In this case, it’s Madonna’s new pact with Universal Music Group. The New York Post says she’ll get around $1 million an album for a three-album deal, and music industry folks say the paper has its numbers right.

This is a very reasonable contract. Madonna is long past her music-selling peak, and the music industry is a decade past its peak, too.

Still! Reasonable contracts — especially for superstars — are still very new things for the music business. Not too many years ago, Sony handed Bruce Springsteen a reported $100 million, and that was well into the post-Napster slide. So let’s just walk through what each side gets here:

• Madonna gets the kind of money, upfront, that she would have laughed at in the past. A million bucks is what you used to give a hot “baby band” no one but a few hipsters had heard of. But the world’s biggest music company will buy her billboards, etc., and that’s still worth something. Plus, on the off chance that one of these albums does take off, the low advance means she could actually earn royalties on the sales.
• Universal gets bragging rights and one of the music industry’s few living worldwide icons, for what amounts to walking-around money. And, again, who knows? She might still sell some records, perhaps on the back of her upcoming Super Bowl appearance.
• Universal doesn’t get Madonna’s lucrative back catalog — Warner Music Group still has those songs, which it continues to sell, repackage, and sell some more. And Universal doesn’t get a piece of her lucrative touring business — concert giant Live Nation has that. (Remember when Live Nation was also going to be a big deal in the record business? What happened to that?)

But wait a minute. Why does Madonna need a record deal at all? Couldn’t she just sell her music on her own, like Prince and Radiohead and the Eagles and lots of folks?

Sure. But not everyone wants to be Louis C.K., who has just declared his direct-to-fan experiment a huge success. (To play devil’s advocate: Even though everyone who bought one of his concerts blogged about it (more than once, in some cases), he has still only reached 130,000 people — far less than would have seen him had he done an HBO deal or a Netflix deal. And those guys would almost certainly have paid him more, too. Though if you want to be a contra-contrarian, you can note that he could still do that. (Which I have!)

Some people, it turns out, are still happy to take money up front from Big Media companies and hope they can deliver the Big Reach, which the do-it-yourself Web can’t guarantee.

But instead of moving movies and TV shows to the world’s biggest Web site, they’re trying something different: Google is handing out more than $100 million to dozens of partners to create new “channels.”

The idea is to make “professional” content that advertisers will pay a premium to be near, instead of the grab bag of videos that dominate the site and that often sell at very low prices.

This isn’t news, of course: YouTube reps have been holding meetings and auditions for most of the year, led by former Netflix executive Robert Kyncl. And we’ve known about the deal terms, and many of the partners, for some time.

But now the site is finally talking about them publicly and promising that it will start unveiling some of the new programming next month. Some of the channels — each of which will have a couple hours of original programming per week — will feature people you’ve heard of, like Madonna, Jay-Z,  Ashton Kutcher and “Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara.

But the channels aren’t all premised around the idea of celebrities and Hollywood per se — just the idea that someone with some idea of how to make good stuff will start making stuff specifically for the site.

For instance, BedRocket Properties, the video start-up backed by the Huffington Post’s Ken Lerer and run by cable TV veteran Brian Bedol, will do four channels, including a soccer-themed channel in conjunction with Major League Soccer, and an action sports channel produced along with Wasserman Media Group.

Another example: IGN, the videogame Web site being spun off by News Corp., will produce a game-themed channel along with the Shine Group, the TV production house recently purchased by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

It’s worth noting that some of the channels will be run by people who are well-versed in creating Web video — and video for YouTube in particular. Machinima, for instance, which also specializes in game-themed stuff, is already one of YouTube’s most prolific partners, and essentially runs a network within YouTube’s network.

Maker Studios, which is producing three channels, is another outfit that already specializes in YouTube. And Demand Media went public this year, in part because it had figured out the art of cranking out Web videos very, very, quickly, at very, very low prices.

YouTube may not be releasing all of the channels and partners today, perhaps because it doesn’t actually have all of its deals signed yet. And at least one partner told me that some of the mechanics of the deals, like control of ad sales, had yet to be worked out.

