File-sharing is good for Big Music

From The Globe And Mail - Earlier today, Industry Canada, a ministry of the federal government, released a surprising study of peer-to-peer file-sharing on the music industry.

The study is called The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada, and was written by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, of the Department of Management at the University of London in England.

Its conclusion: P2P file-sharing does not put downward pressure on purchasing music, as the music industry has insisted for years. In fact, it does just the opposite: It tends to increase music purchasing.

What? | Read full article

MySpace hones targeting of online advertising

From The Globe And Mail - News Corp. has taken the next big step in the move toward commercializing social networks Monday by expanding MySpace's advertising platform, allowing advertisers to deliver precision-targeted banner ads based on user-created data.

Advertisers can now pinpoint exactly who they want to reach, based on data collected from users' personal profiles, the groups they join and the messages they post for their friends. For a studio looking to promote its latest vampire film, the technology represents the difference between advertising to movie fans en masse and reaching the 205 members of the Doomed Moviethon Horror Review group and others like it more directly. | Read full article