You won't find one of the biggest-selling artists of the past week on the Billboard Hot 100, because chart rules make him and his band ineligible. But one week after Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers brought their unassuming live act to the Super Bowl halftime show, they're all over the lists that count everything.

As we've explained before, Billboard segregates albums and singles that are more than a couple of years old from its flagship charts. But even if songs like "American Girl" aren't allowed to appear on the Hot 100, Petty had a very big week.

Over on the digital sales chart—where old tracks are allowed to appear alongside currents—the highest Petty charter is "Free Fallin'," which ends the week at No. 9. But if you combine its 63,000 downloads with the sales for "I Won't Back Down" (No. 34, 28,000), "American Girl" (No. 45, 25,000), "Runnin' Down a Dream" (No. 80, 18,000) and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" (No. 116, 11,000), Petty and band are the sixth-biggest buck-a-song seller of the week.

(Interestingly, all of the above songs are credited on the Digital Tracks chart and on iTunes to "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers," even though "Fallin'," "Won't" and "Runnin'" are technically from the 1989 non-Heartbreakers blockbuster Full Moon Fever. It's further evidence that Petty's so-called "solo" work has been completely subsumed into the band's cumulative career.)

We don't normally talk about album charts here, but Petty's accomplishments there are even more eye-popping. Unsurprisingly, TP&HB's Greatest Hits tops the Top Pop Catalog chart (a list that tracks the sales of records of Legend and Dark Side vintage). Most weeks, the No. 1 album on this chart, if it were allowed to appear on the main Billboard 200 chart, would appear somewhere in the lower half of the top 100—say, around No. 75 or so. But Petty's Greatest Hits sold about 32,000 copies, which would place it all the way up at No. 12 on the big chart.

For comparison's sake, last year's Super Bowl performer, the almighty Prince, enjoyed a similarly fat week of sales right after the game, but they were spread across several albums, and his post-Bowl chart accomplishments were more modest. In mid-February 2007, The Very Best of Prince made No. 2 on the Catalog chart and would have placed at No. 85 on the Billboard 200, had it been allowed there; the soundtrack to Purple Rain made No. 13 on Catalog and would have ranked at No. 143 on the big chart.

It seems that for Petty & co., the smart move was releasing only one greatest-hits album 15 years ago, making it comprehensive, and then, at the big game, only playing hits from it. If, instead of, say, "Mary Jane's Last Dance," Petty had played the post-Greatest Hits hit "You Don't Know How It Feels," his accomplishments would look a little more scattershot this week.

Here's a quick rundown of the rest of this week's charts:

• I said Petty & co. ranked sixth among all the digital sellers this week; in case you're curious, the top five—adding up all of their big-selling songs—are as follows: Chris Brown (four tracks, including his Jordin Sparks duet; 185,000 downloads sold), Rihanna (four tracks; 175,000 sold), Flo Rida (one track; 167,000 sold), Yael Naïm (one track; 163,000 sold) and Miley Cyrus (six tracks; 152,000 sold). If Sean Kingston were fully credited on sales of Natasha Bedingfield's "Love Like This," his four tracks would squeak him past Petty as the sixth-biggest seller; for some reason, Digital Tracks credits that song just to her.

• You may notice two people who are selling like gangbusters with only one song each: Flo Rida and Yael Naïm. The former spends his eighth tiresome week on top of the Hot 100 with the T-Pain-backed "Low"—although, for the first time in those eight weeks, "Low" doesn't earn a bullet, which means it might finally be starting to fade (fingers crossed).

• As for Macintosh-fueled chart debutante Naïm, her "New Soul" both retains its bullet and moves up two places to No. 7 on the Hot 100. That means she continues to outshine fellow Apple pitchwoman Feist, whose "1234" plummeted out of the Top 10 after a single week last fall. Actually, Naïm's performance is even better than that: Billboard points out that "New Soul" is the first song to debut within the Top 10 of the Hot 100 and then move up in its second week since "Get Over Yourself," a 2001 smash by Eden's Crush. Who the heck were they, you ask? Eden's was a prefab girl group assembled on the pre-American Idol TV show Popstars, with vocals by a then-unknown Nicole Scherzinger.