That’s hard to imagine, given the amount of time that YouTube has been at this. But it’s also hard to imagine why you’d announce a big consumer-focused deal at the end of a Friday. So, who knows.

We do know the general outlines of the deals, though: Google will advance most of the creators up to $5 million, and in return will get commitments to produce a couple hours of programming a week for the channel. Once the programmers have earned back their advance from YouTube, they’ll split ad revenue with the site. The programming will be exclusive to YouTube for at least the first year of the three-year deals.

What we don’t know is how this stuff will actually work: $5 million won’t go very far if the partners use traditional TV and film budgets, so many of the partners are going to have to supplement that money with investments of their own — and they’re going to have to work on a tighter budget. And just because there’s a bit of Hollywood shine associated with this stuff doesn’t mean that people will actually watch — or, most crucially, that advertisers will pay up.

Google may also try other methods to get high-end video stuff. The company made a stab at Hulu when that video site was on the block. And it has indicated that it’s interested in licensing some content in international markets, where it thinks it can get more bang for its buck.

It’s racked up some 700,000 views since it went up on Thursday, and lots and lots of press coverage, which means plenty more views are on the way:

Fun video, but truth be told I would have only made it halfway if I didn’t have a professional obligation to finish. So why are so many of us watching it, or part of it, now?

• It’s fun to watch single-take shots of anything. CGI can put anything from talking dogs to Green Lantern on a screen, and we’ve seen all that, a lot. But getting a bunch of people to act in concert, for an extended period of time, doesn’t require a lot of resources–just a lot of patience. That’s pretty cool.
• This one went up before a holiday weekend, which means there’s not a lot of news going on. But we’re still checking the Web, and Twitter, and Facebook, etc., and we need something to look at. Presto!
• There’s a good backstory to the clip: It’s a stunt by a Grand Rapids booster in response to the city’s inclusion in a Newsweek.com list of “America’s Dying Cities.” If you know that, the clip gets a lot better: Look at all these vibrant Midwesterners telling those media elites to shove it! (Even if the media elites say they never meant to say that, anyway.*)
• That backstory means that the clip has a built-in fan base with incentive to promote it: The hundreds of people in the video itself, and many thousands who pushed it on Facebook, etc.
• It’s a good song. And again, it’s a three-day weekend. We’ve got the time.

Did you know Madonna made a terrible cover of American Pie 11 years ago? Me neither. But that’s sort of what Wikipedia is for.

*Newsweek.com’s staff passes the buck twice on this one. The site says it wasn’t their list to begin with, but one it picked up from Mainstreet.com, a unit of TheStreet.com. And that in any case, the people who work at Newsweek.com now didn’t run it–their predecessors did. “It uses a methodology that our current editorial team doesn’t endorse and wouldn’t have employed. It certainly doesn’t reflect our view of Grand Rapids.”

• People will still buy music if it’s really, really cheap. Billboard says that Amazon sold 440,000 digital copies of her new “Born This Way” album at $0.99 each. The e-commerce giant sold 330,000 copies on Monday, even though demand for promotion blew its servers up, and 110,000 more copies on Thursday, when it repeated the stunt.
• People will still buy music if they’re really, really interested in a particular act. Billboard also says Lady Gaga is set to sell 1.15 million albums total this week. Which means that buyers are paying full price for some 700,000 of them.
• Bonus lesson, because we already knew it, but it’s good to remember anyway: People are still buying CDs! Billboard also projects that Apple’s iTunes will account for 200,000 units sold by the end of the week. Add in Amazon’s totals and you get to 640,000 digital albums sold. Which means that Americans will have bought more than 500,000 good old-fashioned compact discs this week, too.

Have you bought a CD in the last year? Do you know anyone who has? Me neither. But someone is: A decade after Napster, discs still account for a majority of the music industry’s revenues.

And now, because I’m tired of embedding Lady Gaga videos in Lady Gaga posts, something old-timey:

*Really. I know. It’s weird, right? At least for people of a certain age, and I am one of those people. But whatevs, as I believe the kids say.

