Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of The Terrordome, in which yours truly will give you the rundown on the latest music business developments (and a little color commentary).

Paying attention to this stuff is actually part of my job, but if the CIA is letting their guys moonlight, why can’t I?

So here are some hot off-the-tubes headlines with a brief explanation about why you should care (or not).

• Is Streaming the Future of Music?
  I say yes. Then again, I live in a Jetsons-style home with all of my media served digitally through specially-equipped speakers that also allow me to listen to massive catalogs of music, streamed in high-quality, on-demand – all for a nominal fee. (Like 12 bucks a month for basically all the records in the world). The only problems with schemes like this is that the payout to artists is still pretty damn low (I know because my music is on these services and there’s not even a major label taking a cut) and the licensing costs to the services themselves are prohibitive to sustainable business models. The entire concept would benefit tremendously from economics of scale — meaning, if more customers used streaming subscription sites, monthly fees would drop and artist payouts could conceivably increase. I got to live interview Dan Ek from Spotify (an incredibly popular “freemium” streaming service so far only available in Europe) at a major music conference last fall. He says there’s plenty of reason to think streaming is the future. Then again, he’s got a product to sell. All I know is that if Apple gets into this game, all the other companies might as well put up “closed for business” signs.

• Buzzword of the New Decade: Monetize
  Back when I worked at Ye Olde Record Shop, I plenty got tired of hearing the words “where’s your jam section?” Well, now I’m tired of hearing “how can we monetize this?” This article is an inside-baseball account of Midem — an international music biz conference that seems to always include a lot of griping and crystal ball-gazing from industry heavyweights. Apparently, the theme this year was monetization. Some people think this means locking down the internet for the sole benefit of the major content providers and ISPs. Others (like me) believe in the idea that if you made licensing easier and kept the lanes open, we’d see a natural expansion of the legitimate digital music marketplace. None of this helps traditional retailers though. (Sorry, Crandall.)

• Ticketmaster and Live Nation Get Married
  I’m not gonna get into what it means. The link above should help sort out all the Department of Justice hullaboo, though.

• Grandma Endures Wrongful ISP Piracy Suspension
  Here we go again. The latest approach to unlawful filesharing by some in the content industry is to push ISPs (through Government mandates, if necessary) to adopt graduated response, or “three strikes” protocols. This means that if you’re suspected of infringing, your interwebs provider could cut your service after a few warnings (or none at all, in the above case). Currently, several European governments are in various stages of adoption, and there’s some rumbling about a US-led international copyright treaty that would make this a planetary remedy. Of course, there are a zillion questions that come up, from consumer recourse (what if you’re wrongly accused?) to the competitiveness of the broadband marketplace (like, is there even another ISP that you can go to?). Piracy is horrible and wrong, but I’m not sure our legal system is equipped to handle this. Stay tuned.

• Did You Watch the Grammys? Apparently, a Lot of People Did
  A 35 percent spike in viewership is nothing to sneeze at for both the struggling networks and the struggling recording biz. Now we can sit back and watch as the entire industry touts Lady Gaga as the first superstar of the digital era. (Think about it: all the other massive acts snuck in either before or at the start of the Great Disruption.) So expect 360 degree deals to become the major label norm (if they aren’t already) and for the smaller and smaller number of new artists signed to sound like Cher singing over Ace of Base. Look, I’ve got nothing against Gaga — she’s got a cool art school/fashion project going on. Still, when the mainstream biz bets the farm on Taylor Swift’s pitchy live performances and Gaga’s costume changes, I get annoyed. But hey, you can’t argue with ratings. Unless your name is Jay Leno.

I could probably post more, but all of our heads would explode. See you next time inside The Terrordome!

Casey Rae-Hunter is a musician, producer, writer and music/media/tech/policy wonk in Washington, DC. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of his employer. You can harass Casey at his site, The Contrarian.