After attending the Virgin Mobile Festival a few weeks ago, I swung through Atlantic City on the way back to NYC for the 2008 DJ Times Expo. Organizer and DJ Times Editor, Jim Tremayne threw me on a panel at the last minute to speak on alternative business models and careers for DJs and what they should be thinking about for long term success.

Just a few years ago, the Expo was filled with CD turntables. How times have changed. This year, the Expo was loaded with digital DJ products. From software to controllers and DVD VJ decks, the transition to digital is in full swing. Even the remix services, X-Mix and Promo Only, are promoting digital downloads through private, subscription only stores, which will be launched soon.

We loved the Hercules RMX digital controller, show above. The key features are the jog wheels and ability to interact with your audio library. We also were really excited Numark’s NS7 Motorized Computer DJ System with Audio/IO. A very sleek looking product with real vinyl emulators, this is could very well be the digital controller to watch. Numark collaborated with Rane to create a product that syncs easily with Serato. Sending signals over USB, Numark claims the resolution is double that of midi.

The Hercules controller was being promoted in conjunction with Virtual DJ, a similar product to Traktor Scratch and Rane’s Serato, available for both PC and Mac for U.S. $299 after discount from their web site.

[Show as slideshow]

Buy Products from JR.com:

Hercules RMX

– Tony Zeoli

Peter Kafka on Tech Ticker

Everyone seems to have an opinion on what ails the music industry. In this Yahoo! Finance Tech Ticker video interview, Silicon Insider managing editor, Peter Kafka proposes that labels drop supporting new music and focus on their valuable catalogs. Doing so would leave the door open to independent labels to figure out how to sell music in a digital era.

Then again, if things continue the way they are, major labels will end up getting dropped from the stock exchanges anyway, once their stock drops below a buck for a few quarters. Once that happens, they could feasibly take themselves private and go back to the way things used to be. Cultivating artists instead of churning out pop crap to see if it sticks to the wall.

On the other side, Sony Music Entertainment, the new entity born out of BMG’s desire to extract itself from the music business, may know something we don’t. Or, they may be doing exactly what Kafka thinks is going to happen, control the masters of all those hits over the last 50 + years and/or simply control the music in a convergence strategy tied to their original video content.

We’ll keep watching and waiting for the music giants to figure it all out, while the digital era continues to chip away at their profits.

Burnlounge almost got away with one of the best scams in digital music history. I called it here on Netmix and was ostracized by people like Hazel Zoletta from Tommy Boy, who sang the virtues of Burnlounge, while tens of thousands of people gave up their hard-earned dollars to a bunch of people who had been investigated for pyramid-type operations before.

One of my best friends (who shall remain nameless) threatened to never talk to me again over my calling Burnlouge out for what they truly were, one of the biggest online music scam’s since digital music was invented. Both she and Hazel were mad that I said “B and C” level” executives were at the first Burnlounge New York meeting, which took place in the lounge under Coffee Shop in Union Square.

I still stand by that statement, as I didn’t see Diddy, Lyor or Clive there. And if I was there, then I was calling myself a “B” or “C” level executive anyway. Of course, in their furor, they couldn’t see the forest from the trees.

So, what happened to Burnlounge? Well, the FTC shut them down. The URL is finito! Gone. Poof! Digital Music News reports that the FTC has settled with a former Burnlounge promoter, Scott Elliot, who agreed to pay $20,000 of a $117,000 judgment against him. We hear it’s about all he could afford.

Of course, we’ve never again heard from Burnlounge Barry in our comments section. Who is Burnlounge Barry? He was a Burnlounge operator who found our blog and carried on a running argument with me about the sanctity of Burnlounge. He was adamant that Burnlounge was the wave of the future…yada…yada. That Burnlounge would revolutionize the music industry. Where is Barry now?  Nowhere to be found now. He’s probably on to the next big scam. We wish him the best of luck and look forward to the day that he’s locked up like the rest of them.

read more | digg story

“In an Oriental-themed, tricked-out parlor, Nicholas, his friends and a bevy of prostitutes would party and have sex for days - abusing cocaine, laughing gas and other drugs, as music from such chart-toppers as Led Zeppelin and Phil Collins played.” — from the New York Post

During the Web 1.0 heyday, the founders of Polyverse, the company that had acquired Netmix and then spent our investment money on a half-a-million dollar Randalls Island rave that lost over a quarter of our funding, introduced me to this guy and Kenji Kato, his assistant.

