Singer Bob Dylan made honorary member of U.S. arts academy NEW YORK (Reuters) - Singer Bob Dylan was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, joining the ranks of leading writers, composers and artists in the prestigious 115-year-old group. Henry Cobb, the president of the academy, said honorary members are people of great distinction in the creative arts. ...

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Boston Symphony Orchestra has hired Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons to succeed James Levine, an iconic American conductor known for his wild hair and dramatic manner, who left in 2011 due to health problems, it said on Thursday. Nelsons will be the leading U.S. symphony's youngest conductor in more than a century when he begins the 2013-14 season as "music director designate." He will assume the full title of music director for the 2014-15 season. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Singer Bob Dylan was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, joining the ranks of leading writers, composers and artists in the prestigious 115-year-old group. Henry Cobb, the president of the academy, said honorary members are people of great distinction in the creative arts. ...

BOSTON (AP) — Andris (AHN'-driss) Nelsons has been named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

NEW YORK (AP) — The CW network is bringing a popular radio music series to television and is going heavy on escapist fare in its new programming for next season.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — One by one the teenage singers practice the opening lines to "Boogie Wonderland," a disco-funk hit from an era before they were born, as dancers work on hip-swinging moves that require perfect choreography.

By Patricia Reaney (Reuters) - Soul singer Candice Glover vied with country crooner Kree Harrison on Wednesday in an all-female finale of "American Idol" to become the first woman to win the TV singing competition since 2007. In a finale that judge Randy Jackson described as "so close," Glover, the 23-year-old former travel agent from St. Helena, South Carolina, brought the judges and the audience to their feet after belting out Tom Jones' "I Who Have Nothing." "You are such a powerhouse singer," judge Keith Urban said. "The song is like a planet exploding. ...

By Tim Kenneally LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Past (and future) "Voice" coach Cee Lo Green will be on hand to dole out a trophy at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, along with a slew of other presenters that includes Celine Dion, Kelly Rowland, Hayden Panettiere, Kid Rock, Chloe Grace Moretz and Miley Cyrus. The presenters will also include Shania Twain, Ke$ha, Carly Rae Jepsen, Alyssa Milano, Jenny McCarthy, Emmy Rossum, Stana Katic, Gabriel Mann, Jennifer Nettles, Psy, Sky Blu, Jennifer Morrison, Florida Georgia Line, Wiz Khalifa and Alanis Morissette. ...

By Alexei Oreskovic and Edwin Chan SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc launched a music service on Wednesday that allows users to listen to unlimited songs for $9.99 a month, challenging smaller companies like Pandora and Spotify in the market for streaming music. With its new service, announced at its annual developers' conference in San Francisco, Google has adopted the streaming music business model ahead of rival Apple Inc, which pioneered online music purchases with iTunes. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. unveiled a streaming music service called All Access that blends songs users have already uploaded to their online libraries with millions of other tracks. Google made it available in the U.S. Wednesday for $8 a month to early birds who sign up for service before June 30.

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Country group Lady Antebellum scored its third No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, staving off competition from Jay-Z's soundtrack for "The Great Gatsby" film. "Golden," the fourth studio album from the Nashville trio, sold more than 167,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan, securing the top position on the weekly Billboard chart, which measures album sales across both digital and physical formats. ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rapper Dr. Dre and music mogul Jimmy Iovine have donated $70 million to establish an entrepreneurial undergraduate program at the University of Southern California, the Los Angeles school said on Wednesday. The gift will create a new degree pulling faculty members from the university's business, fine arts, music and engineering departments. The Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation will begin in the fall of 2014 and enroll a first class of 25 students, USC said. Dr. ...

By Lucas Shaw NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Michael Jackson landed Sam Tsui on Oprah, but now Tsui must rely on someone else's music - his own. A 24-year-old Pennsylvania native, Tsui blossomed into one of the most popular cover artists on YouTube while at Yale, covering everyone from Jackson to Britney Spears to Adele. His channel amassed more than 500,000 subscribers with the help of childhood friend and producer Kurt Schneider, who helped deliver Tsui's covers and mash-ups to millions of fans. ...

By Michael Roddy DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) - A concert in a car factory using parts of a luxury sedan as percussion instruments is one thing, but a Volkswagen suspended above the New York Philharmonic creates another level of musical drama entirely. The NYPO under its first native New York music director, Alan Gilbert, showed during two concerts this week at the Dresden Music Festival in central Germany why the 46-year-old conductor has a reputation for brushing off the cobwebs at one of America's most distinguished orchestras. ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop singer Christina Aguilera is in discussions to return as a judge on NBC television singing competition "The Voice" next season, sources with knowledge of the talks said on Tuesday. Aguilera, 32, went on hiatus from the program this season to promote her latest album, "Lotus," with a concert tour. The singer had been a judge on the first three seasons of the program, which debuted in 2011. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has signed licensing deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment to launch a subscription music service that would compete with fast-growing start-up Spotify, according to a report on Tuesday in technology blog The Verge. Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, could unveil the streaming music service at its annual developer conference, which kicks off on Wednesday, according to the report, which cited anonymous sources. ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — In a high-flying, perfectly pitched first, an astronaut on the International Space Station is bowing out of orbit with a musical video: his own custom version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."

By Brent Lang LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The Grammy Awards will return to the Staples Center in Los Angeles next January, the Recording Academy and CBS announced Monday. The annual music honors will be broadcast on Sunday, January 26, 2014, between 8:00 to 11:30 PM. It will air live on CBS for East Coast viewers and will be tape delayed on the West Coast. The network and academy also announced broadcast dates for the 2015 edition. That iteration of "Music's Biggest Night" will air on Sunday, February 8, 2015. Ratings for the show fell from 39 million viewers to 28 million this year. ...

(Reuters) - Soul singer Aretha Franklin has pulled out of two upcoming performances because of health issues, the two concert venues said on Monday. Franklin, 71, canceled a May 20 concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a May 26 solo performance at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. "It was canceled for medical reasons," Foxwoods spokeswoman Dale Wolbrink said, declining to say what health issues caused the "Queen of Soul" to pull out of the May 26 show. ...

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A music video shot aboard the International Space Station went viral on Monday, turning an astronaut into an overnight music sensation with his zero-gravity version of David Bowie's hit "Space Oddity." As the first Canadian to command the space station, a $100 million project of 15 nations, Chris Hadfield had already earned himself a place in the history books. ...