This year, the media and music industry celebrated earlier than expected Monday when Coachella organizers released the lineup for the 2012 festival, a two-week affair that will repeat the weekends of April 13-15 and April 20-22 at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, Calif.. Typically the announcement doesn’t come until the third week in January.

Concert promoters Goldenvoice now have two unusual challenges on their hands — putting both shows (up to 160,000 tickets) on sale Saturday, and keeping tabs on the 300+ bands who will have a week of down time between gigs.

Legendary indie rockers Radiohead are booked for two massive shows in Mexico during the week off. Thom Yorke and crew will head to Foro Sol in Mexico City for two stadium shows booked by Mexican promoter Ocessa. Friday’s headliner, the Black Keys, have a one-month gap in their arena tour built around the festival, and will play at the BOK Center in Tulsa a week afer their Coachella gig wraps up.

“They’re getting a lot of radio play but they still have an indie feel, it’s still cool to go see these up-and-coming new bands do so well,” said Jerry Goldman, Asst. GM at the arena, which puts its tickets on sale for the Black Keys on Friday.

“They’re not doing any presales — they don’t believe in them. They’re just putting the tickets up and it’s first come, first serve,” he said.

As for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, the rap duo set to reunite on the final evening of Coachella, it’s really anyone’s guess where they’ll spend their week off. The lyricists behind the triple platinum 1992 album “The Chronic” both hail from California and while Snoop will be playing the Snowbomb Festival on the Friday before his Sunday night appearance, many are expecting the pair to be staples in the party scene that is sure to permeate LA from April 16-19.

The options are really limitless — Goldenvoice’s parent company AEG owns most of L.A. Live, home to Staples Center (the top grossing arena in the United States for 2011) along with Nokia Theatre and a number of independently operated nightclubs at the downtown destination. Goldenvoice manages the El Rey Theater and, until recently, the Music Box, which has shut down for unspecified reasons. A statement from Goldenvoice said “it is our understanding that the closing of The Music Box is a short-term closure.”

Lee Zeidman said he isn’t aware of any plans to have the bands participate in events at Staples Center or L.A. Live, but he’s not worried about radius clauses affecting his building’s ability to pull in shows or special events.

“We’re part of the same company, so that doesn’t really affect us,” he said, although two teams at Staples Center have games at the facility for five straight days during the off week.

Tickets for Coachella go on sale Friday, and Derek Schafer, Tour Marketing Manager for AEG Live, advised “if you really want to go, be prepared to invest up to a couple hours preparing and getting your ticket order together.”

Presales for the first weekend of the festival have nearly sold out and Schafer’s team is advising people “Go straight for Weekend 2 and purchase a GA or VIP ticket,” because “if you wait till Saturday or beyond — you may run the risk of not getting a ticket at all.

For more information about buying tickets, click here.

Clear Channel, the nation’s biggest owner of stations with 850 outlets across the country including KIIS-FM, KOST-FM and KBIG-FM in Los Angeles, wants to leverage its strength in radio across a wide range of platforms.

“We can use that horsepower to create new products,” said Bob Pittman, chief executive of Clear Channel parent company CC Media Holdings Inc.

The hiring of Sykes is the first major move by Pittman since becoming chief executive of CC Media last November. Pittman and Sykes have a long history together going back to the early days of MTV when they were part of the executive team that launched the groundbreaking music cable television network in 1981.

In an interview, Sykes said he wants to use the “muscle and reach” of Clear Channel to turn it from “850 independent shops” to a “large scale media company.”

The moves are part of CC Media Holdings’ overall plan under Pittman to reposition itself as more than a radio company. Last week, CC Media Holdings officially changed the name of Clear Channel Radio to Clear Channel Media and Entertainment.

Americans listen to about 15 hours of radio a week, according to research company Arbitron Inc. However, increased competition from satellite radio and new online services such as Pandora have put a cloud over the traditional radio business. Much of the industry has become more consolidated over the last decade in an effort to appease Wall Street by cutting costs.

