A little gold statue of a gramophone was making a big noise this week as the Grammy Awards announced the biggest restructuring in their 53-year history. Will cutting 31 awards make a difference to the viewers? Absolutely none. Will it have a negative effect on lots of niche indie labels? You betcha. Many of the smaller record companies can’t play with the big boys in the major labels, but they could hold their own in sub-genres like Hawaiian, Cajun and Native American music, all of which had their own categories until Wednesday’s announcement. The other big change is that the gender categories are gone…no more best male or best female wins.
1. The Grammys (not ranked last week): Music’s most prestigious awards undergo their first major restructuring in decades, dropping the number of categories from 109 to 78. Does this mean the show will come in under three hours? Not a chance since the televised broadcast only hands out 10 or so awards anyway.
2. U2 (not ranked): This weekend while the rest of us are goofing off, U2 will be making history as its “360†tour becomes the highest grossing tour ever. On Sunday at a stadium show in San Paulo, Bono and the boys will get even richer as “360†hits the staggering $558 million mark. That tops the Rolling Stones’ “Bigger Bang†tour. And the Irish band isn’t done yet. By the trek’s conclusion, the total take will be $700 million. Luck of the Irish, indeed.
3. Adele (not ranked): Move over Madge: Adele’s sophomore set, “21,†celebrates its 10th week atop the British album chart surpassing Madonna’s record for the most weeks spent consecutively at the top of the chart by a female artist.
4. Lady Antebellum (not ranked): The Grammy and ACM winners now have another feather in their cap: “Need You Now†just surpassed Taylor Swift’s “Love Story†as the most downloaded country song. Taylor needs to date someone uberfamous, get dumped and write a song PDQ.
5. Miranda Lambert (not ranked): She was the big winner at the ACMs with four as her juggernaut started with last fall’s CMAs continues. But she’s not content to stick with music: she’s developing a drama for ABC Family. No, it’s not a reality show about the family that hunts together stays together.
6. Warner Music Group (not ranked): the second round of bidding for the label group closes with Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies leading the way with a $3 billion bid, according to the NY Post. Does that mean he might ask BFF Bill Clinton to run WMG? We just made that up, but how awesome would that be?
[More after the jump…]
7. Prince (not ranked): His royal purpleness announced on a call in to George Lopez’s show Thursday night that he will start a 21-night stand in Los Angeles on April 14. It’s about time LA go its residency. The shows will include dates at The Forum and other venues.
8. Tyler, the Creator (not ranked): 99.999% of people haven’t heard of him or Odd Future and yet he leads, along with Lady Gaga, all nominees for the most O Music Awards, which, by the way, we’ve never heard of either. We kid, we know it’s MTV’s latest awards show. Between the Os, the Woodies, the VMAs and the Movie Awards, we’re getting award fatigue from MTV alone.
9. The Record Business (not ranked): What’s that you say? Sales for the first quarter we down only 1.3% over the 2010’s first quarter. That’s one of the smallest declines in ages, made all the more significant that it wasn’t until the Feb. 22 release of Adele’s “21†that we even had a bonafide chart winner.
What do you think of this week’s power rankings? Share your thoughts below.
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