The easiest way to understand VEVO is that it is to music videos what Hulu is to TV shows: a corporate (in this case record labels) founded, ad-supported way to aggregate and serve up videos on the Web. Instead of having to wade through all the user-made junk on YouTube to find the real, high-grade and high-quality music videos, VEVO's channel features only label or artist-produced videos, with great sound and video quality (though not HD yet).

ikill4u784 says, "OMG! it cant sneak up as most views in less than a week. i've never even seen this with 25m views b4!"

Chargrad says "What... The... Hell... even with hot hot sex in the title how can this have got so many views?!?"

mattjsrules says, "This only had 4 million views 2 weeks ago wtf? someone must of refreshed it 80 million times or someone hacked."

The amount of online "chatter" about an upcoming album release directly correlates to higher physical album sales, according to two researchers with New York University's Stern Business School. Professor Vasant Dhar and former student Elaine Chang observed the trends of 108 albums released during the first two months of 2007 to see how different outside elements affected (or predicted) sales once the albums became available, and found that all of them had some effect or another. But certain elements of online chatter-namely blogs and social networks-seemed to be fairly accurate predictors of future success.

The researchers followed the Amazon sales ranks for each of the 108 albums over a period of eight weeks (they said that Nielsen SoundScan stats would have been ideal, but they are costly and proprietary), as well as articles, blog postings, and MySpace friend counts about them. The blogosphere appeared to be most strongly correlated to better album sales-if 40 or more legitimate (written by normal people and not by marketers) blog posts were made before an album's release, sales ended up being three times the average.

That trend doesn't just apply to music from the Big Four, either. Albums from independent labels enjoyed the same level of success. But if an album was from a Big Four record label, sales increased five-fold after 40 legit blog posts. If blog posts crossed 250, album sales turned out to be six times the average, regardless of label.

Rolling Stone is the "authority figure" for judging music (just check out all their Wikipedia links), which doesn't reflect this generation's obsession with consumer-generated content. Blanchard plans to launch a separate site that will be a social network for music fans, complete with profiles and the ability to have a say in their "Best of" lists. Blanchard called it the "American Idol version of lists." Let's hope Sanjaya doesn't make it on any of those.

Blanchard also plans on digitizing all 1,000 back issues of Rolling Stone, to be available on the website or to purchase as a DVD set. This may be done by Christmas, so you can check Dad off the list.

I think RollingStone.com's makeover is highly overdue, and this is the perfect way to do it: keep the magazine just the way it is but add another online element that embodies youth culture.

When Keith Blanchard, Wenner Media's executive director for online media, including Us Weekly, Rolling Stone, and Men's Journal, asked our journalism class how many people visit Rolling Stone's website, only one person raised his hand.

In recent weeks, albums from indie acts The Shins and Arcade Fire both recently debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, selling about 90,000 units each. The two bands soared past releases by entrenched mainstream artists such as Christina Aguilera and Nickelback. And this week, Modest Mouse, a longtime independent powerhouse – now signed to Sony – made a splash with "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank."

The commercial explosion is no accident. Indie labels may have finally found a way to harness the Internet's sizable community of tastemakers. These music labels are bringing bloggers who have a reputation for posting legal and illegal MP3 tracks into the fold by purposefully leaking albums ahead of the release.

Much as iTunes created a palatable model of digital downloading, these labels increasingly rely on carefully controlled – and sometimes uncontrolled – leaks of MP3 files to publicize upcoming records. Ever since the arrival of file-sharing sites such as Napster and Grokster, entertainment firms have grappled with the question of whether to crack down on the sharing of copyright material or find a way to harness its spread to boost music sales. Even as major entertainment firms mull similar questions relating to the spread of unauthorized clips on YouTube, the popular video-sharing site, they will be keeping close watch on the effectiveness of such "leak" strategies by small labels.

The Pandora Community lets you check out other listener's profiles and find shared stations built on multiple users' likes and dislikes. If you're a social network lover, the new community features could be a great way to interact with your fellow music-lovers and discover new favorite songs and artists. And since we're so close to Christmas, don't forget that you can use Pandora to listen to holiday music!

On Tuesday, a lawyer for the Universal Music Publishing Group, a catalog owner and administrator, posted the text of a cease-and-desist letter in the comments section of Stereogum.com, a Web site carrying the video. It contended that Bank of America had violated Universal's copyright of the U2 song.

The two employees featured in the video were the guitarist, Jim Debois, a consumer market executive for Manhattan, and the singer, