Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, is known for his clear-headed analysis of emerging business models. He’s the guy that analyzed Amazon’s success in his now frequently-cited book, The Long Tail. His latest article, which he plans to expand into a new tome next year, explores the future of business models based on the concept of not paying money for stuff. read more

A new study (PDF) by NYU/Stern professor Vasant Dhar indicates that blog buzz has a strong correlation with album sales. The study looked at blog posts, changes in an artist’s number of MySpace friends, and online album reviews over an eight-week period — half before an album was released, half after.

The study found that increases in MySpace friends had a slight positive correlation to album sales. More significantly, artists who received ample attention from major blogs seemed to “move more units,” as they say in the biz. read more

Insiders talk free music at MidemNet
Music industry and technology insiders met in Cannes to discuss the future of free music at the annual MidemNet forum. Many of the participants said “they believe that subscription-based or advertiser-based business models are the answer.”

Author: Ray Bennett
Source: The Hollywood Reporter, January 27th read more

…but asking people to pay for them is another story. At least according to Trent Reznor, whose recent label-free, download-only release of Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust resulted in “disappointing” sales — even at the suggested $5 price point. (Williams, on the other hand, seems satisfied.)

As this interview with Mr. Reznor in CNET points out, five bucks is around the cost of a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. And these days, it’s not much more than a gallon of gas. For a full-length album of higher-than MP3 quality. read more

It’s been almost two months since Comcast’s regulation of BitTorrent traffic was first revealed by the Associated Press, inciting an Internet-wide call to arms for proponents of network neutrality. In case you haven’t been following the story, it was revealed that Comcast was “actively interfering” with traffic on its network, using a technique known as packet-forging to disrupt traffic relating to BitTorrent applications — including the Gnutella peer-to-peer sharing client and IBM’s Lotus Notes groupware application (used by businesses for sharing calendars, emails and other files).