“There is nothing wrong with radio,” said Pittman, who while growing up spent some time behind the microphone of a station in his hometown of Brookhaven, Miss. “In 1970, radio reached 92% of the people every week; in 2012, it’s 93%.

But changing how radio reaches those people is where Pittman sees opportunity. Last year, Clear Channel launched the iHeartRadio application that enables consumers to listen to its stations on computers and tablets. To hype the effort, the company held a two-day music festival in Las Vegas featuring Cold Play, Jay-Z and Lady Gaga. Clear Channel has also struck partnerships with Facebook and Zynga to promote its properties.

Sykes, who was first recruited by Pittman as a consultant last year, wants to create more events like the iHeartRadio festival, which was also streamed on the Web and carried by Viacom’s VH1 cable channel.

“We can partner with a TV network or producer and create properties with a tremendous amount of promotional power behind them, Sykes said.

Clear Channel is not planning to go on an acquisition binge as part of its efforts to broaden beyond its comfort zone of radio. The company, which had a loss of $74 million on revenue of $1.6 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30 is saddled with $20 billion in debt from when it was taken private by Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

“This is not meant to create a giant overhead within the organization,” Sykes said of Clear Channel’s promotional efforts. “It is to partner with people already in the business and use our deep talent pool to actually create a very powerful entertainment platform.”

Sykes, 56, has spent much of his career in and around the music industry. After leaving MTV in the late 1980s, he became president of Champion Entertainment, where he managed John Mellencamp and Mariah Carey. He went on to become a president of Chrysalis Records as well as CBS Radio and VH1.

Most recently, he was affiliated with Pittman’s Pilot Group, a private equity firm where he worked on the restructuring of MGM. He also serves on the board of Shazam, a company that put a modern spin on the game “Name that Tune” by creating an application that enables its users to readily identify songs for purchase after hearing just a few notes.

Physical CD sales continued to fall in 2011, with a 5% decrease. That number, however, affords some reason for optimism if you consider the fact that the decline in physical CD sales for 2010 was a whopping 19.5%. Not surprisingly, the top selling markets were New York and Los Angeles, with the two entertainment capitals outpacing Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Atlanta, and Seattle to round out the top ten U.S. markets for overall CD sales for the year. There were a total of 226 million CDs sold in the U.S. last year.

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has claimed that if all albums were as good as Adele’s ’21′ then the music industry “would be on fire”.

Talking to Billboard, the singer said that poor record sales were the result of lacklustre LP’s rather than a lack of interest in music, and suggested that people would always be willing to buy “great” albums.

With ’21′ recently announced as the biggest selling LP in the US in 2011, Grohl said: “Someone asked me recently, ‘What do you think the problem with the music industry is?’

“I said, take the Adele record, for example. It’s an amazing record and everybody’s so shocked that it’s such a phenomenon. I’m not. You know why that record’s huge? Because it’s fucking good and it’s real.”

He went on to add: Now imagine if all records were that good. Do you think only one of them would sell? Fuck no! All of them would. If all records were that good the music business would be on fire, but they’re not.
However, Grohl dismissed the idea that the popularity of rock music was on the wane or needed saving, and insisted that there will “always be rock’n'roll bands”. He said: “For years, usually about once a year, you have a rock band that comes out and says, ‘We’re gonna save rock’n'roll’, and then you’ll read an article asking, ‘Is Rock Dead?’

“It’s never gone away in my world. Ask the guys in AC/DC whether they think rock’n'roll is dead,” he added.

Foo Fighters recently confirmed they are planning to head into the studio to record a new album this year. The band only released their latest studio effort ‘Wasting Light’ in April 2011 but Grohl revealed on the band’s official blog that he has already started compiling ideas for new songs.

