online music

The facts speak for the themselves: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million and is selling it this week to Specific Media for $35 million. It made its purchase price back perhaps a couple times over by crapping out the site with innumerable ads (remember, News Corp. was simply exploring new distribution channels and the ad model was the most obvious way to monetize the thing). But users abandoned MySpace in droves, from a peak of 90 million in 2006 to 18 million 4 years later. Today, the thing is all but dead.

Last spring I wrote a research memo for the Convergence Culture Consortium about dealing with the unfettered flow of content in contemporary entertainment industries. It’s now public and you can download the PDF here:

This week MySpace announced it is laying off  half of its workforce. This follows an attempt at rebranding itself as a “social entertainment hub,” a new and widely-ridiculed logo, and a warning from its parent corporation to shape up or get sold.

I’ve been continuing to analyze the data I collected about friendships on Last.fm. Last week I presented a paper at Internet Research 10.0 in Milwaukee co-authored with Kiley Larson, Andrew Ledbetter, Michelle McCudden and Ryan Milner in which we combined quantitative analysis of motivations people had for friending with qualitative answers to questions about what they get out of friending.

by: Karl Long

The insanity of music DRM stolen from XKCD

by: David Jennings

by: David Jennings

All through last week the smart people at BBC Radio Labs published a series of research summaries under the heading "fan cultures in radio".

by: David Jennings

I have a theory that the way we get to know music is a bit like the way we get to know potential mates. After the initial attraction, there's a flirting, getting-to-know-you stage; and then there's a going steady stage. One difference is that, with music, polygamy is fine, and it's OK to be going steady and promiscuous at the same time!

by: Nancy Baym

Last week, Coldplay made their new single “Violet Hill” available free for one week (one week? lame) for download from their official website. Last.fm tracked its listens and what a lot of them there were: