Chicken and Egg? Interplay between Music Blog Buzz and album Sales

This paper examines the interrelationship between music blog buzz and album sales, examining both time precedence and the contemporaneous relationship between the two. Using the Granger Causality methodology to examine time precedence, we find evidence of bi-directional causality for the full sample of music albums we are examining as well as for both independently released and major-label released music albums. Next, we employ two-stage least squares analysis to quantify the contemporaneous relationships between music blog buzz and album sales. Preliminary results indicate that blog buzz has a positive and significant relationship with album sales and that this relationship is stronger for independently released music. Results from this study have implications for the music industry, particularly music labels and artists in making decisions about album promotion.