The band have been nominated for six gongs including Album Of The Year for ‘Wasting Light’ at the 54th annual Grammy Awards, which takes place on February 12 in Los Angeles

In February 2011 his album was finished, and in March he uploaded one of his songs, “July” to the now defunct Youth Lagoon Bandcamp page. He emailed a few of his favorite indie music blogs to see if they’d post the tune and, to his surprise, they obliged. Other blogs caught on, too. Then Powers posted a second song, “Cannons,” which he found was just as popular.

Based on the strength of two spare, atmospheric tracks, with lyrics barely discernible over distorted keyboards and drum machine clicks, a music manager sought Powers out. Then a major indie label did, too. Label representatives flew out to Boise to court him and watch him play a show at a local dive.

“To think it’s gotten to this level this quickly,” Powers told The Huffington Post in November. “I can’t even comprehend.”

Cut to the end of this year: Powers has a full-length album approved by the indie rock tastemakers at Pitchfork and he’s headlining a major tour across the United States. Jessica Alba is tweeting about him. He’s tweeting her back. At Mercury Lounge in New York City, he plays a sold-out show, fans singing along to every track. What sounded distant and subtle on the album is suddenly sparkling and vibrant, even though it’s just him and a guitarist up there, alone, playing the songs that barely a year ago Powers was imagining in his head.

The internet gave him attention and a voice. Then all he had to do was actually perform his songs in front of real people. He had to prove he could do everything else a musician does.

That transition — from amateur-level unknown to monumental explosion — appeared to happen more frequently than ever in 2011. Lana Del Rey, who was introduced to the world by way of a scrappy YouTube video featuring her sultry, catchy song and her bedroom eyes, made an international name for herself seemingly overnight.

But she couldn’t survive on her mysterious video alone. To prove she was a real, human person, she recorded a “live” rendition of her song, “Video Games,” and posted it online. People still doubted her, so she began to perform on actual stages. Then, in her own time, she recorded a full-length album, set to debut in early 2012.

The trajectory was specific and spontaneous and all her own.

Mac Miller, a teenage hip hop artist from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, took a similarly contemporary route to success. His black-and-white videos and catchy, energetic style helped him amass legions of fans on YouTube without ever releasing a full-length album. In late 2010, he embarked on his first tour and sold out every show. His recent single “Donald Trump” racked up 30 million YouTube views and became a massive radio hit. Finally, in November, his debut album hit number one on the Billboard charts.

One of Miller’s songs even became the “victory song” for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team.

In Indonesia, a policeman named Norman Kamaru became a viral sensation after releasing a grainy YouTube video of him lip-synching to a Bollywood song. He scored a $100,000 record contract and appeared on local talk shows.

Indeed, 2011 was a year when “YouTube musician” became a compliment, and success for the unknown came faster than ever — in both the indie and mainstream worlds. This is all to say nothing (though plenty has been said) of Rebecca Black, whose YouTube hit “Friday” gave her both wanted and unwanted attention and made her the most Google-searched name of the year (above the iPhone 5 and Casey Anthony).

The rules for success in the music industry have changed rapidly over the years. What started with the MySpace craze has now branched much farther out to include lip-synching Indonesians, students from Boise and teenage girls whose mothers pay a pair of fledgling producers to write a song about a day of the week. And as labels lost more of their power, radio lost listeners, and albums became even more of an afterthought, the music industry continued to redefine itself in 2011.

According to figures released by music industry body the BPI, digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6 million which helped balance a large drop in CD sales.
Combined sales of digital and physical albums fell by 5.6% to 113.2m in 2011, with albums on CD declining 12.6% year-on-year to 86.2m in total.

The BPI has been lobbying against changes that it believes could weaken copyright law, and has called for greater protection from the Digital Economy Act, despite the increase in paid-for downloads.

The drop in artist albums is piffling in the context of the challenges faced by the retail and entertainment industries as a whole
“Led by Adele, Jessie J, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and others, records by British artists in 2011 achieved both critical and commercial success both at home and around the world,” said Tony Wadsworth, BPI chairman.

