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Now that the last note of American Idol’s Season 10 has been sung come a slew of new questions: What will become of winner Scotty McCreery’s music career; how will Idol’s 11th year shape up in terms of the judging panel; and will TV’s No. 1 show re-up its broadcast deal with Fox?

Question No. 1: Will Idol return to Fox?

In a word: Yes. No network would give up the most-watched show on television. But a better question is how much Fox will pay to air Idol. We’re told that negotiations are currently underway between Idol’s corporate parent, CKx Inc., and the network to keep it on the air beyond 2012, as is currently contracted. (Fremantle Media serves as the show’s equal partner on the U.S. version of the show.) The talks are said to be “heated” as both parties will have to reassess their positions based on Season 10′s performance. Most industry observers had expected ratings to nose-dive without Simon Cowell as a judge. Instead, they have essentially stayed the same, proving that the Idol production is not dependent on one key piece of talent, so CKx could easily demand a higher fee of Fox for broadcast rights going forward.

Idol is also under new ownership, thanks to the recent sale of CKx to Apollo Global Management for $509 million, but its stakeholders are members of the old guard: Robert Sillerman, CKx’s founder and largest shareholder, and Promenade Trust, whose sole beneficiary is Lisa Marie Presley. In addition to Idol, CKx holdings include So You Think You Can Dance and the rights to the likeness and names of Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali.

Question No. 2: But what About J. Lo?

According to insiders, the Fox-CKx licensing deal is typically hammered out in early summer, but potentially complicating the situation is the matter of Jennifer Lopez. Unlike fellow judges Randy Jackson and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, both of whom are locked for Season 11, Lopez only signed on for a one-year commitment, so her return remains a question mark. (When asked about the judging panel for next season Jackson recently said on TBS’ Lopez Tonight, “We’ll all be back next year, man. I believe we’ll all be back!”) Would Lopez dare leave the show that reinvigorated her career? Idol creator and executive producer Simon Fuller says the judges’ table will be set soon, hopefully avoiding the last-minute scramble before the Season 10 auditions began last summer. “We have just ended one of the best seasons in Idol’s history,” Fuller tells THR. “After a short holiday, we will all address the outstanding issues for next season.”

Question No. 3: Will Scotty McCreery have a career?

Given these unknowns, it seems the one sure thing is 17-year-old McCreery’s shot at a career, although it’s still unclear which Universal Music Group label he and runner-up Lauren Alaina will land on. “The country genre is tailor-made for an American Idol winner,” says Jeff Rabhan, chair of New York University’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music and himself a former manager of Idols Kelly Clarkson and Elliott Yamin. “Nashville is historically a songwriter-driven town where performers have been vessels for great songs, which is exactly what Idol is. It also tends to embrace its new country artists, so if he comes out of the gate strong, he has a real shot at staying power.”

For proof, look no further than the show’s sole country winner, Carrie Underwood, who also happens to be its biggest seller.

Tonight’s the night pop-music fans will learn if Jewel’s new Bravo TV series, “Platinum Hit,” is a foolish game or a crafty (if not soul-saving) new career move by the former San Diego singer-songwriter.

The show, which debuts tonight at 10 p.m., teams Jewel with former “American Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi. Jewel is the show’s host, while DioGuardi is the head judge. Among the group of guest judges who will appear on the series are Donna Summer, Jermaine Dupri, Leona Lewis, Natasha Bedingfield (who performs July 2 at San Diego’s House of Blues).

“Platinum Hit,” featuring Jewel and Kara DioGuardi

When: Debuts tonight, May 30, at 10 p.m.

Where: Bravo TV

A talent competition for singer-songwriters — or, to be more accurate — songwriters who sing with varying degrees of skill — “Platinum Hit” features a dozen male and female contestants, all in their twenties and thirties. They are vying to win $100,000 and a music publishing deal. Part “Top Chef,” part “Project Runway,” albeit in a musical setting, the show’s emphasis is apparently less on the performance aspect than on the art of crafting a good song.