My Twitterstream was dominated by snarky play-by-play, and the rest of the Web was doing the same thing. Even the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal put Grammy liveblogs on their homepages.

So now it might be nice to head online and actually see–and hear–what I missed. No dice.

The official Grammy site, run by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, has plenty of clips, but none from the CBS broadcast itself–it’s all backstage, or red carpet or other footage I don’t care about. CBS.com doesn’t have anything, and neither does TV.com, CBS’s mini-Hulu.

Meanwhile, Google’s YouTube, the place where I really expect to see clips, is doing a very good/frustrating job of keeping the site scrubbed free of amateur uploads. You can find some stuff, but it takes work, and the quality is poor, and I’m pretty sure it’s getting removed quickly after it goes up.

So while I really want to see Arcade Fire’s performance–my Twitter pals were ecstatic about it–right now the only thing I can find is grainy footage of  Lady Gaga doing yet another Madonna…homage. This may or may not be available by the time you read this:

[UPDATE: Ask, and you shall receive! For now. Thanks to @colinparksfried, @tdotjdot and @nolaschott]

A CBS rep notes that Grammy performances “aren’t typically available online due to rights clearance issues,” and I’m sure that’s true. Any given song can have lots of different owners, and getting all of them to agree to put it on the Web can be a huge hassle. On the other hand, it’s not an insurmountable challenge–that’s why we have Vevo.com, a Web site dedicated to nothing but music videos.

Left unsaid here is that big live events like the Grammys are now TV’s most valuable commodity, and the people who produce big live events continue to struggle with the Web. But more and more of them are getting it–even the very uptight NFL is putting highlight videos up on its site while the games are in progress.

The Grammys are already being augmented very nicely by the Web, which provided it with endless free promotion last night. But now that the live event isn’t anymore, you’d think the music industry, which can use all the promotion it could get, would be pushing very, very hard to let people see what they missed last night.

Who knows. It might even prompt someone to, you know, buy some music.

While I wish there were some overwrought versions of show tunes or intense channeling of Madonna, it works well:

Here’s the story of Tapulous, relayed from the Midem music conference in Cannes by Robert Andrews of MocoNews:

Rhythm game Tap Tap Revenge saw 2.5 million downloads in its first two months–but a million of those were pirate downloads, Tapulous business development head Tim O’Brien told delegates.

But that’s okay. “We know who they are,” O’Brien said, adding that many of the pirates are now buying virtual goods and legal music downloads within the app.

“We’ve started running ads to the pirate users more aggressively.  Some of those users, because we sell virtual goods, have become high-volume users.” Now Tapulous has 25 million unique users and has been profitable since June.

Had the music labels tried this approach, would the industry be in better shape today? I’m not sure. The labels do make periodic attempts to steer “file-sharers” to legal purchases, either via marketing or threats.

But the big problem there is that people who are looking for free music are looking for free music, and there’s no equivalent “virtual good” the labels can sell to enhance the music they’re not selling.

The labels have started branching out again into revenue streams beyond music sales–concerts, T-shirts, headphones, etc.–so in theory, there could be an opportunity to do a variant: Hey we noticed you’re “sharing” a Madonna song. Would you like to buy a concert DVD? Etc. But if they’re doing it–and if it’s working–that’s news to me.

But Hulu is still playing around with music videos, at least at the margins. Last month, it began hosting some clips from EMI, which was promoting a new Norah Jones album. Now the site, owned by GE’s (GE) NBC, Disney’s (DIS) ABC, and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox is adding a few more, via Warner Music Group (WMG).

Emphasis on “few”: For now, the only Warner artist you can find on the site is Muse, which is a band, I learned this weekend. The label’s release says you’ll be able to see clips from Jason Mraz and Paramore in the next few weeks, with more coming next year. (Props to CNET’s Greg Sandoval for sniffing this out earlier today).

Meanwhile, if you want to see clips from every other Warner artist, from Green Day to Madonna, you should look to Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, where Warner has carved out a deal to launch a mini-Vevo of its own.