• Some big Hot 100 movers outside the sleepy Top 10: Miley Cyrus is at the doorstep of the Top 10 with her first bona fide adult-radio hit, "See You Again" (No. 12, up from No. 17). And Lupe Fiasco is at the doorstep of the Top 20 with his first major chart hit, "Superstar," featuring Matthew Santos (No. 21, up from No. 25). Finally, the biggest mover on the whole chart is the 25-place jump to No. 52 by "Sexy Can I," the latest from Brandy Norwood brother and callipygian-model-sexer Ray-J.

• For followers of the rock charts, Seether still lords over Modern Rock; but on the Mainstream Rock chart, the song finally falls from the No. 1 spot after 14 weeks on top. That's the good news. The bad: they're evicted by Puddle of Mudd's "Psycho."

• Since we added the Hot Country chart to our roundup a couple of weeks ago, I've been paying closer attention to some of that format's biggest hits. You will forgive this tiresome blue-stater his ignorance, but the title that naturally caught my eye is Rodney Atkins's provocatively titled "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)," the fastest riser in the Top 10 right now. You owe it to yourself to check out the lyrics. And rather than be condescending in that way country fans hate in us city-slickers, I will say that I'm truly, genuinely impressed at country songwriters' seemingly endless new angles on the same down-home themes: in this case, a guy being warned by a father to be a gentleman with his daughter.

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:

Hot 100
1. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 1, 16 weeks)
2. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
3. Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music" (LW No. 3, 12 weeks)
4. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 5, 23 weeks)
5. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 4, 28 weeks)
6. Sara Bareilles, "Love Song" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
7. Yael Naïm, "New Soul" (LW No. 9, 2 weeks)
8. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 8, 11 weeks)
9. Sean Kingston, "Take You There" (LW No. 10, 15 weeks)
10. Buckcherry, "Sorry" (LW No. 11, 10 weeks)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Keyshia Cole, "I Remember" (LW No. 2, 15 weeks)
2. Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again" (LW No. 1, 16 weeks)
3. J. Holiday, "Suffocate" (LW No. 4, 19 weeks)
4. Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine" (LW No. 3, 20 weeks)
5. Snoop Dogg, "Sensual Seduction" (LW No. 6, 14 weeks)
6. Mario, "Cryin' Out for Me" (LW No. 8, 24 weeks)
7. Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie, "Independent" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
8. Chris Brown, "With You" (LW No. 10, 11 weeks)
9. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, "Low" (LW No. 9, 21 weeks)
10. The-Dream, "Falsetto" (LW No. 12, 10 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Brad Paisley, "Letter to Me" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
2. Rascal Flatts, "Winner at a Losing Game" (LW No. 2, 18 weeks)
3. Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)" (LW No. 4, 21 weeks)
4. Gary Allan, "Watching Airplanes" (LW No. 3, 30 weeks)
5. Billy Ray Cyrus with Miley Cyrus, "Ready, Set, Don't Go" (LW No. 6, 29 weeks)
6. Kenny Chesney with George Strait, "Shiftwork" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
7. Alan Jackson, "Small Town Southern Man" (LW No. 7, 14 weeks)
8. Carrie Underwood, "All-American Girl" (LW No. 8, 11 weeks)
9. Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella" (LW No. 9, 25 weeks)
10. Craig Morgan, "International Harvester" (LW No. 10, 22 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. Seether, "Fake It" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
2. Foo Fighters, "Long Road to Ruin" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
3. Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day" (LW No. 3, 19 weeks)
4. Paramore, "crushcrushcrush" (LW No. 4, 13 weeks)
5. Foo Fighters, "The Pretender" (LW No. 5, 28 weeks)
6. Rise Against, "The Good Left Undone" (LW No. 8, 33 weeks)
7. Avenged Sevenfold, "Almost Easy" (LW No. 6, 19 weeks)
8. Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers" (LW No. 9, 16 weeks)
9. Chevelle, "I Get It" (LW No. 10, 30 weeks)
10. The Bravery, "Believe" (LW No. 12, 19 weeks)

