A Force Behind Lady Gaga Inc – Evelyn M Rusli, NYTimes, Jun 2011
“Troy and Gaga are doing things with communications and fan relationships that we haven’t really seen before,” said Gary Briggs, a vice president at Google, who worked with Lady Gaga’s team on her recent TV commercial for Chrome, Google’s web browser… Amazon sold digital copies of Lady Gaga’s latest album, “Born This Way,” for 99 cents on May 23… Her fan base of so-called little monsters crashed Amazon’s servers on the first day of sales… Zynga recently began GagaVille, a special promotion that allowed FarmVille users to unlock her new songs and special virtual items like unicorns and crystals. Bing Gordon, a director at Zynga, called it a logical combination, saying “it’s all about entertainment.”
“Technology has long been the driver of growth in the music business from the invention of lacquers, eight-track players, vinyl, cassettes and CDs,” [Troy] Carter said. “In order to continue the growth we have to go back to embracing technology and the way that people choose to consume music.”
Collapse in illegal sharing and boom in streaming – Alexandra Topping, Guardian, Jul 2009
The survey of 1,000 fans also shows that many 14 to 18 year olds are now streaming music regularly online using services such as YouTube and Spotify. At the same time less than a third of teenagers are now illegally downloading music, the survey suggests. In January this year 26% of 14 to 18 year olds admitted filesharing at least once a month compared with 42% in December 2007.
The research revealed that many teenagers (65%) are streaming music regularly, with more 14 to 18 year olds (31%) listening to streamed music on their computer every day compared with music fans overall (18%). (Survey carried out by Music Ally)
