The expansion of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, will coincide with construction of a convention center hotel that connects the two structures with a pedestrian walkway, The Tennessean reports.

City and development officials said the integrated design of the museum and the new Omni Nashville Hotel will include four Nashville-themed restaurants, concert space and décor that includes country music artifacts. The museum will extend four stories alongside the 21-story hotel.

According to the newspaper, construction begins in June on the $250 million project, which also coincides with the building of Music City Center, an adjacent convention center expected to open in January 2013. As the convention center's headquarters hotel, the Omni and expanded museum will complete the Music City Convention District.

The current museum will be expanded by 200,000 square feet, with restaurants and retailers placed on the connector between them. Texas-based Omni Hotels and Resorts will build the exterior of the extension and the museum administration will be responsible for the interior.

"With the connection between the Omni Nashville Hotel and the Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville will have a convention center headquarters hotel that embodies our identity as Music City," said Mayor Karl Dean.
 

The big sellers expected to top the Billboard 200 Albums chart by the end of the week are R&B performer Chris Brown, pop singer Jennifer Hudson and the rock band The Strokes, whose Angles collection is the rock band's first album in five years.

MTV.com reports that Brown's F.A.M.E. is by far the front-runner, which has sold more than 250,000 records and could go as high as 300,000 through the weekend.
 

"It marks the first time Brown has had one of his albums debut at number one. His previous efforts, Chris Brown (2005), Exclusive (2007) and 2009's Graffiti, debuted at numbers two, four and seven, respectively," the website states.

Expected to grab the number two spot on the Billboard chart is Jennifer Hudson's I Remember Me, which is expected to sell about 160,000 records by week's end.

The Strokes, who began playing together when they were students in the 1990s, are in a good position to end up in the third spot on the albums chart. The group, which had its debut album Is This It a decade ago, have sold about 90,000 copies of Angles.
 

On Saturday, Bob Seger will kick off a two-month tour with a show that he hopes will give his audiences a surprise.

"We've got 34 songs so far, and I think at a max we can do 25 in a show, and I keep working them up," he told Billboard.com. "We're just trying to surprise some people who will say, 'Oh, wow, I forgot he did that.'"

The same can be said for Seger's in-the-works album, his first all-new collection since he released Face the Promise five years ago. As he explained on the website, "There isn't a song on it quite like anything I've done before. "I'm really making an effort to break new ground on it…different feels, different speeds, different approaches to the stuff I do."

So far, the new collection is shaping up to include a rendition of Downtown Train, written by Tom Waits, as well a father-daughter song called Hannah, with guest performers Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.

The tour announced on Seger's website starts off in Toledo, Ohio, on Saturday with the only non-U.S. stop planned on April 12 in Toronto, Canada. The tour ends with shows on May 17 and May 19 in the Detroit-area Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan. Earlier this week, Seger's website happily reported, "By popular demand - a second Detroit show added!"
 

Well-known as a lyricist and frontman for the Mountain Goats indie rock trio, John Darnielle is taking on several roles in his creative life.

According to Billboard.com, he recently completed a vido, There Is Power in a Union, in support of Wisconsin's state workers. He and his bandmates - Peter Hughes on bass and drummer Jon Wurster - have a new studio album, All Eternals Deck, coming out March 29 on the Merge label. And there's a new novel in the works following Darnielle's success with his first book of short fiction, Master of Reality.

"I work on [the book] on tour and at home and it grows this way and that. I've thrown out whole subplots. I wonder if, at the end of my life, it's gonna be like, 'Well, he never quite finished his second book, but he made a lot of records," Darnielle told Exclaim.ca.

Counting the new one, the Mountain Goats have produced 18 albums in the past 20 years.
But Darnielle said too much is made over his reputation as one of the U.S. music scenes most prolific songwriters. As he told Billboard, "I am productive, but I think everybody should be as productive as me if they really cherish the ability to do it."

A longstanding Michael Jackson milestone has been surpassed by Justin Bieber, at least with U.S. audiences.

Billboard.com reports that Justin Bieber: Never Say Never has broken the record for most successful concert-themed movie at the U.S. box office, earning $72.2 million through Sunday. The box office take with domestic audiences was $71.1 million for Michael Jackson's This Is It, which came out in 2009.

This Is It, a compilation of interviews and documentary footage of Jackson preparing for a round of sold-out London shows, still holds the worldwide record for box office sales at $189.1 million. To date, Never Say Never has grossed $10.8 million overseas, with its strongest showing in Latin America, the website reports.

Never Say Never was released about six weeks ago, then followed on March 4 by Never Say Never 2.0, an updated version that included new footage and 20 tracks not included in the earlier edition of the movie.

Paramount Pictures, which released the Bieber film under its low budget division, Insurge Pictures, said the reactions of the singer's fans helped mold the movie's 2.0 version.

The Jackson film documented the singer's This Is It tour that was to begin in July 2009, but was canceled due to his death a month earlier.