[Photo: Getty]

Above, the song that Grannis wrote to woo the Internet-chained nerdboys who populate the completely annoying user-generated news site Digg; in the attached text, she asks people to vote for her in the contest. Well, the campaign worked in that Grannis "won" a record deal with Interscope; whether her victory was through lack of interest in the campaign (the MySpace version of her video only had about 50,000 views—not exactly Super Bowl, or even Puppy Bowl, levels) or the Power Of Digg (cough, cough) or what. Personally, I hope that her win was actually due to some Digg script kiddie writing a program that firebombed Doritos' servers with nacho cheese-flavored votes. Because the "user-generated content" world really needs its own Jesse Camp.

See the "Digg Girl" Kina Grannis Gets Song During Super Bowl [Digg]
Earlier: The Top Five Reasons Digg Is Completely Useless For Finding Anything Related To Music

Universal Music: MIA on iLike [Silicon Alley Insider]

Rcrd Lbl has signed contracts giving it the right to distribute a handful of songs from 40 to 50 bands, including some, but not all, of Downtown Records' artists. For instance, there are no plans for Downtown's marquee act, Gnarls Barkley (the duo behind last year's alternative hip-hop hit "Crazy"), to contribute music to Rcrd Lbl. On the other hand, the hot indie rock band Cold War Kids and high-profile rapper Mos Def, both signed to Downtown, will have music on the site.

Rcrd Lbl's artist contracts are unusual — chiefly in that they make the company the exclusive distributor of a specific number of songs, not for an act's entire musical output, as is the case in traditional record deals. "It's a blog," says Mr. Deutsch. "We're not necessarily trying to tie you up for your fifth album."

Big-name advertisers have generally shied away from even the most influential music blogs, since most of the music they include is posted without permission. Thanks to their involvement with Rcrd Lbl, the company says it is launching in the black.

Artists with songs on Rcrd Lbl won't get a cut of advertising associated with their music; they'll get advances Mr. Deutsch characterized as modest for each song they give the label. These advances range from $500 a song for the least established artists, according to people who work in the music industry, and escalate for bigger names to around $5,000. Rcrd Lbl will divide with its artists any money that it makes from licensing their music to television shows, movies or TV commercials.

RCRD LBL is pitching itself as "music we like," but obviously that term is a bit of sleight-of-hand; it's more like "music we like from artists and labels who are willing to work with us." (Although I do have to tip my hat at them coming out of the gate with a totally utterly blogger-approved collaboration between Justice and Spank Rock and Mos Def. Way to get that elbo.ws love!) It's like the old promo-track trick used by promo companies all over the Internet, but with money behind it and the dreaded term "exclusive MP3" being thrown around more than usual.

In a way, this take on monetized music blogging reminds me of the Radiohead experiment, in that both Rojas and Radiohead are already pre-existing brands who have some loyalty; Rojas' gadget-blogging background will probably earn him some extra love/eyeballs from the "free music at all costs" Digg crowd. But as Glenn at Coolfer noted in his ruminations on In Rainbows yesterday, trying to get people to change their music-acquisition habits is a trick. Sure, members of the MP3-blog-reading crowd will add RCRD LBL to their RSS feeds. But will enough regular-Joe music fans be willing to change their music-ferreting habits—and take risks on new artists—to sustain the advances paid out to bands? Or will people just wait for the MP3s offered by the site to show up on their favorite torrent tracker?

