WHO'S HOT, WHO'S GETTING WARMER

The big story as the biz girds for the money part of the year continues to be the improbably rapid rise of Capitol Music Group, a project Steve Barnett undertook just over 19 months ago. If you’d predicted at the time that CMG would hold a solid lead in frontline and the #2 position in TEA at this point, we would have called you delusional. So much for the three-year plan; Barnett and his team have practically cut that in half. Far less surprising is the ongoing potency of Monte Lipman’s Republic, hit-laden as always, with Taylor Swift on the horizon. Ken Bunt’s Disney appears to have a lock on the year’s top-selling album with Frozen, while Rob Stringer’s always-formidable Columbia has two of the Top 5 albums as well as the two top-selling singles. And there’s action aplenty below the big guns; see I.B. Bad’s latest column.