(Photo: Pia Toscano)
Time to take a look at what happened in the music biz – for the week ending April 10: Pia gets booted from “American Idol,” the Grammys cut categories, and Britney Spears scored her sixth No. 1 album.

The biggest water cooler story of the week was industry favorite Pia Toscano getting booted off of “American Idol.” As our fearless blogger The Idolholic pointed out, this was the first time in Season 10 lost credibility and insiders wondered if Simon Cowell would have let this happen. Pia, of course, got signed to Interscope Records (the show’s partner) right away and within hours had some of the best writers and producers in the biz begging to work with her. She will truly be the breakout star.

But the real question is, who is really watching “American Idol” this season? All the guys are getting booted (note the Casey fiasco and last minute save by the judges) and Pia certainly presented herself as a more mature singer. So are only teenage girls tuning in and voting for cute boys? There is also an online campaign to skew the voting. Check out www.votefortheworst.com. Season 10 was truly off to a great start. Steven Tyler is the star of the show, ratings are up, and Simon was a distant memory. But with Pia gone, the show is lacking a certain gravitas. We’ll see how “The Voice” and “The X Factor” measure up.

People who care about awards were up in arms over the Recording Academy cutting the number of Grammys doled out during its annual ceremony from 109 to 78. Even worse, now men and women will be competing with each other! For example, there will no longer be a “best female pop performance” and “best male pop performance,” but simply, “best solo performance.” Outrageous. So many Grammys diminish the value, and most of them are given out during the pre-telecast to a very deaf audience. Plus, sources tell me that part of the problem was that there weren’t enough submissions in some categories. I think less is more in this case.

Britney Spears scored her sixth No. 1 debut with “Femme Fatal.” She now ties with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for the most No. 1 albums by a female artist. Sadly it only sold about 276,000 copies to land the honor.