources, the album dropped from 34 to 42 in the last countdown on November 26. It spent a staggering 96 weeks on the charts, garnering sales in the UK of over 4.5 million copies and around 10 million in the United States.

She also received some good news. Adele’s 21 has reached a new milestone, becoming the 21st album to sell more than 10 million copies since Nielsen SoundScan began keeping track in 1991. Adele’s is the third album to reach sales of 10 million copies this year, following Linkin Park’s 2000 LP Hybrid Theory and Usher’s 2004 release Confessions.