RCRD LBL [Official site]
Music Test: Can a Firm Profit From Free Tunes? [WSJ]

The page was for the San Francisco band Dubious Ranger; if you're logged in, you have the chance to become a "fan" of an artist via a very hidden click on the right side of the page. Becoming a fan means you'll get artist updates in your Facebook news feed, although I'm guessing the probability of getting to play Scrabble with said artists if they're not busy with touring and stuff is low.

As far as the page itself, it combines the discography listings of sites like allmusic.com with standard social-networking site music offerings—concert listings, audio/video, photos, a message board—on Facebook's clean, animated-background-free pages. (There's also contact information for press and booking agents, although I wonder if larger acts will want to allow that much access to their nuts and bolts.) But that's only if you're logged in; the logged-out version, which will be seen by many more people as they click links e-mailed to them, is missing the discography, tour info, and audio/video widgets. That doesn't sound very user-friendly to me, but then again, neither does Tila Tequila's "music," and look where she is now. Screenshot of the plain-Jane version is below.

Dubious Ranger [Facebook]

The raids, in Amsterdam and Middlesbrough, followed a two-year investigation into a members-only Web site, www.OiNK.cd, which allowed users to upload and download albums before their release.

An estimated 180,000 members of the site paid "donations" via debit or credit cards, ensuring that they could continue to access the site and its catalogue of music and other media.

The site provided access to more than 60 albums before their release this year, according to industry experts.

Wow, 180,000 members on lists probably now in the hands of the authorities during the international music industry's most litigious season in recent memory. Whoops! (Actually many of the news stories on OiNK's shutdown are getting the facts wrong—users didn't have to pay dues to remain an OiNK user; they just had to upload a shit-ton of music, so as to keep their upload-to-download ratio high enough.) Here's hoping that whatever user logs the cops have don't include any of the entitled boys and girls on this Digg thread:

This has to be a fucking joke.
I need my OiNK.

There, there...we all survived Audiogalaxy leaving us, and we'll all survive this. Promise.

Raids Target Music Piracy Site [Reuters]

• Guns N' Roses: "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain"
• Vanessa Williams: "Save the Best for Last"
• Janet Jackson: "Let's Wait Awhile"
• Gloria Estefan: "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Dark"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
• Goo Goo Dolls: "Iris"
• Journey: "Faithfully"; "Don't Stop Believin'"
• Sarah McLachlan: "Possession"; "Building a Mystery"
• Aerosmith: "Cryin'"
• Linkin Park: "One Step Closer"
• Def Leppard: "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
• Reba McEntire: "One Honest Heart"
• Bryan Adams: "Somebody"
• No Doubt: "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People"
• Sheryl Crow: "Run Baby Run"
• Richard Marx: "Now and Forever"
• Destiny's Child: "Bills, Bills, Bills"
• Green Day: "Basket Case"

Note the inclusion of "Bills, Bills, Bills" on that list. Someone on the majors' legal team has quite the sense of humor!

RIAA Trial Produces Playlist of the Century [Threat Level]

The four-piece of former choristers signed a five album classical music deal with Universal last month.

Stephen Bowman, 25, from Bath, Jules Knight, 25, from Sussex, Dominic Tighe, 24 from Devon, and Oliver Baines, 24, from Wiltshire met through friends on Facebook three months ago when they discovered they shared a love of classical music.

The quartet of music and drama graduates then tracked down Daniel Glatman, former boss of the boy band Blue, through the site.

They sent him a message asking if he would be prepared to become their manager. After auditioning the band he signed them immediately.

Mr Glatman negotiated the Universal deal following a bidding war.

He said : "They have an unbelievable combination of talent, looks and chemistry." ...

Stephen Bowman said the group knew of each other through school, choirs and theatrical productions, but first made contact on Facebook.

"We then all happened to be at a party in London," he said.

"When a guy started playing the piano, it came naturally to us to start to harmonise when he began to play Moon River.

"We sang just one song together but the sound just clicked instantly, it was remarkable."

