SXSW and social media. A match made in interactive-hipster heaven.

While browsing through the lineup for the 2008 SXSW Music Festival, something occurred to me. While I volunteer for the music portion, and am interested in the film portion as well, there is a very important facet of the conference I vastly overlook, the interactive festival. Sure, it doesn't offer the drawing tactics of famous musicians in a commonplace setting, or actors attending star-studded premieres. But just because the interactive fest isn't the most glamorous of venues, doesn't mean it lacks in interest and crowd pleasing offerings.

I work the music panels at the fest, and thought there might be some decent interactive panels as well. As it turns out, the interactive portion of the festival boasts significantly more for professionals. A list of panels by category shows 17 on Social Media alone. One of the keynote speakers is Mark Zuckerburg, founder of hugely popular networking site Facebook. One of the panels that I found particularly interesting, as well as incredible applicable to our class, is entitled "Harnessing the Power of Social Networking on Your Intranet". Led by Bill Cava, Chief Technology Officer for Ektron, the panel focuses on how social networking can make your company's intranet a collaborative tool, for creation and delivery of business documents. Social networking, in this capacity, can be used as a tool to provide feedback between employees and to assure consistency of message.

How does an album get better sales? By being blogworthy, of course!

A recent study done by NYU's Stern Business School shows that the amount of online "chatter" about an upcoming album release directly correlates to higher physical album sales. Researchers studied 108 albums released in 2007 to see how various outside elements affected the sales once the album had been released, and found that all had an effect in one way or another. Certain elements, however, proved to have more impact than others. Which elements, you ask? Say it with me now, BLOGGING and SOCIAL NETWORKING. I may sound like a broken record here, but article after article points to the strengths of web 2.0 as a marketing tool.

Researchers studied Amazon.com sales ranks (Nielsen Soundscan Ratings are too costly), as well as articles, blog posts, and Myspace presence for each album listed over a period of eight weeks. Findings showed that blogs tended to be the most strongly correlated to high album sales. According to the findings, if 40 or more legitimate blog posts- legitimate as in written by regular people, not marketers- were made prior to an album's release, sales ended up being three times the average.

This success is not limited to albums released under the umbrella of the "Big 4" labels, Independent releases reaped the same benefits. The study also discovered, as bad a rap as Myspace gets, that the number of Myspace friends a band has also correlates to album sales. Take this finding with a grain of salt, however, as the law of numbers proves that more friends generally equals more people ready to buy the album and support the band. That being said, while social networks are a new phenomenon and a good catalyst for high album sales, they simply cannot compare to a review from a notable source like Rolling Stone Magazine or one of it's counterparts.

As I've said before, I am a regular reader of music blogs like Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan, and I buy into the hype. I'm still loyal to the bands I've like all along. A negative Pitchfork review wouldn't deter me from buying, say the new Radiohead album. I'll admit though, that If a band I'm unfamiliar with gets intense praise, I will look into it, and perhaps buy the album. So yes, the hype machine (as we've collectively termed it) claims another victim. But really, is that such a bad thing?