“But the challenge of sustaining this performance against a backdrop of chronic piracy means that Government action remains absolutely crucial for British artists and their labels.”

However, the BPI’s stance has been called into question by some observers, who claim the 5.6% fall in overall sales is not a bad result during the ongoing economic downturn.

“What that means, in translation, is ‘We’ve done better than our pessimistic predictions, but don’t be fooled – we’re still too incompetent to sustain that success in the face of technological change, so we want the Government to guarantee our future for us’,” said Mark Goodge, a musician, local politician and activist, on his blog.

“As for ‘chronic piracy’, it really doesn’t seem to be happening at all,” he said, citing estimates that album sales excluding compilations had dropped by only 2.5%.

“The drop in artist albums is piffling in the context of the challenges faced by the retail and entertainment industries as a whole.”

Read more: Music industry torn over album download success | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/371971/music-industry-torn-over-album-download-success#ixzz1iOvi58nm

OK, it’s only by a whisker of 1 percent. But it is welcome news in an industry where album sales for 2010 were down 13 percent from 2009. And prior to that they’d been down an average of 8 percent every year through the 2000s, suggesting an incredible shrinking music business.

This year reversed the trend, but there is a cloud buried in the silver lining: the success stories of 2011 will not be easy to replicate.

The year’s two biggest albums were Adele’s “21” and Michael Buble’s “Christmas” — and even the most copycat-prone execs aren’t foolish enough to start looking for pleasingly plump Englishwomen or Sinatra-bred carolers to sign.

Regardless of how applicable the lessons might be, here’s our look back at what worked and what didn’t in 2011:

RETRO ROCKS … IF YOU DON’T CALL IT RETRO

Artists from Adele to the Black Keys thrived by recalling good old days for oldsters while seeming utterly contemporary to kids who’d rebel at the word “throwback.”

Also read: Review — Adele Bares It All in Candor-Filled ‘Live at Albert Hall’

At last tally, Adele’s “21” had sold 5,281,000; with two sales weeks yet to be reported, the blockbuster should finish out the year a little shy of 6 million. (The only release in the past few years to cross the 6 million mark was Taylor Swift’s “Fearless.”) Moreover, she sold an additional 750,000 copies this year of her previous album, “19.”

Adele is a singles artist, too. “Rolling in the Deep” has sold 5,665,000 downloads, followed by “Someone Like You” with 3,352,000, “Set Fire to the Rain” with 963,000, and “Rumour Has It” with 551,000.

Also read: Why Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ May Save the Music Industry

On a smaller but louder end of the spectrum, the Black Keys put the lie to “rock is dead” theories — again — by moving 426,000 copies this year of their two-year-old “Brothers.” Their brand new “El Camino,” whose nostalgic aspects lean more toward glam-rock than neo-blues, has sold an impressive 293,000 units in two weeks.

BET ON THE RIGHT CAROLER

Everyone guessed there’d be a big Christmas album this year. Almost everyone guessed it’d be Justin Bieber’s. But Buble’s sold 1,964,000 of his holiday CD, versus Bieber’s 1,003,000.

We should have seen it coming, since Buble’s previous album quietly sold 2 million-plus. Despite his crooner image, Buble’s holiday set wisely had something for everyone, whereas Bieber’s had something to annoy just about everyone outside his core.

“Christmas” currently stands at No. 3 on the list of 2011’s bestsellers, and will surpass Lady Gaga to land at No. 2 by Jan. 1.

Again, maybe not a surprise to anyone who recalled how Josh Groban’s “Noel” became 2008′s surprise bestseller.

FORGET WHAT WE SAID ABOUT ROCK NOT BEING DEAD

The news wasn’t so great if you weren’t the Black Keys. One of the biggest bands of the 2000s, Evanescence, belly flopped with their self-titled third album, which has sold an anemic 284,000 units in 10 weeks and currently sits at No. 101.

