zed equals zee

Part 2 of this week’s music and tech roundup (part 1 is here).

The 10 Commandments of Music 2.0… Hypebot’s concise list of how to engage your followers as an artist. Our fave is #3: “Thou Shalt Giveaway Free Music – Like Jesus and the loaf of bread, give your flock a gift that multiplies as they pass it around.”

…which Trent Reznor is no longer following. The pioneer of social media in music bails, citing the preponderance of jerks and trolls and haters on the Internet. Ironically, this might be a case where being a ‘legacy’ musician (ie pre-dating social media) may be a detriment, not an asset; Reznor’s take on the situation is that some of his fans are upset that the real, Twittering Reznor doesn’t match their long-held image of him.

Why people buy music. A survey of a thousand or so customers at independent music stores revealed a couple of interesting things: one, friends were the biggest influencers of music purchase. The second was that 65% of music store shoppers spent less than 10% of their music spending on digital purchases, which strongly suggests that they are a distinctive subset of the music-buying public (via @pampelmoose).

Virgin Media and Universal team up to offer unlimited downloads for a flat rate. Gizmodo reports that the record label and cable company are set to offer a new subscription service that will let you either stream or download (as DRM-free MP3s) as much music as you want for £10-15. It seems pretty steep for music from a single label, but it’s an interesting experiment (thanks, @mchangolin!)

[Image: The Crowd at a Rock Show on Subnormality; click for larger image]