A heartwarming story. (People still sing "Moon River" at parties? Wild.) Whether it's actually true or not is still up in the air—for example, my searches for a "Dominic Tighe" between the ages of 23 and 26 yielded nothing, which makes me wonder if there's at the very least some Trixter-like age-shaving going on—but I already can feel myself dreading the torrents of band spam I'm going to be getting from hopeful Mancini songbook crooners in Blake's wake.

Facebook spawns first boy band [Telegraph]

1. Is EMI crazy for doing this?
No—for once, they're actually ahead of the curve. Positioning DRM-free music as a premium product—with better encoding rates and higher per-track prices—has its risks, but they'll likely pay off. After all, this move is one of the few times that a major label has actually acted as if it trusts consumers, and teaming up with the market leader in digital-music distribution is a signal that EMI wants to forge forward in terms of musical distribution. Sure, DRM-free files will make it slightly easier for a user to e-mail a copy of "Smile" to her friend who just went through a breakup, but we don't see entire chunks of people running off to trade their recently purchased files. And those listeners who want to swap entire discographies through private BitTorrent networks will probably continue to do so, whether for reasons of frugality or out of desire for even higher-quality formats like FLAC.

2. Why didn't rates for albums change?
Apple has been getting a lot of flak for offering per-track downloads and taking a bite out of the album market. The EMI deal makes high-quality DRM-free albums standard on iTunes, and not changing a premium price for a premium offering is yet another way for the iTunes Store to encourage people to buy albums instead of cherry-picking songs, thus showing the major labels that they're in at least one fight together. (See also the "Complete My Album" incentive offered to single-track buyers last week.)

3. What does this mean for consumers? Do they even care about what label an artist is on, or about DRM?
People who want to pay for music (yes, there are still a few out there) will have even more incentive to buy EMI's albums digitally, and consumers who were, in the past, stymied by attempts to move their iTunes-purchased music around—whether to different computers or to portable players that aren't necessarily the iPod—will have a slightly easier time doing so now. (Even the Zune will be able to play the unprotected AACs offered by iTunes.) And again, the idea of a major label viewing a consumer as a trusted entity, as opposed to a potential target for lawsuits, should pay off in PR points, at the very least.

4. Are other labels going to follow suit?
It makes sense that they would, although we'd expect indies to migrate to the DRM-free world more quickly than the majors. Many of them already distribute their music in unprotected format through services like eMusic and the forthcoming Other Music digital store. Hypebot today also mentioned rumblings from Universal Music Group about offering certain parts of its back catalog—including its classical offerings—without digital-rights protection. But even though Jobs has said that he expects half of iTunes' catalog to be available without DRM by year's end, we don't see all four major labels moving to DRM-free downloads for at least another two years, if not longer.

5. What about other stores?
So far, the UK store 7Digital has announced that it will offer restriction-free downloads at an even higher quality—although it's clearly appealing to the demographic of Damon Albarn fans, as its entire DRM-free catalog at this point consists of The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. (UPDATE: A reader e-mailed us to let us know that 7Digital is actually run by EMI—which makes sense, given that Albarn's outfit played the launch press conference announcing the DRM-lift.)

6. So when will I be able to buy those Beatles MP3s?
Nicoli said today that Apple and EMI were "working on" getting the Beatles catalog—which will allegedly be remastered—to the iTunes Store's shelves. If the Beatles show up on iTunes first, you'll actually have to buy Beatles AACs. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding, and it's the format that iTunes uses for its downloads; audiophiles aren't completely sold on the quality of those files, though, so if you have extra-sensitive ears, you might want to wait until the remasters come to CD.

Earlier: EMI Goes DRM-Free, Says To Online Retail, "C'mon, Jump In"

The London-based EMI is believed to have held talks with a wide range of online retailers that compete with Apple's iTunes. Those competing retailers include RealNetworks Inc., eMusic.com, MusicNet Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. People familiar with the matter cautioned that EMI could still abandon the proposed strategy before implementing it. A decision about whether to keep pursuing the idea could come as soon as today...