They ended up partying with him well into the night, while I was taking care of Netmix business. They thought Nicholas might invest in the company, as he was keenly interested in youth culture Internet plays, having funded a youth-driven startup in Denver. While Nicholas was in town, they ended up partying at Lotus and a few other spots, taking a break in between to meet with me and some of my staff at the time.

Although I was excited to meet with the billionaire, I was still very cautious and direct, knowing that the Polyverse folks were playing the party game, while I was trying to grow a business. When Nicholas asked me if I was ready to work 24-hours a day, I said I’d work 26, just to see Netmix grow .

It turned out that Henry Nicholas wasn’t much feeling the partners in Polyverse. Despite his partying ways, he could see through them, as I did while constantly battling with them to do the right thing. Unfortunately, I was stuck with them.

In August of 2000, I caught one of our sales people doing cocaine with a client in a hotel room at the MGM Grand during the DJ Times Expo in Atlantic City. I wanted her fired, but I was told by the Polyverse folks after a series of personnel meetings that “this is the way business is done” in the advertising world. Needless to say, that girl didn’t sell one piece of advertising for the company while taking in a $90K salary in all the time she worked there. Although they didn’t fire her, she was persona non grata in the Netmix offices and I forced them to move her to another location. That memory of her is forever etched in my mind. If that’s how you want to be remembered in this world, more power to you.

If you need to use cocaine to sell a product, then in my eyes, you’re not that much of a sales person. Once you get known as the drug provider, that reflects on everyone in the company, undeservedly tarnishing the reputations of the company’s other employees and forever damaging your organization’s reputation.

The Henry Nicholas Jr. story just goes to show that the crazy days of Web 1.0, where the money to fuel the parties seemed endless, was a time of extraordinary mismanagement, greed and self destruction. Anything goes, but then you had nothing to show for it. Fortunately for me, I never transferred the Netmix domain to Polyverse. They broke the purchase and sale agreement, and I still own the brand that I cultivated.

I, unfortunately, chose the wrong path. I could have opted to go with an angel investor in the Philadelphia area that had backed a successful world music concert series, but we decided that it might be better to work with the Polyverse folks, given their ties to companies like SonicNet, MTV and others. It was probably my biggest mistake and one that taught me a very valuable lesson.

I’m certainly glad that Henry Nicholas decided not to fund us. Seeing his very public downfall reminds me that you can have all the money in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you end up in a $66,000 a month rehab facility, your personal assistant is suing you for being your personal drug courier and all your former employees think you’re ass. The money doesn’t matter when you have no friends.

I always turn to this one quote from a David Halberstam book, “The Breaks of the Game,” which reads: “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident and money takes wings. The only thing that endures, is character.”

Now that I know what Henry Nicholas Jr. is really all about, he’s just another two-bit hustler like the rest of them. I’ve totally lost the ounce of respect I had for him for achieving so much. If you lose $4 Billion in personal net worth, although you still have $2 Billion, it isn’t all that impressive to me. Henry Nicholas III could have been the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but those guys aren’t in rehab and he is. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. Certainly glad I don’t have to deal with him every day. I’d rather run Netmix as the hobby that it now is, then be around spoiled billionaires who’s self-defeating ego turns the entire world against them.

I know too many people who’s lives have been tarnished by extreme drug use. I’m certainly glad mine is not one of them.

read more (New York Post story) | digg story

If you’re like me and are immersed in social networking and Web 2.0, then you should know what Twitter is. For those of you who don’t, I’ll try to explain it in as simple terms as possible.

Twitter allows you to “micro-blog.” That is, to create a profile on Twitter.com and the constantly feed it with your current thoughts in 140 characters or less. There are no photos, no video–it’s simply just a running text feed of your current status. Sort of like your Facebook feed, but you can port your Twitter status updates into Facebook and other social networks, while you can’t yet do the reverse with your MySpace or Facebook status updates.

With Twitter, you can follow people’s feeds and they can follow yours. I’m following a few hundred digerati, DJs and music industry professionals and have reached over 1,000 posts. Twitter has become such a phenomenon, that the site has had difficulty as of late staying online. The criticism is that they built the site using Ruby On Rails server technology, which is said to not scale as efficiently as other technologies available. Nevertheless, Twitter just raised a $15 Million round of funding and that should quiet the critics and hopefully smooth out their operations.

