Three stories have caught my attention in the past two days off of Billboard.com:

– As mentioned here in October, the Indigo Girls are definitely going the indie route, signing with Vanguard to distribute “Poseidon and the Bitter Bug” on their IG Recordings label. Arriving March 24th, the Mitchell Froom-produced CD will be a double, with one disc the fully formed versions of the songs, and the other disc all acoustic versions of the songs. No word on touring plans, but Amy is currently out touring for her “Didn’t It Feel Kinder” solo set. She’ll be here playing the Fox Theater in Boulder on February 7th.

– A recent addition to the Year End categories has been Top Digital Artist, and this year’s top artist is Flo Rida. Yeah…no kidding. He grabbed the #1 Digital Song and #2 Hot Ringmaster honors with “Low”, which has sold 4.4 million downloads. That’s some serious (legal) downloads! He also hit #1 on the year-end Hot 100, and #3 on the Best New Artists chart, only getting squeezed out by Leona Lewis and Jordin Sparks, who both had the full year to rack up points. [Side note: among the folks he’s working with on his follow-up is none other than Dr. Luke. For some reason, Dr. Luke = Poster Girl in my mind…]

– 2008’s #1 artist Chris Brown has a lot of irons in the fire for 2009, including some potential duets with Rihanna, TWO label start-ups for Interscope and Jive, writing for a whole host of pop artists, and a collaboration with Tim McGraw on a song called “Human”.

“It’s incredible”, he says. “I wanted to do something more along the country line. That’s a bigger and different audience for me.”

Tim McGraw continues to be one of my favorite country artists, primarily because he’s not afraid to step outside the box and take some chances in his career (see his cover of Ryan Adams or his duet with Nelly). Having said that, I have no idea what this collaboration might sound like, but I’m definitely keeping an open mind.