Taylor Swift Celebrates Success with Music Industry

Last night in Nashville, members of the NARAS, CMA, ACM and the AMA’s were on hand at an event celebrating the unprecedented success of Taylor Swift and her Fearless album.  The album is the first album to win Country Album and Album of the Year awards from all these industry trade groups along with an unprecedented string of 10 Top 10 hits (5 from each of her two albums), another record for Taylor’s mantle as she’s the first female country artist to achieve such a mark from their two debut albums (Shania Twain had a similar run from albums 2-3). They also celebrated Fearless and it’s six-times platinum sales success. Here’s a photo from the event:

Pictured L-R: John Grady, Academy of Country Music Awards Board Chairman; Steve Moore, Country Music Association Board Chairman; Susan Stewart NARAS South Regional Director; Taylor Swift; Larry Klein, American Music Awards Producer; Kelly Rich, Big Machine VP of Sales & Marketing; Scott Borchetta, President & CEO of Big Machine Records PHOTO CREDIT: Krista Lee for Krista Lee Photography

Dierks Bentley Partners With Esquire Magizine for their upcoming “Music” issue

Country music singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley has been handpicked by leading men’s lifestyle magazine Esquire to be part of their April Music Issue, available on newsstands March 23.  

In Feb., five musicians converged in Clarksdale, Miss., at the Shack-Up Inn for a two day fashion shoot with world-renowned photographer Danny Clinch.  At the end of the trip, each songwriter was challenged to write, perform and record an original song that included the phrase “Somewhere in Mississippi.”  Bentley’s song will be available for download on March 29 for one day only, and a full EP of all the songs will be available April 5 at esquire.com.

Until then, for a behind-the-scenes clip of the shoot and recording session, visit www.esquire.com/miss.

Miley Cyrus Says Country Music’s Contrived

Hannah Montana Starlet Miley Cyrus says that country music is too contrived and something that she says moved her father away from the industry a few years ago.  If that’s true, why did she record “The Climb,” why did she record the duet with her father?  Why did she record that song that’s playing in the new trailer for her upcoming Nicolas Sparks film The Last Song.  Do you agree with her, do you think mainstream country music is ‘contrived?’

Universal Music Group To Reveal New CD Prices

Fans of country music, particularly albums from the likes of George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, Easton Corbin, Gary Allan, Toby Keith, Josh Turner and other artists signed to UMG Nashville and Show Dog-Universal will certainly like the news that parent company UMG will be setting up new price points for albums at a $6-10 range for regular releases so that they can compete more with the digital world.  Country fans, many of whom have never downloaded or care to download a song from iTunes should be happy about this news as it will mean an end to overpriced CDs, at least from one of the four major label players -The Others are Warner Music (Atlantic, Warner/Reprise), Sony Music (RCA, BNA, Columbia, Arista) and EMI (Capitol Nashville).  Any thoughts on this one?