Warner isn’t discussing terms, but given the limited number of artists the company is trying out here, it’s easy enough to get the impression that the label views this primarily as a promotional deal, not one with a big financial upside. Another indicator: My understanding is that under the terms of the agreement, Hulu will take the lead on selling ads against the clips, as opposed to the YouTube deal, where Warner is handling sales itself.

Here’s one of Hulu’s new Muse clips. Not my thing, at least based on what I saw of the band’s performance on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend. But whatever floats your boat. Press release below:

WARNER MUSIC GROUP ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT WITH HULU TO OFFER MUSIC VIDEOS AND CONCERT FOOTAGE

New Partnership Debuts with Rich Content Offering
From British Rock Sensation Muse

New Artist Pages Featuring Jason Mraz and Paramore to Launch in Early 2010

New York, December 22, 2009 — Warner Music Group (WMG), one of the world’s leading music companies, today announced an agreement with Hulu, an online video service that offers hit TV shows, movies and clips at Hulu.com and other online destination sites–anytime in the U.S. The agreement brings an artist-focused online video experience that features music videos, artist interviews, live concerts and rare behind the scenes footage from WMG’s world-renowned artists and labels including Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records.

Warner Bros. recording artists Muse are the first artists featured under the agreement.  Recently, Hulu launched an all Muse artist page (www.hulu.com/muse) that features the band’s appearance on Saturday Night Live’s December 19th holiday episode as well as content from Muse’s sold out tour dates at Wembley Stadium, exclusive interviews and rare deep-catalog videos.

Hulu will also launch artist pages for Atlantic’s multiple Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Jason Mraz and for Fueled By Ramen/Atlantic’s multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated rock band Paramore in the coming weeks.  More artist channels will be announced in early 2010.

In making the announcement, Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy and Business Development, WMG, said, “We’re pleased to be working with Hulu as we expand our premium ad-supported video strategy to provide our artists with a customized and flexible approach to marketing and monetizing their music, by leveraging the most powerful partnerships and platforms in the industry. Hulu has been a leader and innovator in this space, and we look forward to working with them on creating compelling, content-rich artist channels that will provide a dynamic experience to their fans, while introducing our artists to new audiences online.”

Muse will launch their US tour in February 2010 in support of their fifth studio album, The Resistance, which earned them their highest-ever debut on the Billboard album chart when it debuted at No. 3. The Resistance debuted at No. 1 in 20 countries around the world. Their current single, “Uprising,” has topped Mediabase’s Alternative Radio chart for the past 16 weeks, breaking the record for the longest No. 1 track at Modern Rock for 2009.

Jason Mraz most recently released an all new live CD/DVD titled Jason Mraz’s Beautiful Mess–Live On Earth recorded at the Chicago stop on his Gratitude Café Tour. This comes on the heels of his third studio album, the platinum-certified We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., which has received multiple Grammy nominations, including most recently Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for “Make it Mine” and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for “Lucky.” Additionally Jason’s song, “I’m Yours,” set the record this year as the longest-running song on Billboard’s “Hot 100” in the 51-year history of the chart.

Paramore’s new album Brand New Eyes, is the follow up to their 1.8 million selling RIOT!. The album, which was produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Kid Rock) and co-produced by Paramore, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and features the hit single “Ignorance.”  Paramore also contributed two songs to the soundtrack for the box office smash “Twilight,” including the Grammy-nominated focus track “Decode.” The band’s THE FINAL RIOT! DVD has been certified gold by the RIAA, making it the first Atlantic Records video/DVD release to be certified gold in more than 10 years. The band just wrapped up a sold out UK tour including a stop at London’s Wembley Arena.

The search giant is working on a new service that will provide searchers with streaming music, which sounds a whole lot like a content play at first blush. But Google will only be offering limited bits of music, and it will be relying on other companies to actually provide the tunes.

Sources describe the service, which they refer to as “One Box,” as a refined set of answers for music queries. The idea: Punch in, say, “Madonna,” and you’ll be presented with one or more songs, which may be partial clips or full-length versions, then guided to other sites where you can purchase the music.

That is: If you’re looking for Google (GOOG) to launch a rival to Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes or to music streaming services like iMeem and MySpace Music, this isn’t it.

