Music Industry

Look out, Jesse Helms. Take heed, Tipper Gore. Heavy guns in the music industry, the visual and performance arts are now going on the offensive to ward off what they perceive as dangerous infringements on their constitutional, First Amendment and free speech rights. The battle cry was raised this week at the New Music Seminar in New York City, which featured 8,000 young turk rock and rap artists, music industry executives, broadcasters and journalists. Retaliatory measures to censorship also were being plotted at a recent gathering of more than 200 top music industry executives and artists in Los Angeles, convened by Virgin Records executive Jeff Ayeroff.

Now here's a fascinating paradox: The record industry lecturing its audience on immorality - the theft of copyrighted music over the Internet. This from an industry that has enriched itself by glorifying infidelity, violence and rebellion, as well as criminal, abusive and other deviant behavior. Meanwhile, you have albums such as 50 Cent's Get Rich, or Die Tryin' (Interscope, a unit of Universal Music Group) and Radiohead's Hail To The Thief (Capitol Records, owned by EMI Group)

Look out Non-Comm, here comes Bob Lefsetz. Bob who? Non-what? Non-Comm is the shortened term for the annual radio industry gathering officially called the Non-Commvention, which is hosted by WXPN-FM (88.5-FM) and starts Thursday in University City. It will bring an assortment of high-wattage and up-and-coming names to World Cafe Live over the next three days, including Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Beth Orton, Brandi Carlile, and the War on Drugs. (Tickets for all those artists are sold out, but piano man Rufus Wainwright highlights a free Saturday afternoon show at the new Penn Park, at 31st and lower Walnut Streets.)

The recording industry sued 261 music fans in U.S. federal courts yesterday, accusing each of illegally downloading and sharing at least 1,000 songs over the Internet. The civil lawsuits could eventually number in the thousands, said the Recording Industry Association of America, whose members include major record labels BMG, EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music. This summer, the RIAA issued about 1,600 subpoenas to universities and Internet service providers, demanding that they identify those allegedly sharing copyrighted music.

With the Internet and sites like MySpace revolutionizing the business, young people with music talent are on the edge of unprecedented opportunities to break into the industry, local music executives say. "You guys are spoiled and you don't even know it," said "Grouchy" Greg Watkins, cofounder of allhiphop.com. "The music industry is at ground zero. There's an opportunity to break in like never before. " To make things even easier for young students interested in careers in the music industry, the Jr Music Executive organization started a speakers series in association with the Friends Neighborhood Guild.

Behold the music industry's most coveted consumer: A girl in pigtails and tie-dye, maybe 11 years old, radiating fruity cologne from the Johnson's Kid Wash while, in her ice-cream sticky hands, she clutches a 98 Degrees T-shirt Mom just bought for $22. Like the two friends who have accompanied her to Montage Mountain, she's an enthusiastic cog in the "boy band" machine - she knows the names of all four members of 98 Degrees - and is on the lookout...

The music industry may not know where the demand is going to come from. But there's never going to be any shortage of supply. That much was obvious at the South by Southwest Music Festival, or SXSW, which ended Sunday, where more than 1,500 acts played showcases, and hundreds of others plugged in at barbecue joints and taco stands in this city that becomes the capital of the music business every March. Band managers, booking agents and label honchos played I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours with digital mobile devices, as panels met on such topics as "Record Companies: Who Needs Them?"

Put away the acne cream and break out the champagne. This is the year American Idol came of age. Even though Fox's singing contest has been camped atop the Nielsen heap for three years, in the past Idol has always been considered a cheesy, teenybopper fad. But as its audience has continued to expand (up again this season 14 percent), the ultimate karaoke party has become a legitimate monster. "A confluence of cultural factors have made this show not just a hit but a supernova in the TV universe," says John Rash, media buyer for Campbell Mithun, a Minneapolis advertising agency.

THE GRAMMYS are that annual lovefest when the music industry tries to convince the rest of the world that it still has a pulse. But you know what showed a surprising heartbeat yesterday? The movie industry. For the first time since Christmas 2008, four - count 'em, four - movies opened with more than a $20 million box-office haul. "The Vow" led the way with a ridiculous $41.7 million. Who knew so many people would remember to see a movie about amnesia? In second, with $39.3 million, according to yesterday's studio estimates, was the Denzel Washington-Ryan Reynolds ' action thriller "Safe House.

