"In this study, we examine the usefulness of such content, consisting of data from blogs and social networking sites in predicting sales in the music industry. We track the changes in online chatter for a sample of 108 albums for four weeks before and after their release dates. Our findings are as follows: (a) the volume of blog posts about an album is positively correlated with future sales, (b) greater increases in an artist’s Myspace friends week over week have a weaker correlation to higher future sales, (c) traditional factors are still relevant – albums released by major labels and albums with a number of reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone also tended to have higher future sales." Download the paper here