According to people familiar with the matter, EMI initially began exploring the issue in earnest in late December, when it circulated proposals to online music retailers. Part of its proposal was a request for a one-time, multimillion-dollar "risk-insurance" payment that would not be tallied against future sales. Three people familiar with the talks said online retailers generally balked at the request.

EMI then returned with a new proposal in late January, around the time of a music conference in Cannes, France. EMI asked the online retailers to tell it what size advance payments they would offer in exchange for the right to sell its music as MP3s. Those proposals were to be submitted yesterday, said one person familiar with the matter. This person understood that EMI would decide whether to forge ahead with the MP3 strategy based on the offers' aggregate worth.

We're pretty sure no one at EMI is reading this, but if so, for God's sake, do it! There's no time left for "risk-insurance" dilly-dallying or advance-payment fussing about; the music industry as we know it is has about three or four more years left before it becomes a small-scale equivalent of the drug trade, and this is your chance to be its Newton Blade: You can control the product, set up the street rules, and still feel justified if you need to bust some heads now and then. Plus, you can buy a $25,000 salt-water tank, and fill it with baby hammerheads.

EMI Mulls Lifting Online-Music Restrictions [WSJ]

Lou looked miserable. He ended a song, looked out and, in that distinctive Lou Reed voice, said to the crowd: "Maybe you can talk louder."

He continued: "I can turn the sound up and hurt you."

Some people cheered.

Lou gave the order to the sound guy: "Turn it up."

He strummed a blaring chord, then spoke some more, turning up the irony.

"This is the moment I've waited for my whole life. When I was on St. Marks Place I thought, someday there'll be a cyberspace and I'll be playing for AOL." (There was a big AOL banner behind the band.)

Hey, it could have been worse, Lou. You could have been opening for the Bank of America guy.

UPDATE: Valleywag has video of Reed's performance, as well as estimates of his take-home.

Lou Reed Meets Web 2.0 [The Key]
Hello bubble: Lou Reed plays "What's Good" at Web 2.0 dinner (with video) [Valleywag]

A look at "Smack That" illustrates the complexities. Securing the online rights to the song by rappers Akon and Eminem — No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — would involve permission from Akon's record label, Universal Motown. Most of the time, a label alone can grant a license for the use of a music video, but when it comes to videos involving YouTube users lip-syncing to the song, or any other use of it as background music, it also would take permission of publishers representing the four people listed as the song's writers: Akon (real name: Aliaune Thiam), Eminem (Marshall Mathers) and two colleagues of Eminem's from the Detroit rap scene, Swift (Luis Edgardo Resto) and Mike Strange.

Music publishing is a highly fragmented business, in which hundreds of tiny players have various kinds of relationships with larger publishers, who administer catalogs and collect royalties for them. Mr. Mathers's publishing is handled by Eight Mile Style LLC, run by a longtime business associate named Jeffrey Bass. Mr. Thiam's publishing is handled by a company called Byefall Productions Inc., and administered by Famous Music Publishing Cos., a division of Viacom. Mr. Resto's publishing is handled by an outfit called Swifty McVay Publishing, and administered by EMI Group PLC's EMI Music Publishing. Mr. Strange's publishing is controlled by an operation called Slick Jesus. Under common industry practice, each publisher needs to grant permission for "Smack That" to appear alongside any imagery other than the official music video.

Tee-hee! Music-publishing company names are so LOL! Anyway, we highly recommend reading the story, which lays out the complexities of reigning in the once-lawless YouTube, and of digital-age music headaches in general. We also recommend raiding the site as much as you can in the next few weeks, because the good times can't last much longer.

YouTube Finds Signing Rights Deals Complex, Frustrating [WSJ]
Earlier: Idolator's coverage of YouTube