I.B. BAD ON WHO’S HOT AS 2009 RAMPS UP

Steve Barnett’s Columbia team will have the year’s first projected triple-figure release with Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream, hitting Jan. 27. While some are projecting a 350k first week (2007’s Magic debuted with 335k), Columbia has yet again done a masterful setup, highlighted by Springsteen’s featured appearance this Sunday at the Obama inaugural celebration and the Super Bowl halftime performance Feb. 1, capping off release week… The appearance of what seems to be a finished track from Eminem’s upcoming album suggests that Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope may finally be about to break out of its ’08 slump—although some observers are asking how much yank the hip-hop icon still has, more than three years after his last studio album, which sold 2.9m. Will it be enough to sell a million? Two million?… Katy Perry has just passed 800k in the U.S. alone, putting her behind only Leona Lewis (1.4m) and the Idol-driven David Cook (860k), both on RMG, among 2008 rookies. Perry was brought to Capitol Music Group by SVP Publicity/Creative Services Angelica Cob-Baehler, signed by then-CMG chief Jason Flom and shepherded by Greg Thompson, who took the newcomer’s first two singles to #1, with the third now shooting up the airplay charts… No recent success story is more impressive than that of Taylor Swift, who has exploded from one of 2007’s most promising newcomers to the overall 2008 sales champ on the 3.7m combined total of her two albums. After upstart Nashville indie Big Machine got her started at Country radio, Monte Lipman’s Universal Republic entered the picture and brought her to the promised land … Just a few weeks ago, Akon’s newly released follow-up to his own 2007 smash, on Steve Rifkind’s SRC through Sylvia Rhone’s Universal Motown, got off to a sluggish start because first single “Right Now (Na Na Na)” was just gaining traction. Rhone and Rifkind quickly decided to take two more tracks to radio, and the cumulative airplay on all three has driven the new album back into the Top 10. Industry watchers note that this sort of turnaround is extremely rare… For those who believe radio is dead, it’s worth noting that every one of the aforementioned smashes—Perry, Lewis, Cook, Swift and Akon—can be directly attributed to radio airplay and/or television exposure.