*Cue Eardrum-Shattering Sound of a Record Screeching to a Halt*: Warner Bros. is Giving Perez Hilton a Record Label

The debt brought on by the housing bust, corrupt high finance, and the crumbling automotive industry has been an avalanche of economic disaster under which the once much-discussed decline of the record industry has, perhaps mercifully, been relatively buried in the media. That decline has no doubt been hastened by the broader economic crisis, as the parallel downfall of print media has shuttered music industry vehicles like Vibe and Blender. Meanwhile, record industry efforts to profit from cross-promotional deals with in the gaming and cell phone arenas have revealed deeper cracks in the foundation, with record labels and music publishers at odds with one an other (even when those players share a parent company) over what revenue such deals have generated.

So no one surveying the damage should be surprised that media conglomerates are rolling out the big tents for a freak show of a finale to herald the industry’s swan song. Case in point: Warner Brothers is launching an imprint label for celebrity gossip blah-blahger and slur-slinger Perez Hilton, who claims to “have an ear,” and to have seen the pop potential of Lady Gaga “before anyone else” (and more bizarre nonsense) in an interview confirming the label deal.

More accurately, he has a massively popular website, the dropping of a name on which would lend the ears of millions of head-nodding, downbeat-clappin’ Perez Hilton readers to this or that streaming file. Whether that translates into money in the bank for WB, though, is another matter altogether. Pity the poor man’s Jonas Brothers band that signs its soul over to the self-professed Queen of All Media.