Ellen Degeneres, pop mogul? Launches new label named after Come album, signs 12-year-old Grayson Chance

Well, no, we don't actually know whether ELLEN DEGENERES consciously named her new record label after Come's 1992 breakthrough Eleven: Eleven, but it would be pretty awesome if it turned out to be a tip of the hat from one gay icon to another.

Who'd have thunk that a) Ellen would not suck at being an American Idol judge, and that b) she would out-Simon-Cowell Simon Cowell by independently signing a young star who seems destined to sell more records than any of the Idol contestants?

It's still unclear whether the incredibly well-connected tween Grayson Chance -- who is reportedly under the care of two managers whose other clients include Madonna and Lady Gaga -- is now signed to an indie or a major. Previous reports had him signed to Interscope. We're gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that Ellen isn't going to build her own distribution platform from scratch -- more likely, it's a vanity imprint for a major. (As for which major, we direct your attention to the fact that the Ellen show is distributed by Warner Bros)

If that's the case, then we have to hand it to the music industry -- they may be going down in flames, but they're still able to pull the occasional rabbit from the hat. Between Bieber and Chance, a new model begins to emerge: instruct your A&R staff to stare at YouTube all day, wait for an adorable middle-schooler to upload a karaoke video, then package him with a major television show to push the video viral. (If you haven't already, see Ad Age's analysis of television's impact on Greyson's rise.) Can't find a television host who's interested? No problem: go Dick Clark style and cut her in on the action. Of course, conspiracy theorists will add a wrinkle: find the kid yourself and plant the YouTube video. But honestly, that seems to us to be giving far too much credit to an industry that has acted with collossal stupidity for the better part of a decade.