R&B singer Janelle Monae has made some major career connections since a show-stopping performance on the Grammy Awards, complete with crowd-surfing while she sang Cold War.

First she signed on with pop singer Bruno Mars for his North American tour, Hooligans in Wondaland. They start May 4 at New York's famed Roseland Ballroom and continue through mid-June with a last show in Phoenix, Arizona.

Now, Billboard.com reports that after a few weeks rest, Monae will join Katy Perry on the road for six dates on Perry's California Dreams tour. They'll take the stage starting July 13 in Canadian cities of Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton, followed by two dates in the U.S. in Nashville and St. Louis.

Monae has tweeted on her website about how much she looks forward to the latest addition of show with Perry. "Excited about sharing our music with her fans and cross pollinating worlds," Monae wrote.

In addition, the singer painted an artwork on stage Thursday during a performance at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. She tweeted to her fans that the painting is to be auctioned off and all the proceeds will benefit victims of Japan's catastrophic tsunami.

Wiz Khalifa was the big winner at mtvU's Woodie Awards on Wednesday night, reeling in the Woodie of the Year trophy for his breakout single, Black and Yellow, Billboard.com reported.

The awards show is part of the annual South by Southwest music festival that continues through March 20 in Austin, Texas. Thousands of music fans descend on the city's venues to hear concerts, see films and view the latest electronics and interactive gadgets at SXSW Interactive. For the first time, musical acts were scheduled on Tuesday, overlapping with the interactive portion of the event before it concluded that night, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Although Kanye West wasn't in attendance to pick up his Left Field Woody, the rap star will be performing Saturday at a VEVO event during the music fest.

Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino won the Performing Award for their live show, Matt & Kim. "This one is really for anyone who's come to see our shows," said Johnson.

The hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang picked up the Best Video Woodie for its "Opposites Attract" clip.
The Foo Fighters opened the show with their single Rope, followed by performances by the Sleigh Bells, Two Door Cinema Club and rap stars Lil B and Odd Future.

A host of superstars - including Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Bon Jovi and Kanye West among many others – have had the hand of L.A. Reid helping to guide their careers.

But now the chairman of the Island Def Jam Music Group will have a hand in selecting a new generation of musical stars as one of the judges on an American Idol-style show called The X Factor, reports EntertainmentWeekly.com. He has resigned his post at the label to participate in the new venture, which is produced by Simon Cowell, best known for his previous reign on Idol.

"I have always thrived on growth and the next great challenge, and I look forward with much enthusiasm to what the future holds," Reid wrote in a letter to his staff posted on the website. "I am extremely proud of our beautiful roster and all we have accomplished in my seven years with IDJ."
 

The U.S. version of The X Factor is modeled after its predecessor in the UK, which began in 2004. Reid, Cowell and a judge to-be- named will sit at the judges' table.

According to TheBoomBox.com, Reid's career as a record executive includes co-founding LaFace Records in 1989 with Kenneth "BabyFace" Edmonds and a stint as president of Arista Records before joining Def Jam.

An annual music conference that culminates with the live broadcast of the Latin Music Awards on Telemundo will feature an important appearance this year.

The legendary Latin rock band Maná will be interviewed during the Billboard Latin Music Conference when the event takes place from April 25 to April 28 in Miami Beach, Florida.

Billboard.com reports that the appearance will be the first time all four members of the group - Fher Olvera, Alex Gonzalez, Sergio Vallin and Juan Diego Calleros - have participated in a live panel to discuss their musical process and issues within the music industry.

During their 20-year career, the group has won three Grammy Awards, five Latin Grammy Awards and nine Latin Music Awards among other honors. They have sold 25 million albums worldwide that draw upon pop rock and Latin rock, as well as calypso, reggae and ska. Now considered one of the most influential groups in Latin music, Maná began in Guadalajara, Mexico and its members began writing their own music in Spanish before many other Latin performers.

Maná's first collection in five years, Drama y Luz, will be released on April 12 by Warner Music. Lluvia al Corazon, the first single from the set, was released earlier this week.

The latest members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted on Monday showed humor, emotion and pride in the recognition they were given by their peers in the music industry.

This year's inductees, who included R&B, pop and hard rock legends, are Tom Waits, Alice Cooper, Leon Russell, Neil Diamond, Darlene Love and New Orleans piano maestro Dr. John, the Associated Press reported. In the non-performer category, Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman and Specialty Records founder Art Rupe were also inducted.

The ceremony will be aired on March 20 on Fuse.

Various music legends introduced and inducted the honorees. Paul Simon came on for Diamond, who interrupted an Australian concert tour to fly to New York for the black-tie event at the Waldorf Astoria. Other introductions were offered by Elton John, Bette Midler and John Legend.

Alice Cooper, the stage name of singer Vincent Furnier as well as his 1970s-era band, was given credit by singer Rob Zombie for inventing the modern-day rock show.

The AP reported that Waits, best known for writing songs from blues to ballads, jokingly told the crowd, "They say that I have no hits and that I'm difficult to work with, and they say that like it's a bad thing."