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Twitter makes money for music industry. Musicians just make money
25 June 2009

A poll on the habits of nearly 4,000 internet users has found that Twitter users buy more music than their tweet free cousins. Twitter users were more likely to have purchased a CD in the last three months ( 33% vs 23%) and much more likely to have purchased a digital download (34% vs 16%) according to the study conducted by NPD.

Twitter users were also more likely to listen to online radio, listen to music online on social networking sites and watching music videos online

Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD said “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.”

However it's not just the record labels who are making more money using Twitter. Indie musician Amanda Palmer has told how she made $19,000 in a month by leveraging a 30,000 strong Twitter fan base.


Palmer says the idea stemmed from a joke to her fans on twitter,


“i hereby call THE LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS to ORDER.” 9:15 PM May 15th from web

The hashtag #LOFNOTC hit Twitter's trending topics and she quickly started selling t-shirts that were frantically designed on the spot with a magic marker.


Palmer is understandably excited by what she has been able to gain despite making little from the record deal exclaiming:

TOTAL MADE THIS MONTH USING TWITTER = $19,000
TOTAL MADE FROM 30,000 RECORD SALES = ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.