Market research firm The NDP Group has issued a report that says Web users who are active on social networking site Twitter are more engaged with music and, more importantly, tend to be more likely to purchase music online.
The firm bases these conclusions on less than 4,000 completed surveys for its quarterly music-acquisition study.
First, the engagement: according to the report, one-third of surveyed Twitter users listened to music on a social networking site, 41% listened to online radio (compared to 22% among all Web users) and 39% watched a music video online (versus 25% among all Web users) during the first quarter. Twitter users are also said to be twice to visit services like MySpace Music and Pandora than average Web users.
Music buyers’ awareness of Twitter was 67% in the first quarter, compared with 52% of general Web users; 12% of music buyers said they used Twitter in the past three months, versus 8% overall. Some 33% of Twitter users purchased a CD recently, compared with 23% of Web users.
Twitter users also seem to be more keen on purchasing music online, according to NDP: 34% bought a digital download, compared with 16% of general Web users. Apparently, they buy more on average too, 77% more so than users who are not on Twitter (yet).
Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, commented:
“[This] study shows that there are segments of consumers who are more actively integrating Twitter as a key tool for communicating and networking. 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.”
We recently wrote about artist duo TRV$DJAM offering a download of their new mixtape free of charge in exchange of a tweet, and how Twitter helped Universal Motown Republic put one of its new artists, Asher Roth, on the map. You can find a lot of music-related applications tied to Twitter in this post.
(Via @gleonhard and DMW)
Makes sense. I ended up getting a beta invite for http://www.jamwee.com – it’s pretty much like twitter for music and has been awesome so far. These guys are going much farther than blip, especially with some of the social networking elements it’s bringing to the table.
I’ve already bought about 3 songs in my 2 weeks of testing it.
Yep, also makes sense because Twits are too stupid to steal music like everyone else.
http://www.anonboard.com
I don’t know whether I purchase more music than the next person but through Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed I interact with many sources as they share their favourite tunes. Sites like Last.fm/hype machine have replaced the need to download music and listen to conventional radio.
Last.fm and hypeM do an awesome job of opening your eyes up to new music. I’ve been using last.fm for a while now and it’s only getting better. Gotta say I’m pretty interested in what the guys over at http://www.jamwee.com have going on though as well.
I’m a big fan of last.fm…probably bought about 10 songs just from using their service.
last.fm is arguably the only music search engine you need.
Is it really something strange? it is quite an obvious conclusion, isn’t it?
I didn’t realize that the Internet population has been divided into: Twitter users, and non-Twitter users.
Go figure.
Yea i also want to reply like you did.
@cinger Isn’t it great? I’m a Twitter user and I love being part of the elite group of early adopters and Internet users that are better tha
yeah, elite users who create the loser generated content and make millions to startups
does anyone care? Really? Or do you just like the smell of your own fart @Cory?
Some people use twitter for an actual purpose (getting organized quickly), while 98% just feed their ego.
Sorry, but you totally missed the joke. I formatted my reply as if it were a tweet, even cutting out my message after 140 characters.
Sorry to have apparently offended you enough to use the word “fart” in a comment, though.
Hi Robin,
I didn’t know about this until I read your post. I guess from now on I should sell music via Twitter.
Thanks for the great post.
Mani Raj
Havoc Marketing
“As you all know by now that Twitter is growing exponentially and its one of the best marketing tool available online today.”. Piss off, just piss off.
Well I guess that its having the same effect in a way, doing viral marketing for musicians in the same way that MySpace did initially… except in this case there’s FAR more of an interaction, which has got to improve interest, which would lead to more sales… It took a survey to realise this ?
Which means: Twitter’s users are moron.
There should be a survey to verify this claim!
Early adopters in one tech likely to be early adopters in other tech shock!
“…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.”
all 20 of them.
Hmm, now I know where to promote my music pieces.. LOL
I wonder how many are Mac users?
I think Twitter should be the President of the United States of the World.
Robin Wauters from Tech Crunch, The research company is called The NPD Group not NDP Group. I have a friend who works there.
Sounds like one potential business model for the currently unprofitable Twitter. Time will tell what others will be discovered.
I love these numbers – it’s always interesting to see whose doing what.
Now, lets see if Twitter can shift the numbers to the larger, later adopter (not “late”…”later”), crowd.
I think they can. And then some of these third parties who leverage Twitter will make a ton of cash.
Should be able to stream music to followers via a service like SeeqPod.
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Non-twitter vs. twitter buckets? Makes good blog fodder but provides absolutely no insight into music purchasing habits. Wish they would have provided a comparison of social networks (e.g. of FB, MySpace, Twitter users, which subset purchases the most music per year? etc.)
That is an interesting correlation. I don’t doubt it though since Twitter would be an amazing place to get advice as to which new music is hot etc.