• Business Week, Friday, March 6, 2009 10:34 AM

I've recently read substantial portions of a book on Google Book Search http://books.google.com/books, then bought a copy on Amazon. Sometimes, I didn't buy. To me, it was a similar experience as browsing at Barnes & Noble. My rather myopic market research project that led me to believe that the model of giving away a heavy dose of content will lead to sales is belied by a story by Douglas McMillan, who says that music sites with freely accessible content are being used by a growing number of listeners as a substitute for buying music.

The hope had been that people would sample music on services such as Imeem, Last.fm, and Pandora and that the music labels would get a sales boost as listeners discovered new kinds of music. But McMillen writes that a consensus is emerging that online music sites are being used "as a substitute for purchasing music, rather than serving as a catalyst for more purchases."

Some record labels are looking at other ways they can squeeze value from the growth in streaming music. "You have a lot of real-time data about what's happening with a piece of music in the market," says Greg Scholl, president of independent music label The Orchard. Some of his artists use interactive dashboards to monitor where on the Web their music is being played, and even the demographic group and geographic location of the people playing it.

Read the whole story at Business Week »