I heard it on TV

You've seen it before: The pop-up card in the corner of your television screen telling you which rock band or singer-songwriter supplied the mood-enhancing tune for that night's episode of . . . you name it. Nearly every prime-time TV show incorporates pop songs, which work like emotional shorthand to ratchet up the passion or heartbreak, angst or elation. And television has proven to be a powerful marketing tool for young artists -- most famously Death Cab for Cutie, an indie band with a cult-size following until featured placement in Fox's "The O.C." catapulted the group to mainstream stardom.

Now CBS is parlaying the powerfully symbiotic relationship between television and music into a new record company. In January the CBS corporation relaunched the long-dormant CBS Records label, which will break artists by integrating their songs into the CBS and CW television lineup and release music, at least initially, exclusively as digital downloads on iTunes. If digital sales and other online indicators (like blog activity and MySpace page hits) warrant it, CBS Records will issue its artists' music as physical CDs.

From a business standpoint, CBS's new label model makes all kinds of sense. Music licensing costs are on the rise; digital downloads are cheap and easy. The label is keeping overhead low, with a skeletal staff on-site and tasks such as publicity, online marketing, and website design being outsourced. Without the pressing demand to see a quick return on a significant investment (major labels typically spend more than $1 million on an album project), CBS Records can function more like an independent label -- but with the clout of a large corporation behind it.

"We wanted to be revolutionary, not just in how we break and sell artists but also in being artist-friendly," says Larry Jenkins, a 23-year industry veteran who was brought on by CBS last August as a consultant and has been operating as the label's de facto head. "We're not investing millions. We've removed ourselves from the game of having to have a first big week. We're not beholden to the same restraints the majors are held to. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The types of artists we're signing could take years to break and I don't want to rush it."

Thanks to a well-placed fan -- former Bostonian Jeff Sellinger is head of CBS Mobile -- two of CBS Records' first four signings are Boston artists: singer-songwriter Will Dailey, who performs tomorrow night at the Paradise, and power-popsters Señor Happy, who play April 21 at the Abbey Lounge. Alt-rock auteur P.J. Olsson and husband-and-wife duo Wilshire have also inked deals with CBS.

Dailey was apprehensive at first. Contributing to the soundtrack of "The Young and the Restless" was not, to say the least, high among the Malden native's planned career moves. (Two of Dailey's songs, "Boom Boom" and "Rise," have been used on the daytime soap.) Neither did Dailey, who waxes poetic about the lost art of the album, envision releasing his songs as digital tracks. But he's changed his tune -- in part because a bout of appendicitis left Dailey $50,000 in debt. But he's also adjusted his attitude to accommodate the reality of a rapidly changing music business.

"I've embraced the challenge of the new paradigm," says Dailey, whose "Grand Opening" was a jukebox selection in the Nov. 29 episode of "Jericho." The song is from Dailey's 2006 indie album "Backflipping Forward," which CBS is re-releasing. "If someone downloads one song and they blast it in their car and come to my show, then I have the chance to show them everything. Also, if I have a new song I don't have to wait 10 months to put it out." Dailey's also come to terms with the idea of his lovingly crafted folk-pop songs being pared down to snippets and used as background music.

"Bob Dylan," he points out, "works for Victoria's Secret."

CBS bought Señor Happy's last album, 2004's "I'm Sorry," from Boston's Q Division Records and is re-releasing it with one additional track: "How Many Ways," the theme from the new David Spade sitcom "Rules of Engagement," which the network commissioned from the band after it was signed to the fledgling label last year. Tired of toughing it out in the local trenches, Señor Happy was actually on hiatus when the call came from Jenkins. But the band's guitarist, singer, and songwriter, Derek Schanche, felt no ambivalence about abandoning the new batch of songs he was working on and diving headlong into a new opportunity.

"We were ecstatic," he says. "Once this interest started on a record we loved, it was time to regroup and start doing shows. It's like winning the lottery."

Señor Happy's "Get Up and Go Out" has been in heavy rotation on "Survivor: Fiji," and "Love If You're Real" was featured in December on "The Ghost Whisperer." The band's drummer and coproducer, Tom Polce (who also produced Dailey's album), is impressed not just with how aggressively CBS is pushing their music, but how thoughtfully.

"They used a minute or so of the song and dropped the lyric in at perfect spots, really married the lyrics to the emotions," Polce says of "The Ghost Whisperer." "Then they put our name up and our MySpace hits went up astronomically."

While no one wants to talk dollars and cents, Polce describes Señor Happy's contract as "very, very fair, better than a standard major label deal." He says that the profit split is more on a par with what a band would get at an indie label, and without a lot of the strings attached to a major-label contract. "Nobody knows how this will go down, but they're creative and they want to give it a real try."

Jenkins is equally pumped, and just as circumspect, about trying to forge a new path in the music industry's shifting landscape.

"Look, we know that no matter how well we've thought this out, it won't always work," says Jenkins. "But if things don't work out, I think our artists will still walk away feeling like they had a shot, which is something that hasn't been happening much lately."

Will Dailey is at the Paradise tomorrow at 9 p.m. Tickets $12. Call 617-931-2000 or go to ticketmaster.com.