With the Grammy Awards nearing, Clive Davis cites Lady Gaga and Eminem as examples of what is right with the music industry.

Year in and year out come Grammy time, perhaps the hottest ticket in town is the one granting admission to the bash hosted by veteran music mogul Clive Davis. It was the occasion he used to introduce a promising young singer and songwriter named Alicia Keys a little more than a decade ago and where he’s brought together an A-list of performers and party guests for more than three decades.

Davis, 78, is getting a special salute night from the Grammy Museum downtown for his patronage of the fledgling facility — his name now adorns the 200-seat theater where the museum hosts a regular series of performances and question-and-answer sessions with key players in the music business. On Wednesday, he’ll be the first honoree of the museum’s “Icons of the Music Industry” series. (“It's a real thrill having the theater at the Grammy Museum named for me,” Davis said. “Day after day I see the incredible musical events that take place there, and I know it's bringing great joy to many people.”)

Davis’ track record for identifying and nurturing new talent stretches from the 1960s and ‘70s, when he signed artists as diverse as Janis Joplin, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Barry Manilow, Patti Smith and Aerosmith. In the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s he scored megaplatinum successes with Whitney Houston and Keys, and his latest discovery, singer and songwriter BC Jean, the co-writer of Beyoncé’s megahit “If I Were a Boy,” is about to release her debut album.

The Grammy Awards give the industry a chance to celebrate its successes, so with that in mind, what do you think is going right in the much beleaguered business today?

There certainly is freshness: There is, and has been, the emergence of Lady Gaga; when you look and you see the great album Eminem did, there certainly have been some very strong records that have come out in the past year.

What are the issues that concern you the most?

We’ve got to make sure that music is not homogenized, that music does not exist only to fit into a radio format — which is just encouraging rhythm and tempo and discouraging artistry.... We’ve got to be careful that we not just concentrate on having hit records but that we launch the careers of stars. That’s what the business has always been for me: equal parts discovery of new artists like Whitney or Alicia, but also showing, in effect, how long a career can last. If you begin with a young Aretha or Luther [Vandross] or Rod [Stewart], if they are only allowed to make records that fit into a dance tempo radio format, you can’t do that. I would welcome more diversity. No one’s trying to stem the tide of newness and freshness, but we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the opportunity to build new artists that have careers that will last 10, 20, 30 or 40 years.