What’s great about Twitter is that people from all over the world are already jumping on the bandwagon, typing in the minutiae of their lives. My girlfriend, Missy, thinks Twitter is useless. That is, until a blogger in Egypt twittered that he’d been unfairly arrested. The “twitterspehere” the blogger operates in quickly came to his rescue. That changed Missy’s mind (for now). That is, until she sees me post something about her…lol.

Anyway, the point of the story. Yes…I’m getting to the point here, is that the user @aztrovoi contacted me through Twitter–all the way from Mexico. Who knew I had fans in Mexico!

Why the “@” symbol? Twitter uses the “@” symbol to allow sending direct messages to folks. So, if you want to post and address your post to me so that I see it in my “Replies” box, just put the “@” symbol in front of my user name: djtonyz. The message will go to both community and me.

The power of Web 2.0 is amazing. So many of my friends and colleagues are now following my updates through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and many other networks I’m part of. This gives me the ability to communicate what’s happening in my world everyday, and helps all my contacts stay up on my status.

Sure, it’s a lot of work constantly managing your online life. But, the means justifies the end! As I begin to build my off line DJ career again, all these tools have become necessary to promote and market oneself. You have to take advantage of them, because that’s where the people are.

In Should Music Startups Give Equity to Copyright Holders?, Wired’s music industry blogger, Eliot Van Buskirk, shines a light on the often implemented but rarely discussed trend of Internet music start-ups ceding equity in exchange for the right to exploit rights holders music copyrights.

I agree with Van Buskirk’s assessment on how something like this would work. He writes:

“Why go through the heartache? This lengthy, complicated process is scary for startups, clumsy for copyright holders, and tends to leave indie bands and labels out of the equation.”

Of course, there’s always someone willing to offer up a new idea as to how start-ups might be able to achieve their objectives without having to pay royalties while building their businesses. Van Buskirk discusses this option, saying:

“Will Page, chief economist for the MCPS-PRS Alliance (a U.K. royalty-collection group), and David Touve, a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt and former Lycos/Sony/AOL employee, have proposed a novel solution (.pdf) to the problem: a music license specifically designed for startups that would give copyright holders an equity stake in the businesses.”

I caught this discussion on the Pho List, of which I am a long-time member. The Pho List is a digital music industry list-serve. What’s a list-serve? It’s a Web 1.0 era technology based on group communication by email. A person may send an email to the main list and everyone on the list receives it. If one person responds to the list address, all list members receive the reply, and so on.

Proper list etiquette dictates that one should ask other list members if it’s alright to post their responses to a blog. In this case, I haven’t haven’t done that, but I will do so in future. I’ve also gone to the trouble of deleting email addresses in my replies for privacy reasons.

In the meantime, I will start to post my comments to the list here. It’ll probably be a bit difficult to follow if I’m not posting other responses to the subject matter. My responses without context may seem a bit hard to follow, but rest assured, I’ll try my best to briefly give a synopsis of the discussion, so that you’ll be able to follow.
Here are two of my responses to the discussion about whether start-ups should give equity to copyright holders in exchange for the right to exploit their content.

from Tony Zeoli <djtonyz@netmix.com> to Fred W <address_deleted@gmail.com> cc address_deleted@pennydistribution.com, Pho List<address_deleted@onehouse.com> date Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:57 PM subject Re: Pho: The Record Industry Innovation Prize mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 10:57 PM (2 hours ago)

Reply

This is nothing new and its already happening, especially at UMG. They have an investment arm that takes a look at fledgling start-ups. I’ve gone through this process personally. It’s not that simple. UMG, or any label for that matter, has to believe that the business is going to be viable to invest the time and energy into doing the deals. Record labels can’t just let anyone and everyone use their catalogs, because there have to be some controls in place.

According to the writer, the record labels should set up some kind of independent entity where new start-ups can register. The problem with that is who decides amongst the labels who gets the right to exploit my catalog? Each major label has a competing philosophy. And, if I’m the start-up and most of my success comes from two out of the four majors, why should I give equal equity to all four, when only 2 our of the 4 should be rewarded for giving me content that grows my business.

Also, if I’m the business development executive at UMG (or any label for that matter), I’m definitely going to keep a watchful eye on how the companies catalog is being exploited. Remember, the artists control their image, not the label (although it seems so). And if an artist finds out that he or she is being misrepresented or improperly exploited on a 3rd party web site, all kinds of problems can ensue.

