Social Networking and its Effect on Music Purchasing
Posted by Jeff on Aug 7th 2007, 16:59
There was an interesting article over at WebProNews today on Social Media, and its effects on the music market. It's low on substance, but it does get the ball rolling. In response to the article, Gern Lionhard posted a couple pictures.
Take a moment for those to sink in. Do you see what's going on there? MySpace and YouTube - the two most massive websites in the realm of social media and social networking - are having big impacts on somewhere between 20-40% of their users music buying habits.
What impact? Well mostly its music discovery and fan appreciation. Someone will see a music video or hear a song they like randomly on MySpace or YouTube, go research about the band and eventually become a fan.
The radio, traditionally the way most people found out about new music, is long gone people. You can find and listen to new music when and how you want on the internet.
But all is not perfect in the tubes. There are too many bands and too many people releasing their music online for any one person to make sense of it all. There is too much information and audio from music websites for anyone to go there and find an artist they really like.
Problem is, on any one particular music site there is usually only a small set of artists to choose from. And chances are, for every 100 artists you listen to you'll only really like 2-5. The other problem is that on the vast majority of music sites, sifting through the mediocre artists herd is left up to the user. Sure they have a "Top Artists" list, but it's rarely accurate or democratic. And you're telling me that on the internet, the best way people find new music is one or two lousy top 10 lists?
TuneShout attempts to combat the second problem with the stage, where site activity decides and shows who really is popular. The 1st problem is a little harder. How do you help people weed through the 95-97 artists they like to find the 2-5 they do? Nobody seems to have figured out a good way quite yet. Tomorrow, I'll share my thoughts.
Take a moment for those to sink in. Do you see what's going on there? MySpace and YouTube - the two most massive websites in the realm of social media and social networking - are having big impacts on somewhere between 20-40% of their users music buying habits.
What impact? Well mostly its music discovery and fan appreciation. Someone will see a music video or hear a song they like randomly on MySpace or YouTube, go research about the band and eventually become a fan.
The radio, traditionally the way most people found out about new music, is long gone people. You can find and listen to new music when and how you want on the internet.
But all is not perfect in the tubes. There are too many bands and too many people releasing their music online for any one person to make sense of it all. There is too much information and audio from music websites for anyone to go there and find an artist they really like.
Problem is, on any one particular music site there is usually only a small set of artists to choose from. And chances are, for every 100 artists you listen to you'll only really like 2-5. The other problem is that on the vast majority of music sites, sifting through the mediocre artists herd is left up to the user. Sure they have a "Top Artists" list, but it's rarely accurate or democratic. And you're telling me that on the internet, the best way people find new music is one or two lousy top 10 lists?
TuneShout attempts to combat the second problem with the stage, where site activity decides and shows who really is popular. The 1st problem is a little harder. How do you help people weed through the 95-97 artists they like to find the 2-5 they do? Nobody seems to have figured out a good way quite yet. Tomorrow, I'll share my thoughts.