In fact, Google is actually partnering, in a way, with News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace: iLike, the music start-up that MySpace purchased earlier this year, is one of the two services providing music to Google, industry sources tell me. The other is Lala.com, which has a novel streams-plus-cheap-songs concept. (This is presumably one of the “big announcements” Lala founder Bill Nyguen was referring to yesterday when I spoke to him).

UPDATE: Streaming music service imeem will also be providing songs for the new service, I’m told by people familiar with Google’s plans. It’s unclear to me whether the company will provide full streams in search results. No comment from Google, Lala, MySpace or Imeem. Or the labels, for that matter.

At this point I’m not clear how Google and the labels will determine how much of a song a searcher will be able to listen to. Last I time I checked, iLike didn’t have the ability to provide full song streams at all. And Lala’s licenses only allow the service to provide listeners with a full song once–after that, they have to purchase the track from the service.

One other note: “OneBox” is the name of an existing Google feature that offers up not just links, but actual answers to certain queries. (Think of weather, or stock results). So while it’s possible that Google intends to brand the service with that name, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the term the company has been using internally and with the labels, and that the service will have a different name when it launches.

TechCrunch first reported about the service this morning.

Don’t get me wrong: Google’s (GOOG) video site still appears to be the only place to see Letterman’s jaw-dropping admission that he has had affairs with staffers on his show and that a CBS (CBS) employee attempted to extort him with that information.

Those clips aren’t supposed to be there, and CBS and YouTube keep taking them down, but people keep uploading them. Here’s one that appears to come from a Portuguese user, for instance.

But I had a hunch that the story, which involves a man who has been on late night TV longer than many YouTube users have been alive, might not resonate with the site’s core demo. And data from video-tracking service TubeMogul make me think that’s the case. Here’s the report I got from TubeMogul marketing director David Burch:

Pirated versions only racked up 130,624 views throughout the day, mostly because CBS didn’t post an official version of the clip and was issuing take-down orders (they had already removed five versions of the clip by the time we ran our first report this morning). By way of comparison, pirated clips of the UFC Kimbo Slice fight totaled 1,074,531 views in the past 24 hours.

Oddly, CBS News’ channel released four news videos about the story today, but youtube.com/cbs only had Letterman’s Madonna interview rather than the clip everyone actually wanted to see.

Never heard of Kimbo Slice before? Like Fred, he’s yet another YouTube sensation, albeit one who’s graduated to TV.

Last December, talks between Warner and YouTube to renew a licensing deal broke down, and Warner’s videos disappeared from the world’s largest video site. Now, as Advertising Age has reported, an agreement is in the works that will bring Green Day, Madonna and their label-mates back to the site.

What hasn’t been reported, so far: The deal terms themselves. Neither company is talking, but sources familiar with the negotiations tell me the new pact will be similar to the one Google’s (GOOG) video unit struck earlier this year with Universal Music Group.

That deal created Vevo, a sort of “Hulu for music videos,” owned by Universal and Sony (SNE). So think of Warner’s deal as a “son of Vevo.”

The big idea is the same: Try to create more value for videos by limiting their distribution and creating a more ad-friendly atmosphere around them, and share ad revenue between YouTube and the videos’ owner. The big points:

• Unlike Vevo, Warner and YouTube won’t be creating a separate site for Warner videos, and Warner won’t be creating a separate company dedicated to its videos. Instead, YouTube will help Warner create a “premium advertising platform” for its videos within YouTube.
• Warner will take primary responsibility for selling its videos, and YouTube will receive a cut of the revenue.
• Warner will no longer receive a licensing fee each time one of its videos is played.

I gather that a lot of this is still being hashed out, and some of this will evolve even after the deal is inked. For instance, Warner needs to figure out how it’s going to sell advertising for its clips, since it doesn’t have its own sales force. Timing is also up in the air: Even after the two sides formally announce the pact, users shouldn’t expect to see Warner videos instantly reappearing on YouTube; it may be that they only get rolled out as the new ad platform is built.