I went through this at StarStyle.com with Gwen Stefani’s management, because Interscope simply didn’t notify Jim Guerinot that we were working on a co-promotion with Gwen’s brand Lamb, which was in conjunction with Interscope’s Strategic Marketing. Someone in business affairs at Interscope didn’t realize that we had a deal with UMG or that we’d gotten approval from the SM department. Instead of checking on the rights, that person went straight to management, they complained and we were subsequently asked to take down the video and the promotion. Because we were so small, we had to oblige lest we cause problems and word spread throughout UMG that we weren’t “doing the right thing.” All this, even though we had a deal with UMG corporate and we got approval from Strategic Marketing. It’s all highly political. And in fairness, if I were Jim Guerinot, I would have done the same thing.

Artists like Gwen Stefani command heavy upfront minimum guarantees to exploit their image beyond what the record label can or can’t control. So if I was running a promotion with Gwen Stefani through the label’s Strategic Marketing department, because I didn’t clear it with management, it becomes problematic.

So, although the intent is admirable, the execution is more difficult than one would think. Once you do the deal with the label, you’re on your own to deal with the individual artists both through the label and through management. The politics of this is extremely volatile and needs to be handled with extreme care.

–
Best regards,

Tony Zeoli, Founder
Netmix Media
• Web 2.0 Design & Product Development
• Digital Strategy & Online Marketing

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from Tony Zeoli <djtonyz@netmix.com> to John Mitchell <address_deleted@interactionlaw.com> cc Fred W <address_delted@gmail.com>, address_delted@pennydistribution.com, Pho List <address_delted@onehouse.com> date Sat, May 24, 2008 at 11:52 PM subject Re: Pho: The Record Industry Innovation Prize mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 11:52 PM (1 hour ago)

Reply

We’ve all heard the complaints about it being “messed up,” but if I’ve got 100 start-ups trying to engage my company to do business, the right decision has to be made about which companies I believe will grow help grow the value of my catalog, for that’s my bread and butter. I see your point, where you say “king makers,” but we have to remember that labels invest millions of dollars (both wisely and unwisely), have thousands of employees who’s livelihood depends on future success, and who have the right to profit from the commercial exploitation of a product (music) they’ve invested in.

If I’m a label, I need to make sure that anyone who comes to the party can execute against the strategy collectively set internally, and that each independent entity is on board with that strategy. If I just list the pricing and let anyone come to the party, control is lost. I’ve worked for and run music-centric businesses and have been on both sides of the equation. As I get older, wiser and infinitely more knowledgeable about how to run a business, control is crucial. No one yells at Apple for their tight control of the iPod ecosystem, but everyone gets pissy with a major label for not allowing other companies to come to the party. I’m sure that Belkin pays a pretty penny for the right to exploit their after-market products to Apple. You never hear about that, you only hear when people (like me…lol) complain that a label won’t do business. In corporate America, you have to exploit your products while keeping control of the image you want out there.

I’ll give you another example of control. I know that Beatport is actually turning down new labels with few releases who want to market themselves through the site, because they want the perception to be that they’ve got the best underground dance and urban music. That is a form of control. They are gatekeeping the new jacks who need distribution to sell their products. Now, what if that music doesn’t really sell? Many of Beatport’s users would be turned off by the overpopulation of sucky music on the site. So, some sort of control is necessary.

For anyone reading this, I am not getting into the debate of whether artists should or shouldn’t get their just rewards. This is absolutely NOT about that. The point I’m simply making is that if you are a business, you have the right to control your distribution and reach so that you can shape the message to the market. That is business 101. If I’m a singer songwriter, I don’t want to be on a head bangers ball web site. If I’m hip hop, don’t put me on a gay dance music site. So, control goes both ways. The artist want to control their image just as the labels wants to control their distribution. That’s not “messed up,” it’s simply good business.

Tony Z.

Music Industry Downfall, Part II: The Rise of Social Streaming Written by Alex Patriquin (contact - e-mail) — May 12th, 2008 | If any industry has felt the brunt of the internet as a disruptive technology, it’s the music industry, which has been dealt a heavy blow by the onset of digital music distribution.

According to Compete’s measurements, the majority of activity for online music are free streaming music services. A distant second is legal downloads, then subscriptions followed by P2P downloading.

read more | digg story

Amit Gindha from the New Tech Meetup Group in NYC sent this to me today. I was surprised to see myself on camera at the Web 2.0 Expo. Didn’t think I’d make the cut.