In a recent blog about the show, Jewel writes:

“My goal in being involved was to give each contestant a better shot at being hit songwriters, whether they won the show or not. This is a hard business to break into, and there is NO SCHOOL that teaches it. As an artist and songwriter, I benefited so much from other artists taking me under their wing and schooling me. From Bob Dylan to Neil Young, they took me aside and gave me straightforward advice and information I badly needed as an aspiring singer-songwriter. And it became words to live by.

“Granted, we are not looking for “singer-songwriters” on this show. We are not looking for the next great singer or even an artist. We are looking for craftsmen who can write the hit songs that great singers and artists need. Elvis did not write his own songs — a stable of the best in the country did that for him. Where would Whitney Houston be without the song ‘I Will Always Love You,’ written by the great Dolly Parton, not to mention the other songs that were written to show off her amazing voice? Or Celine Dion without “My Heart Will Go On,” written by James Horner and Will Jennings?”

Jewel’s biggest challenge? To offer constructive criticism as a judge, without sounding withering or pedantic.

“This was by far the hardest part,” she blogs. “I certainly don’t relish offering critique to new talent, as no one wants to harm the dreams of someone who is working so hard. My approach was to be honest. Period. Not clever. Not mean, but also never to pander or pull a punch.

“I also tried to be specific. There’s nothing as an artist that I hate more than receiving vague feedback. ‘You just didn’t bring it’ is not a helpful critique. You can do nothing with that. If I did not like something on the show, I tried to be exact about what bothered me and also offer a solution. So if a lyric was too generic, I would site the offending lyric and offer an alternative to show an idea of what might work better. This was the hardest part of the show for me, but I figured placating someone gets them nowhere, and being honest is the best thing I could offer them, even if it was hard. And the contestants seemed to thrive on it. This is a serious group of young artists who are in it to win it.”

Jewel and DioGuardi are not neophytes when it comes to their involvement with music-oriented TV shows.

Best known for her tenure as a judge on “American Idol” in 2009 and 2010, DioGuardi was also a judge on ABC-TV’s “The One: Making a Music Star,” a 2006 series that was canceled after just two weeks.

Jewel, the Alaska native who struck musical gold (make that, um, platinum) after moving to San Diego in her late teens, now lives in Texas with her husband, rodeo champion Ty Murray. But she launched her career here and remained a San Diego resident through the peak of her stardom. With more than 15 million copies sold, her 1995 recording, “Pieces of You,” still ranks as one of the top-selling debut albums ever released. Her worldwide album sales now exceed 27 million.

In 2006, Jewel served as a guest judge on “American Idol.” In 2007 she co-hosted the USA Network TV series “Nashville Star.” This move was followed by the 2008 release of “Perfectly Clear,” the first of her two country-music albums to date.

Jewel is expecting her first child in July. Her TV presence will grow later this summer, when she hosts 13 episodes of “The Incurables” on Veria TV. Now in its third season, the show profiles “real people on life-changing journeys,” specifically their battles against life-threatening illnesses and diseases.

Because of her pregnancy, Jewel currently has no live performances scheduled. To read our most recent interview with the former San Diego troubadour, click here.

george.varga@uniontrib.com; (619) 293-2253; Twitter, @georgevarga

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6. Cloud Music Services Let You Enjoy Tunes Everywhere »

The past decade has seen the emergence of new services–many of them free–that allow you to stream music from the Web, as well as to store your own music files online for easy access from your PC, your TV, or your smartphone.

Music on Demand

Pandora lets you set up personal radio stations that suit your musical tastes.Services such as Pandora and Slacker create personalized radio stations that bring commercial-free music to your PC or smartphone. Most are free, though all reserve certain features (such as mobile access or desktop apps) to paid customers. Of the major services, Pandora is the best choice for users who want free music on their phones or streamed to their TVs via Roku or other cloud-enabled devices. Another option, Grooveshark, provides more customization by letting you search for and play specific songs on demand, but for a fee.

