Grammy Award Winners – Here are some of the winners in selected categories at Sunday’s 53rd Annual Grammy Awards:
Album of the Year: "The Suburbs," Arcade Fire
Record of the Year: "Need You Now," Lady Antebellum
New Artist: Esperanza Spalding
Pop Vocal Album: "The Fame Monster," Lady Gaga
Pop Performance by a Duo or Group: "Hey Soul Sister," Train
Female Pop Vocal Performance: "Bad Romance," Lady Gaga
Male Pop Vocal Performance: "Just The Way You Are," Bruno Mars
Rock Song: "Angry World," Neil Young
Rock Album: "The Resistance," Muse
Contemporary Jazz Album: "The Stanley Clarke Band," The Stanley Clarke Band
Classical Album: "Verdi: Requiem," Riccardo Muti, conductor
Traditional Gospel Album: "Downtown Church," Patty Griffin
Alternative Music Album: "Brothers," The Black Keys
Spoken Word Album: "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Audiobook)," Jon Stewart
Naxos of America artists got nine Grammies across eight categories, including artists from their Sono Luminus and CSO Resound distributed labels. EMI artists and songwriters got more than 20 awards, mainly in the country music genre. Alia Vox, distributed by Harmonia mundi, received their first Grammy for the sumptuous three-SACD + book release “Dinastia Borja.” The full winners list in all 109 categories is available at www.grammy.com
Congress Looks to Cut Public Broadcasting Funding – House Republicans have recommended deep cuts in the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB distributes taxpayer money to support public radio and TV. The action comes as the head of CPB, Kenneth Tomlinson, has pushed NPR and PBS to address what he calls a lack of journalistic balance in some of its news programs. CPB money provides less than 1% of NPR’s annual budget, but 15% of that is for individual NPR stations. There is an active organization and website promoting “Defund Public Broadcasting Now.” Ten years ago there was a Republican effort to eliminate funding for public broadcasting, and it has occurred again. Americans for Limited Government urges their members to act, saying NPR and PBS are too radical and “it’s time to just pull the plug.” Though the government is not the major source of public broadcasting funding, programs vital to listeners and viewers such as Nova, FrontLine, American Masters, Masterpiece Theater, Bill Moyers Journal, Morning Edition, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and This American Life could be threatened. Your elected representatives need to hear from you now; make your voice heard. Here’s a petition you might want to sign.
Last.fm Begins Charging $3 a Month for Mobile Service – Like Pandora, Last.fm is mostly ad-supported on their web site, but decided the same model was not viable for non-PC platforms. They will begin charging $3 per month to access the service on your mobile device from anywhere without ads. Pandora listening is free up to 40 hours per month and higher-res signals at 192 kbps, but you must hear ads every few songs.