Okay, so the last few days have been slow on the Netmix front. Reason: I’ve been finishing up some homework for the end of the semester at NYU, where I’m taking classes towards a degree in Digital Communications and Media. Trying to consult to clients, get my DJ career back on track, go to school and be a great boyfriend to my girlfriend, Missy, certainly doesn’t leave a lot of room for much more. However, since I’m enjoying the independent freelance life and am between projects, it’s given me some downtime to think through some new ideas I’m putting in the pipeline.

First, I launched a splash page for my Product Development consulting company, NetmixMedia.com, which will also develop internal projects that I’ll cover to follow. NetmixMedia will specialize in Information Architecture, Usability and People-centered design of Web 2.0 sites and applications. I’m working with a LAMP, Flash, Flex and Ruby developers to execute exciting media projects for our clients. We just finished up a blog-a-zine project for a major media company and wrapped up a fix for a project for Pepsi Cola. The next project starts up in a few weeks and we’re fielding calls from a number of other organizations. Feel free to contact me with your RFP at info@netmixmedia.com.

Going out to Web 2.0 in San Francisco was incredibly inspiring. I also just joined a new Facebook group, Ultra Light Startups, which held its first meeting this week at the offices of Rose Ventures, a angel investment firm that operates Angelsoft, a web site that helps angel groups organize and search for new projects to invest in.

I’ve been working lately with a great group of guys who manage an offshore team and we’ve been discussing the opportunity to work together to build some cool applications for the DJ market. I’ve got a couple of things in mind that I’d love to launch in an “ultra light” kind of way and I’m looking for DJs, developers and other web savvy DJ culture oriented individuals who want to join in the fun and work together to bring this project out in a “Twitter-esque” manner. I’m already talking to some friends in San Francisco and a few here in New York. It’s exciting to have that bug again and I’m gearing up to bring the idea to market.

The domain I’ll be launching that will service the DJ market is DJGig.com. It’s not live yet. It’s in the planning stages now and there are a few hurdles to jump over before I get it up and running.

The second domain is EroticDisco.com. That’ll be a web site featuring the world’s hottest (as in looks and sex appeal) DJs. I may keep it all female or I may decide to open it up to men as well, to serve the both the ladies and the gay market. It’ll be tough because men who love to look at women won’t necessarily want to see male DJs on the home page, so it may have to have a dual entry page so we can keep things separate and cater to both audiences.

So, all you hot (looking) female and male Djs out there who want to submit photos or video, the rules will be no nudity (want to keep this clean as I can possibly keep it while pushing the envelope, of course) and the shots must be highly stylized and be in a nightlife environment. It’s about DJs and nightlife, so it has to be in that setting only. No bedrooms, no street shots. Nightclubs and lounges are the only acceptable environments.

As the blog grows, I will be producing a calendar and possibly a digital movie release for download. All entrants will have to sign agreements and once we select the top photos or videos for the calendar and digital movie release, we’ll negotiate licensing fees.

I’m just waiting on the designs from a young, talented designer from New York, Ann Li. Once those are approved, I’ll be integrating the theme into Wordpress and off we go. Stay tuned for more on this and other news.

Peace,

Tony Z.

Austin Ventures, the VC and private equity firm, has launched its eighth mini-rollup fund in the last five years, and this is an intriguing one: it is putting $50 million into a vehicle led by former CEO of Razorfish, Jeff Dachis.

Valleywag, a tech gossip blog, reports that Dachis will move to Austin, TX to head up the venture. Dachis former company, Razorfish, was a cutting edge digital design studio building web sites for corporate clients in the Web 1.0 era. He founded Bond Art + Science, another high end digital shop in the years after he sold Razorfish.

In the 90’s, he had also bankrolled RSub, a network of web sites using the latest Flash technologies to publish artsy content from subculture publishers, which was loosely attached to the Razorfish organization. The site is still live, but I’m not sure from glancing at it if it’s been updated recently or if any of the publishers in the network are still live. It looks cool though!