Then there’s the ad platform itself: I haven’t been able to get a concrete definition of what this is supposed to look like, but for now, I’m imagining something like the “channels” YouTube has made for partners like ESPN, except they’d be made on an artist-by-artist basis.

All in all, this sounds like a fair deal. Warner loses a guaranteed revenue stream, but if its contention about the value of its videos is correct, it will make even more than it did under the old arrangement. Meanwhile, YouTube gets to hang onto “premium” inventory without being locked into the kind of  pay-per-play arrangement that helped drive the site’s expenses sky-high.

The potential downside for YouTube: If this works–or if the Vevo deal works–it will have to create similar packages/portals/platforms to retain or attract other “premium” content suppliers, like, say Hollywood studios. But given that the site has had limited success getting those guys on board so far, that’s not the worst fate in the world.

In the meantime, even though Green Day is Warner act, you can still find plenty of its clips on YouTube–it’s just that most of them are odds and ends like this grainy concert video:

Was it more than a month ago that Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess, with a gestation period that seems interminable (and BoomTown has been there, so can speak from experience about interminable pregnancies).

In fact, I’m still waiting for the Google (GOOG) takeover news floated inaccurately back then to cross our desk at All Things Digital HQ, although it’s more likely Godot will show up first.

So I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple (AAPL)–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

You could set your broken-but-right-twice-a-day clock by it, in fact.

But despite very serious interest in Twitter by every company that can afford considering such a thing, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the microblogging service to be involved, and they are not as yet.

In fact, both Twitter co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, are in New York today to attend the 2009 “Time 100″ dinner, which fetes this year’s influential people honorees selected by the magazine. Which they are.

So, if they are in serious talks with Apple, they better grab that award and head on home tout de suite.

In point of fact, talks with Facebook last year were actually the only truly deep sale discussions that Twitter has been involved in, and those went south.

Oh, the very notion of Apple and Twitter is a Techmeme dream-ticket, sure to be chewed over for days on end. (I once considered doing a post that just said “AppleTwitterAppleTwitterAppleTwitter…” for 1,000 words to see how much idiotic traffic I would get.)

But given that it is too good to be true for now, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft (MSFT), News Corp. (NWS), Verizon (VZ), Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL, Comcast (CMCSA), Cisco (CSCO) and more inevitably show up.

1.) Belle of the Geek Ball

Everyone is indeed actually interested in buying Twitter and each has expressed a proper level of interest to the company’s execs–especially to over-contacted CEO Williams–about said interest.

And, because this is America, a bid for Twitter could come at any time and in any amount.

That’s why Apple has indeed said hello. Why Microsoft’s business development team has been busy formulating a valuation. Why Google’s M&A guy, David Lawee, has called into Twitter’s HQ many times with kind expressions of desire. And why News Corp. execs, including Rupert Murdoch himself, have murmured tweet nothings to the Twitter team.

Please note: This is not the same thing as “late-stage negotiations.” Not at all; so don’t believe such things, as you will see this one coming down the pike for miles (see Step #4 below).

If there ever were an Apple deal to be done, it would not be living in some tidy vacuum.

For example, does one imagine Google CEO Eric Schmidt–who is on the Apple board, much to the FTC’s chagrin, it seems–would decline to enter the fray? Oh, he’d be up to his conflicted eyebrows in it at this point.

(Full disclosure: ATD is also considering making a bid for Twitter, but only if I get to name who is called Chief Twit.)

2.) We Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty

Twitter’s Williams, as well as Stone, do not really want to sell just yet, given the huge traffic over the last year, goosed even further by the whole Oprah-Ashton Kutcher axis of Tweetvil.

Twitter is growing and growing and growing. Does that mean it has peaked or is just crossing over into the mainstream?

I would say the latter and so would its investors and execs.

I have done a lot of reporting and have found that most of them would like a chance to ride this rocket ship and see if they can prevent it from being a shooting star by figuring out some viable, innovative and lucrative business plan.

“Twitter really could make a lot of money,” said one investor. “And we are not just making that up either.”

Well, phew, because I have been a little worried about that.