Also read: Universal’s $1.9B EMI Deal: IN a Digital World, Market Share Counts for Less

Some other big rock names did just OK. Coldplay sold 877,000 copies of “Mylo Xyloto” in eight weeks … impressive, until you remember their last album sold 721,000 in one week.

Don’t call Blink-182′s “Neighborhoods” a comeback. The dormant superstars’ return moved 259,000 units in 10 weeks. Their current neighborhood (No. 200 on the Billboard 200)? The chart ghetto.

Daughtry looked to be one of the big sellers of this holiday season, on paper, but their new album sits at No. 27, having sold 241,000 in a month.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers sold 458,000 of their latest, leaving a long road to catch up with the two and a half million their last effort managed. The term “red hot” just doesn’t seem to apply to anything related to rock …

Unless, of course, it’s U2’s “360” tour, officially the highest grossing ever. Their lengthy worldwide trek brought in $293 million, playing to 2.8 million patrons.

SINGLES ARTISTS VS. ALBUM ARTISTS

Adele and Taylor Swift sometimes appear to be the only acts who can move millions of long-players and singles. Swift’s 2010 release “Speak Now” sold another 902,000 copies this year, upping its total to 3.9 million.

But the trend is toward acts like LMFAO, who had far and away the year’s biggest single with “Party Rock Anthem” — a 4,579,000 seller as of mid-month.

Also read: Review — Amy Winehouse’s ‘Lioness’ Opens Up an All-Too-Empty Vault

The dance duo also have the current top-selling single with “Sexy and I Know It,” with 2,544,000 downloads. Another song, “Shots,” has moved 1,540,000. Fans clearly prefer the a la carte approach. The act with the year’s top-selling song can only lay claim to the 56th best-selling album, as “Sorry for Party Rocking” has sold 401,000 copies.

The ultimate example of a singles-only act: Hot Chelle Rae. The pop group won best new artist at the American Music Awards, after their “Tonight Tonight” single sold an astonishing 2,382,000 singles. The subsequent album has moved 31,000 copies in three weeks.

Britney Spears may also fall into this category now. Her “Femme Fatale” did better than expected, given a run of bad pre-release publicity, but its 725,000-copy total wasn’t good enough to push it into the top 20 sellers of the year.

NEW COUNTRY VS. OLD(ER) COUNTRY:

It used to be that country was the genre most hospitable to mid-career artists. Tell that to Martina McBride, who’s sold a mere 119,000 in 10 weeks. Toby Keith is down to No. 28 after just eight weeks, with an OK 266,000 tally, the kind of number he used to do in just his opening week.

So who’s barnstorming down the dirt road? Country’s new new guard of guys. Jason Aldean’s “My Kinda Party,” a late 2010 release, has racked up a 2.2 million total, and it moved back up to No. 16 in the week prior to Christmas. No other album that’s been out more than a year has anywhere near that ongoing momentum.

For second-tier success stories, check out Eric Church at 504,000 units, Luke Bryan at 580,000 with his latest, the Zac Brown Band adding 720,000 to their 2010 album’s total — and Scotty McCreery, putting an end to the recent “Idol” curse with 748,000 and counting.

One female-fronted group broke through the wall of dudes: the Band Perry added 666,000 to the 998,000 total for their debut album, which will be well over a million by year’s end — capitalizing on their 3.5 million-selling single, “If I Die Young,” the funeral song of the millennium.

DID HIP-HOP FAIL TO WATCH ITS THRONE?

Eminem had the top-selling album last year, but there were no such contenders in 2011. Lil Wayne had the best first-week tally, selling over a million — but he has yet to double that. Still, his “Tha Carter IV” is the year’s fourth-best seller, with 1,826,000 so far.

Jay-Z’s and Kanye West’s “Watch the Throne” is up to 1,116,000, but was expected to have done better. Drake’s sophomore “Take Care” will soon surpass it. As for the old guard, you only have to look to The Game to see who’s lost his game, with a braggadocio-defying 222,000 units.