I’m reporting on this, because at one point, I entertained the idea of selling Netmix to Dachis in 1998. At that point, I wasn’t sure if the money was right, so I held out. Maybe I was a bit overwhelmed by the Razorfish organization, but one of my chief concerns is that I would be selling into RSub and not the Razorfish entity, so I chose to back out of the deal and keep the company. In hindsight, aligning myself with Jeff probably wouldn’t have been a bad thing and we all make our decisions and have to live with them. I still have own the URL and I’m still independent, so maybe that’s a good thing. History will tell.

read more | digg story

Call me crazy, but isn’t the purpose of LinkedIn to set up a profile and network with other users yourself? I got this message today from from a colleague of a guy named Pete Basset of QuiteGreat.co.uk. If Pete couldn’t take the time to contact me himself, then why should I take the time to network with him? So, I hit delete.

Now, it seems that Pete owns a PR and communications company. I guess he must be using LinkedIn like he does the press. He’s got his lackey blanketing everyone to see what sticks.

How many of you use someone else to troll through your LinkedIn or Facebook friends to make your connections, instead of doing it yourself? If you’re a fairly discerning person, why would you entrust someone to make friends or business relationships with people you might not really want to know? And, lastly, what if your lackey started hitting up people you really don’t like? Not much of a filter, is it?

There are people I come across on LinkedIn that I’d never invite into my network of friends. If the person I assign the task to has to come back to me and ask if it’s okay to send a message to this person or that person, did you really save time in the first place?

That being said, until technology advances to the point someone can think like me, act like me and be just about as picky as I am about who I let into my social web–be sure you’ll never get a message from someone I directed to use my profile to contact you.

In this video interview with Portfolio Magazine, Korean music executive Jin-Young Park discusses broadband penetration in South Korea and how that has affected music sales and what he believes is the death of the album as we know it. He sees a future in singles sales and the band as a brand, it’s name plastered over phone cards, devices, merchandise and a host of other marketable products.

What may be great for the pop-star isn’t as appealing to musicians who are cautious about selling out. The jury is still out on how those artists are going to survive in a music business that could ultimately be even more damaged by aligning itself with corporations than actually being about the music and the fan first. If music fans are willing to accept the double-edged trade off, then take the check and cash it.

NEW YORK, Feb. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Pulse 87.7 FM, the rhythmic top 40 station will be launched by Mega Media Group (OTC Bulletin Board: MMDA) (www.megamediagroup.com), on February 11th at 6am, the station will feature the Highly popular Star & Buc Wild Morning Show which will debut on February 18th weekdays from 6 to 10am and today’s top music hits. Joel Salkowitz will become the station’s program director.

Industry Veteran Joel Salkowitz To Lead Station

Salkowitz is a veteran major market programming and operations executive, who recently served as Vice President of Music Programming and Content at Sirius Satellite Radio. Prior to joining Sirius, Salkowitz was with Clear Channel Communications as a Format Director and Brand Manager overseeing the launch and programming for 10 major market stations, as well as serving as Program Director for JAMMIN 105 — New York (WTJM-FM). His past experience also includes management, production and programming positions at Fox Television, E.M.I. Records, Westwood One, ABC Radio, NBC Radio and Emmis Communications. As Regional VP of Programming at Emmis’ HOT97 (WQHT) in New York, he helped develop the Rhythm Top 40 format that dominated contemporary radio during the late 1980s and early 1990s and was also responsible for overseeing programming at Emmis’ WAVA (Washington DC) and WLOL (Minneapolis).

Commenting on the announcement, Mega Media Group CEO, Alex Shvarts stated “I am pleased that Joel is leading our radio team. His wealth of experience with building stations and managing major market radio personnel will prove invaluable to the launch of Pulse 87.”

Also commenting on the announcement, Salkowitz said, “I am excited to be a part of a new, independent radio business that I can help to grow from its very inception. It will be especially gratifying to work with Star who is one of the top morning talents in the country and who was able to have such a huge impact on not one, but two radio stations in New York. He’s a one-of-a-kind personality and together with a unique music format, we’re going to give New York something to get excited about on the radio again.”

According to a recently published research paper, “Does Chatter Matter,” NYU Stern Professor Vasan Dhar along with his former student Elaine Chang, discovered there is a direct correlation between the number of blog posts on the Web and subsequent sales of albums being discussed. In a sampling of 108 album releases from January and February of 2007, Dhar and Chang found sales were three times the average if “legitimate blog posts reached a threshold of 40.”

The study also reports major label album sales “increased five-fold” if they got some love from the blogosphere. If postings exceeded 250 then sales reached up to 6 times the average “regardless of an association with a major or independent label.”

They also reported that MySpace had an impact on sales as well. Artists with extensive friends lists saw an increase, but the direct effect was less than the results from blog postings.

Source: mi2n.com