Twitter Users Helping The Music Industry
NPD Group, a leading market research group, found in a study that active Twitter users buy 77 percent more digital music on average than non-users, and 12 percent have bought music in the last three months.
"Based on their music-purchasing history, active Twitter users are simply worth more to record labels and music retailers than those who are not using Twitter," says NPD entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick.
The study showed that a third of all Twitter users reported buying a CD in the prior three months, and 34 percent reported buying music digitally, compared to 23 percent and 16 percent for Web users overall.Â
Another one-third of people that Tweet listened to music through social network sites, and 41 percent listened to music using an online radio player. Thirty nine percent of the people on Twitter watch online music videos.
Overall, they are twice as likely to visit an online music player, like Pandora or MySpace Music, than the average Web users.
"Twitter has the potential to help foster the discovery of new music, and improve targeted marketing of music to groups of highly-involved and technologically savvy consumers, but it has to be done right," Crupnick said.
"There must be a careful balance struck between entertainment and direct conversation on one hand, and marketing on the other. Used properly Twitter has the power to entertain — and to motivate music fans to purchase more new albums, downloads, merchandise, and concert tickets."
The four major music labels, which are EMI Music, Warner Music, Sony and Universal Music, all have Twitter accounts.
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