''It's a transitional stage," Selena Gomez says. "I'm figuring out what I have to do."

Gomez has been thrown a curveball. During the first week of June, there was a significant shake-up within the Disney Music Group. Two of the executives who helmed her musical career will be stepping away from her professional life in the months following the release of the most important album of her young career.

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Disney Music Group chairman Bob Cavallo will retire on Jan. 31. Hollywood Records GM Abbey Konowitch will be leaving his post at the end of September. Cavallo pulled all of Disney's music properties under a single umbrella and spent 13 years there following a career in artist management (Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Prince) and film production. Konowitch had been with Hollywood Records for 10 years as GM and is credited with ushering Gomez's success.

The piece of the Disney empire they oversaw is filled with brand names well-known in households with kids -- Miley Cyrus, Ally & AJ, Jesse McCartney, "High School Musical" -- as well as a few acts (Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Plain White T's) less reliant on the Disney TV'n'tunes synergy. Ken Bunt will take over management of Disney Music Group. Hired in 1998 to help lead the company's digital media strategy, he was named executive VP on June 1. It's too early to say what'll happen with the young acts deemed a priority under Konowitch's watch -- alternative rock band Redlight Kings, Disney-groomed rock act Allstar Weekend and all-female punk-pop group Cherry Bomb -- but one thing does appear to be certain: Gomez's third album, "When the Sun Goes Down," has all hands on deck.

"Selena is one of our top priorities," Cavallo wrote in an email. "She made a fantastic album, with great depth and several hit singles. Everything is moving ahead as planned." Those plans include the release of the album, which features such songwriters as Toby Gad, Katy Perry and Antonina Armato, as well as a 29-city North American tour booked by Creative Artists Agency. There's also the promotional run-up for the film "Monte Carlo" with Fox 2000.

One of the last major rollouts for Konowitch, whose office decorations reflect his love of music -- primarily the Beatles -- rather than any of the success he's had at Hollywood Records, MTV or Maverick Records (where he developed Morissette), was to guide Gomez to and through a new stage of her career. She's the latest Disney Channel star attempting to step away from a TV character -- she starred on Emmy Award winner "Wizards of Waverly Place" for four seasons.

"She sees the world as her audience, an audience that goes 12 to 35 or 45," Konowitch said in a May interview, two weeks before he announced he'd be leaving the company. "But she's conscious of where she came from, and of not wanting to abandon them."

In the decade-plus since Disney began aggressively connecting music and TV, its stars from cable and film have stumbled in the transition to stand-alone actor/pop star. Hilary Duff has struggled with Disney's velvet ropes. Cyrus has shed the "Hannah Montana" character but continues to get flack for the public steps she takes toward adulthood. Most recently, she made news ripples about plans to record a song with her brother, Trace. The Jonas Brothers have splintered. The stars of "High School Musical" have yet to find their place as individual artists.

"There have been other times when it was more difficult to use both audiences on top of each other," Konowitch says. "The fortunate thing with Selena is she's 18. She's winding down her Disney Channel show and she has movies in the marketplace. We can't just market to the young audience. It's not fair to her, not fair to her career, not fair to the fans. The opportunities are there. A lot has to do with how our business has matured -- we have to manage both audiences."

This summer, Gomez is attempting a new path for Disney Channel stars: severing her connections with a hit show, making a film for a rival studio and releasing her third album without the benefit of the Disney TV empire to promote it in conjunction with a series or special. Once the fourth and final season of "Waverly Place" wrapped in May, Gomez was promoting her new album, which Disney-owned Hollywood Records will release June 28, and the film "Monte Carlo," which also stars Leighton Meester and Katie Cassidy, that opens July 1.

"Monte Carlo," shot in Monaco, Paris and Budapest, Hungary, is a mistaken-identity comedy in which Gomez's character, on vacation with two friends, is believed to be an heiress. It's Fox's only July release, following Jim Carrey's "Mr. Popper's Penguins" (June 17). Varese Sarabande Records will release Michael Giacchino's score for "Monte Carlo" the same day that Gomez's album drops.

"It's obviously an important phase in my career, and personally," Gomez says. "The good news is I have been juggling acting and singing for two-and-a-half to three years. But I have to start over in some areas. It's interesting to start taking risks, to grow up through my music."

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