3.) We’re Living in a Material World, and I Am a Material Girl

That said, as Madonna sings, a pile of cash is a pile of cash and if one of the suitors makes a big move with $600 million or more in cash, it would be hard for Twitter to completely ignore such an offering.

But, in any case, there will be no late-stage negotiations with one player.

Instead, an epic free-for-all wrestling match to the death would break out among all of them, especially Google and Microsoft.

This will be great for me and all the other tech writers as it will be ugly, competitive and tailor-made for breathless reporting.

Google is the likely winner here, although Microsoft is quite intent on the possibilities of integrating Twitter technology with its business offerings.

Someone will, I can predict with certainty, lose an eye.

4.) All the Single Ladies…Cuz if You Liked It, Then You Should Have Put a Ring on It

And, even with that kind of offer–which I would take in a New York minute, as would some Twitter investors–there is a sense when you talk to Twitter’s founders and investors that they truly believe they are onto some very important interactive communications paradigm shift in the Internet arena with their start-up.

I would have to agree given that the real-time and status-update concepts that Twitter has perfectly touched on are a very important one.

Thus, Twitter would prefer to remain independent for now.

Whether Twitter will prevail or not is never assured, but it would be really a shame if it gave up before the story was over.

5.) And They Lived Happily Ever After

Let’s be honest: There is no real downside here for Twitter.

If the service turns out to be be a flash in the pan and it is not sold for big bucks, Twitter still has heralded a very important new era in the digital industry.

And, if it grows like crazy even more, better still.

Also, Stone got to go on “The Colbert Report” and Williams on “Oprah.”

Best of all, in a shameless plug, they will both be captive on stage with Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference exactly three weeks from today, where we can ask them about all this and more.

So, I am thrilled too.

Who says there are no happy endings?

Until that D7 interview, here is my recent video with Williams and Stone at Twitter’s funky San Francisco HQ:

Who actually made the move to drop the label’s content from the world’s biggest video site is a matter of dispute, though. Both sides are taking credit for the decision.

Here’s Warner Music (WMG)’s statement:

We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists’ content to the site. Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.”

But a person familiar with the situation tells me that the two companies were close to an agreement until recently, when Warner changed its terms. In response, Google (GOOG) made the move to yank the label’s content.

Google’s blog post about the matter is more oblique. But note that it doesn’t say it is taking the music down at Warner’s request:

Sometimes, if we can’t reach acceptable business terms, we must part ways with successful partners. For example, you may notice videos that contain music owned by Warner Music Group being blocked from the site.”

As I explained yesterday, music videos are some of the most popular content on YouTube. But the videos are also money losers for the video site because it has to pay the labels each time someone views a clip, regardless of whether it’s generating any revenue. YouTube’s contracts with all of the the big labels–in addition to Warner, it has pacts with Sony (SNE), Universal Music Group and EMI–are set to expire in the near future, so there are multiple games of chicken to watch here.

Meanwhile, taking down an entire music company’s catalog can take quite a while, which means that if you head to YouTube right now, you can still find plenty of Warner stuff  there–like the Madonna channel, which has golden oldies like this one:

In addition to myriad rock star perks you’ve already heard about, here’s another one to add to the list: Better stock deals. At least when you’re talking about stock in concert promoter Live Nation.

The company spun off from the radio and billboard giant Clear Channel a couple years ago and has been trying to lock up big name artists to exclusive deals by shoveling tons of loot their way. Madonna, U2, Jay-Z and others have gladly accepted pacts that pay them hundreds of millions of dollars to work exclusively with the company.

Some of those payments have been in stock, which is supposed to indicate that the company and the music acts are all in the same boat. And since Live Nation (LYV) shares have gotten pummeled, you’d think those music acts would be hurting too. Nope.

The Wall Street Journal:

Live Nation had guaranteed that U2 would receive $25 million for 1.6 million shares. But the current market value was just $6.1 million at the close of trading Wednesday. That leaves Live Nation on the hook for the balance, which the company said Wednesday in a SEC filing it would pay with cash on hand or borrowed money.