LOSS LEADERS TAKE A LOSS

Lady Gaga should end up with the third best-selling album of the year, after Adele and Buble — but it’ll always have a steroid-sized asterisk, since first-week sales were goosed by a controversial 99-cent sale on Amazon.com. Billboard allowed the sub-dollar sales when they celebrated a million-plus opening week for “Born This Way,” but later announced they wouldn’t include virtual giveaways in the future.

That’s not to say Gaga’s fans aren’t willing to shell out where it counts: at the box office. Her concert trek grossed $72 million — even without putting any tickets on sale at the Dollar Store. She was the only performer under 30 besides Swift to land among Billboard Boxscore’s top 10 money-making tours, a realm otherwise largely populated by the veteran likes of U2, Bon Jovi and Roger Waters.

With music shelf space still shrinking at big-box stores, which of course helped kill dedicated music outlets during the flush years, it’s doubtful whether music can manage another up or flat year in 2012.

That might take Adele breaking her every-other-year release pattern and giving us a surprise “22″ on the inevitable path to “23.”

Related Articles: TheWrap’s 2011 Year in Review: From Moguls to … WTF?! Why Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ May Save the Music Industry

After Steve’s passing in October, the world continues to realize the true impact that he made on the music industry and the transformation of the technological industry that Apple’s products caused. On Friday, The Recording Academy announced they’ll be honoring Steve Jobs with a Special Merit Grammy Award for revolutionizing the music industry with the highly successful iTunes Music Store.

As former CEO and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books. A creative visionary, Jobs’ innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased. In 2002 Apple Computer Inc. was a recipient of a Technical GRAMMY Award for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. The company continues to lead the way with new technology and in-demand products such as the iPhone and iPad.

The Recording Academy will be holding a special event on Saturday, February 11th in order to honor numerous visionaries with Lifetime Achievement Awards as well as Technical Grammy Awards. The Academy will also be honoring Jobs with a Trustee Award honoring Steve Jobs the following day.

The impact of Apple’s products under Steve Jobs’ guidance can be seen all around the world, and with the influence that his products had on the music and computing industry, there is no doubt that Steve Jobs is the right person to receive the award.

In this case, it’s Madonna’s new pact with Universal Music Group. The New York Post says she’ll get around $1 million an album for a three-album deal, and music industry folks say the paper has its numbers right.

This is a very reasonable contract. Madonna is long past her music-selling peak, and the music industry is a decade past its peak, too.

Still! Reasonable contracts — especially for superstars — are still very new things for the music business. Not too many years ago, Sony handed Bruce Springsteen a reported $100 million, and that was well into the post-Napster slide. So let’s just walk through what each side gets here:

Madonna gets the kind of money, upfront, that she would have laughed at in the past. A million bucks is what you used to give a hot “baby band” no one but a few hipsters had heard of. But the world’s biggest music company will buy her billboards, etc., and that’s still worth something. Plus, on the off chance that one of these albums does take off, the low advance means she could actually earn royalties on the sales.

Universal gets bragging rights and one of the music industry’s few living worldwide icons, for what amounts to walking-around money. And, again, who knows? She might still sell some records, perhaps on the back of her upcoming Super Bowl appearance.

Universal doesn’t get Madonna’s lucrative back catalog — Warner Music Group still has those songs, which it continues to sell, repackage, and sell some more. And Universal doesn’t get a piece of her lucrative touring business — concert giant Live Nation has that. (Remember when Live Nation was also going to be a big deal in the record business? What happened to that?)

But wait a minute. Why does Madonna need a record deal at all? Couldn’t she just sell her music on her own, like Prince and Radiohead and the Eagles and lots of folks?
Sure. But not everyone wants to be Louis C.K., who has just declared his direct-to-fan experiment a huge success. (To play devil’s advocate: Even though everyone who bought one of his concerts blogged about it (more than once, in some cases), he has still only reached 130,000 people — far less than would have seen him had he done an HBO deal or a Netflix deal. And those guys would almost certainly have paid him more, too. Though if you want to be a contra-contrarian, you can note that he could still do that. (Which I have!)