Social media services such as Blip.fm make it easier to share and discover music with friends through integrated Facebook and Twitter support, so you can tell everyone what you’re listening to and see recommendations from people whose taste you trust.

Stream Your Own Tunes

What if you already own lots of great music, and you just want to be able to listen to it on any device? Digital music lockers can store your tracks online and stream them to your PCs, phone, and tablet.

Amazon has launched a service called Cloud Player for the Web and Android phones, offering 5GB of free cloud storage via Amazon Cloud Drive for your existing music collection. You can upgrade with options ranging from 20GB for $20 per year up to (for those who have too much money on their hands) a terabyte for $1000 per year. Upload your existing music files to Cloud Drive, and Cloud Player will stream them to your PC over the Web, or to your Android phone via the Amazon MP3 app. Android users also have the option of copying the files to their SD Card to save bandwidth and avoid streaming problems.

Earlier this month, Google launched Google Music, which works like Amazon Cloud Player but includes a desktop app. While in beta, the service is free. Final pricing has not been announced.

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In “Platinum Hit,” premiering Monday, Bravo takes the formula it perfected with “Project Runway” and “Top Chef” and plugs in a dozen singing songwriters — which is not necessarily to say “singer-songwriters,” in the James Taylor sense of the phrase — and whittles them away weekly until only one remains, holding cash and contracts. You will recognize the elements, even to the way that the demerits of the losers are enumerated in groups of three: “Your song was trite, confusing and uninspiring.” “Your song was not memorable, it was not emotional, and it did not speak to us.”

There are differences, to be sure. In “Runway” and “Chef,” the go-for-your-dreams element of the game is buried by the more interesting and exciting practical business of making stuff. In “Platinum Hit,” as in “American Idol,” the dreams are always front and center, personified in the contestants themselves. For although it is framed as a competition among songwriters, it is clear that this is a competition among people who themselves want to be pop stars.

They would rather be Jewel, that is, the show’s friendly host-judge, than head judge Kara DioGuardi — who, though her songs have been recorded by a mess of big-name singers, is only famous because she was a judge on “Idol.”

In the first episode, the aspirants are asked to write a song about Los Angeles, which inevitably brings forth a series of variations on the theme of making it big. Members of a generation raised on the idea that to want something really bad is in some way to deserve it, they can seem a little silly in their self-approving urgency, though I don’t doubt this is partly a matter of editing and partly a matter of playing the game.

There is Nevin, who declares, “I sing for the widow, I sing for the orphan…. I am a leader of men.” There is Nick, who is “a musical genius for sure”; and Jes, who calls herself an “über-quirky songwriter”; and Jackie, who does not mention that she was a once semi-finalist on “American Idol”; and Scotty, who does not mention that he was a contestant on ABC’s “The One: Making a Music Star,” which featured DioGuardi as a judge and lasted all of two weeks in 2006.

It would be truer to the premise, and the professional world the show is supposed to mirror, if the songs were not sung by the people who wrote them. The sort of songwriting “Platinum Hit” demands is the industrial sort, made to order in short time and less concerned with art than with efficiency.

“If you give me a record and that song don’t catch me in the first two, three seconds, I’m on my BlackBerry and that song is out the window,” says guest judge Jermaine Dupri. DioGuardi is even stricter: “You got one second to grab us, one second.” I hope that is not literally true, but it might explain a few things about modern pop.

Still, they get to make their music, solo and in groups, that we may see the egos collide and mesh, expand and contract. And if nothing here screams New Dylan or Next Gaga, or bids in any way to rival the best of “Runway” or “Chef,” the craft-under-pressure and problem-solving elements work as before. It’s amazing what people can do in a day.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

Where: Bravo

When: 10 p.m. Monday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)