There could be more bad news coming from another of the company’s marquee acts: Madonna. In April, Madonna is eligible to sell $25 million of stock under the terms of her contract, even though the stock’s market value has plunged 83 percent since she struck her deal in October 2007.”

That’s lousy news for Live Nation shareholders. U2′s cash-out put even more pressure on the stock (the company is selling 1.56 million shares of its own to help pay for U2′s deal), and news of the Madonna deal will do the same.

The bigger question is whether Live Nation’s strategy ever made sense: It was supposed to use the big name acts to help it expand beyond the concert business and into other revenue streams… like selling CDs. Understandable why the company wanted to diversify beyond concerts, which are high-risk, low-margin affairs. But signing big acts to big, guaranteed contracts is one of the things that got the music business in the trouble it’s in now.

But let’s give the old music industry some credit: It did bring us some pretty good music. Here’s U2, circa 1983:

Well, this deal is not exactly turning out like buttah–in the words of the laudable “Saturday Night Live” character Linda Richman of “Coffee Talk”–is it?

BoomTown is verklempt.

Thus, since this round of deal-making is obviously going to be done on Yahoo time (that would be using the 724-hours-in-a-day clock), I choose to entertain the troops–until I come up with our next serious screed, oops, post, that is–with this choice video showing Linda, Madonna and Roseanne getting a visit from the patron saint of BoomTown.

Here it is:

Doug’s a very special guy. He’s the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He’s old school. I like him a lot.”

–Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris

The per-device royalties Universal Music Group receives for every Zune player sold were apparently substantial enough to buy CEO Doug Morris a bigger set of balls, because he’s out drumming up support for an industry-owned subscription service with which he hopes to loosen Apple’s grip on the digital music market.

The endeavor is called “Total Music,” and Morris has already approached Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group about participating. His proposition: a subscription-based music service for the hardware industry, one whose cost could be baked into the hardware that supports it. Under the Total Music model, hardware makers subsidize the cost of music, which consumers are then given for “free” when they buy a new digital media player. That’s more money up front for hardware makers, but it’s a wise investment because, as Morris reckons, they’ll make that money back and then some by selling many more devices.

Interesting business model. “If the object is to wrest control of the market from Steve Jobs,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, “this is a credible way to try it.”

Sadly for Morris, it’s also one inevitably complicated by recent turmoil in the music industry. With Radiohead releasing its latest album as a pay-what-you-will digital download, Nine Inch Nails declaring itself a free agent, and Madonna about to dump Warner Music Group for a concert promoter, we’re clearly seeing a sea change in music discovery, distribution and consumption, one perhaps lost on an industry so hardened by years of CD price fixing. So while the music industry struggles so to wrest control of the digital music market from Apple, some of today’s biggest popular artists are crafting an entirely new business model.

Doug’s a very special guy. He’s the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He’s old school. I like him a lot.”

–Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris

The per-device royalties Universal Music Group receives for every Zune player sold were apparently substantial enough to buy CEO Doug Morris a bigger set of balls, because he’s out drumming up support for an industry-owned subscription service with which he hopes to loosen Apple’s grip on the digital music market.

The endeavor is called “Total Music,” and Morris has already approached Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group about participating. His proposition: a subscription-based music service for the hardware industry, one whose cost could be baked into the hardware that supports it. Under the Total Music model, hardware makers subsidize the cost of music, which consumers are then given for “free” when they buy a new digital media player. That’s more money up front for hardware makers, but it’s a wise investment because, as Morris reckons, they’ll make that money back and then some by selling many more devices.

Interesting business model. “If the object is to wrest control of the market from Steve Jobs,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, “this is a credible way to try it.”

Sadly for Morris, it’s also one inevitably complicated by recent turmoil in the music industry. With Radiohead releasing its latest album as a pay-what-you-will digital download, Nine Inch Nails declaring itself a free agent, and Madonna about to dump Warner Music Group for a concert promoter, we’re clearly seeing a sea change in music discovery, distribution and consumption, one perhaps lost on an industry so hardened by years of CD price fixing. So while the music industry struggles so to wrest control of the digital music market from Apple, some of today’s biggest popular artists are crafting an entirely new business model.