Some people, it turns out, are still happy to take money up front from Big Media companies and hope they can deliver the Big Reach, which the do-it-yourself Web can’t guarantee.

In an age where nothing sells like it used to, Adele’s sophomore effort 21 was positively retro, a masterpiece of all-ages accessibility that managed to camp out on the charts with such persistent resolve that it seemed to constitute its very own Occupy Billboard movement.

The record has been certified diamond in Canada, where it had sold more than 800,000 copies by November. It moved another 3.4 million copies in Adele’s native U.K. — making it the bestselling album of the young century there — and reached quadruple platinum designation in the U.S. back in October. And when Adele strides into the Grammy Awards in February, she’ll do so with six nominations, including nods in each of the show’s three biggest categories.

The best part? No one expected it. Adele’s 21 was a runaway freight train that looked as serenely inconspicuous as a Prius. But if the industry was looking the other way when 21 hurtled past, they’re watching now. And their response to the most prominent stealth smash in ages could resonate for years to come.

“My idea is that the industry for the last 10 months has been frantically trying to duplicate Adele,” said Entertainment Weekly music critic Leah Greenblatt in a recent telephone interview.

“They’ve given new directives to their A&R guys, like: ‘Find this girl with the voice. She doesn’t have to wear hot pants, and she doesn’t have to make crazy-expensive, sexy videos. She just has to be fantastic.’”

But even if Adele’s success has prowling music execs humming her catchy chorus in a different context — “Nevermind, I’ll find someone like you” — most industry observers believe that record companies searching for an Adele double should be learning a different lesson in the wake of her astonishing ascension.

Of course, Adele’s sophomore record didn’t emerge entirely from the ether. Her 2008 debut, 19, positioned Adele amid a cluster of sassy, hype-heaped British soul throwbacks who breezed onto the scene in the wake of Amy Winehouse’s marquee success. Still, Adele wasn’t a mere copycat and her debut marked the arrival of a serious talent, one gifted with a voluptuous voice, promising songwriting skills and the ability to fuse blues, jazz, folk, soul and pop for a mix that was at once skeletal and supple, gritty and glamorous.

So, Adele was one to watch, sure but certainly didn’t seem a pop powerhouse in waiting. Even last November, when she released the first single from 21 — the thumping “Rolling in the Deep,” a swaggering soul number streaked with gospel and disco — it entered the charts meekly, landing at No. 68 in the U.S. in the week leading up to Christmas.

But like everything Adele did this past year, the song had staying power. Once it got, ahem, rolling, the powerful single eventually hit No. 1 in May. By then, 21 had taken hold. The next single, the anguished torch tune “Someone Like You,” was an immediate smash and 21 took up its residency at the top of the charts.

Meanwhile, many industry insiders — despite loving the album — were left slightly puzzled. The record had been released on British-owned independent XL Recordings. Adele didn’t have a mammoth marketing budget, didn’t have any splashy collaborations and didn’t need to trot across television screens with no clothes on to persuade customers to buy her album. She even struggled to gain radio play at first, because the genre-hopping nature of her album made it an uneasy fit in the archaic, narrowly focused world of radio.

Needless to say, she surprised people.

“No one was expecting this,” Greenblatt said.

Added Alan Cross, host of the syndicated radio program The Secret History of Rock: “The interesting thing about the Adele record is that she’s not a raving beauty — she’s a pretty woman but I mean, she’s not like a kewpie-doll pinup, there have been no flashy videos, there’s been no hype, and no tabloid stuff to propel things along, she hasn’t done anything outrageous.”

“This has all been an organic thing. . . . So there has to be something genuinely powerful about this record from a music point of view. It’s certainly not the image and the hype . . . (because) all she’s really doing is getting in front of an audience and singing.”