After a tumultuous 2011 in which they opened a new Center City coffee-and-music venue amid a nasty labor dispute, no one would have faulted rising entertainment entrepreneurs Jamie Lokoff and Tommy Joyner for taking it easy in the new year. But that's not how they roll at MilkBoy, a blend of java- and music-brewed business ventures that seeks to reinvent itself in 2012. Joyner and Lokoff are focusing on Center City after a decade running a recording studio and their now well-known coffee house in Ardmore (and a smaller one in Bryn Mawr)

Look out Non-Comm, here comes Bob Lefsetz. Bob who? Non-what? Non-Comm is the shortened term for the annual radio industry gathering officially called the Non-Commvention, which is hosted by WXPN-FM (88.5-FM) and starts Thursday in University City. It will bring an assortment of high-wattage and up-and-coming names to World Cafe Live over the next three days, including Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Beth Orton, Brandi Carlile, and the War on Drugs. (Tickets for all those artists are sold out, but piano man Rufus Wainwright highlights a free Saturday afternoon show at the new Penn Park, at 31st and lower Walnut Streets.)

CAPE MAY - For the music-minded vacationer, Cape May's historic halls and watering holes are turning up the heat early. The occasion is the fifth annual Singer-Songwriter of Cape May gathering, which began Friday and runs through Saturday night. In the half-decade since the event began, this Shore town has become a springtime pilgrimage spot for independent performers from as close as Atlantic City and as far away as Australia. "It is something I make a point to schedule on my tour every year," Avi Wisnia, a Philadelphia jazz-pop songwriter, said in an e-mail from the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, this month.

DICK McGettigan was a fun-loving Irishman who never hesitated to get out on the dance floor when the music was playing or to belt out a ballad in his robust voice. He was an avid music fan, favoring jazz, big bands and swing, and tried not to miss a parade of military pomp. His favorite vocalist was Ella Fitzgerald. Richard J. McGettigan, a nearly 35-year investigator with the Department of Defense Personnel Support Center, helping to stop contract fraud and bribery, a man with a nonstop Irish wit who especially loved to entertain children, died March 21 of congestive heart failure.

THE GRAMMYS are that annual lovefest when the music industry tries to convince the rest of the world that it still has a pulse. But you know what showed a surprising heartbeat yesterday? The movie industry. For the first time since Christmas 2008, four - count 'em, four - movies opened with more than a $20 million box-office haul. "The Vow" led the way with a ridiculous $41.7 million. Who knew so many people would remember to see a movie about amnesia? In second, with $39.3 million, according to yesterday's studio estimates, was the Denzel Washington-Ryan Reynolds ' action thriller "Safe House.

WE MAY never know if Whitney Houston died by accident or intent - drowning in a bathtub Saturday afternoon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. While there's much speculation that she was under the influence of anti-depressants and alcohol, the coroner's official report won't be out for weeks. What we do know is that Whitney Houston couldn't possibly have picked a more opportune moment to make goodbyes and deliver a brutal statement about the dark side of the music biz - how the stresses of the game can drive a person to bad habits and spiraling self-destruction.

It's possible that Adele won't be the runaway winner at the 2012 Grammy Awards, to be broadcast at 8 p.m. Sunday on CBS3 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. With the Grammys, after all, the inexplicable often occurs. Last year, Canadian indie band Arcade Fire upset heavily favored Eminem for best album, the same category in which Herbie Hancock's The River (The Joni Letters) caused a tizzy by beating out both Amy Winehouse and Kanye West in 2008. But in 2012, it would stand to reason that nothing can stand in the way of Adele.

After a tumultuous 2011 in which they opened a new Center City coffee-and-music venue amid a nasty labor dispute, no one would have faulted rising entertainment entrepreneurs Jamie Lokoff and Tommy Joyner for taking it easy in the new year. But that's not how they roll at MilkBoy, a blend of java- and music-brewed business ventures that seeks to reinvent itself in 2012. Joyner and Lokoff are focusing on Center City after a decade running a recording studio and their now well-known coffee house in Ardmore (and a smaller one in Bryn Mawr)

You could call Serena Sol Brown - singer, musician, and radio personality - a triple threat, as her friends like to say. But that would be leaving out a lot. Let's see. She also writes songs. And produces and promotes artists. And did I mention deejaying and acting? What are we up to now? Octuple threat? Suffice it to say that Serena Sol's artistic journey has taken her in and out of so many facets of the music industry that that she probably could run a label herself.

NEW YORK - A Jewish housewife from Passaic, N.J., named Florence Greenberg was a pioneer in the '50s - first, she outsmarted the male-dominated pop record industry with her own Scepter record label. And second, the already-married Greenberg fell in love with her talented black music producer, Luther Dixon ("Sixteen Candles," "Tonight's the Night"). But for all her home-grown savvy at the pinnacle of the music industry and her strength to stand up for herself in bucking a taboo, Greenberg would have been nothing without four black girls from a Passaic high school.

Anyone deep into the local music scene ought to perk up and listen to the tunes drummer David Uosikkinen and friends are rerecording for "In the Pocket: Essential Songs of Philadelphia. " Available (along with a cool documentary) at http: POP . . . plus Anyone deep into the local music scene ought to perk up and listen to the tunes drummer David Uosikkinen and friends are rerecording for "In the Pocket: Essential Songs of Philadelphia. " Available (along with a cool documentary)