Study: Blogging about music may triple its sales

A study by NYU Stern business school professor Vasant Dhar and partner Elaine Chang shows correlational evidence that blog posts increase online sales of recorded music.

The study observed 108 albums over a course of eight weeks, and concluded that the amount of blogs about a certain album can actually predict how well it will sell. It also suspected that the amount of MySpace friends a particular band has acts as a "badge of popularity," actually generating more interest through that number alone.

Dhar and Chang found that of blogs, social networks, consumer reviews, online media and mainstream media, it was the blogs that had the most significant effect on sales. When more than 40 "legitimate" blog posts are made, sales of independent albums were three times higher than average, and five times higher if they were major label releases. They also found if blog chatter exceeds 250 posts, sales were six times higher than the average, regardless of being major label releases or not.

As the first published study to examine bloggers' impact on the music industry, it may actually be quite limited. Instead of using the industry standard Neilsen SoundScan ratings which track album sales, the study is based strictly upon Amazon.com sales ranks.

Further, blogs chosen for the study were limited to those "in English with some authority." Authority was determined by only a single factor: how many links the bloggers received in Technorati.

Though the study may lack credibility in some areas, it could still be worthy of review by record companies and the "hegemonic," traditional content generators.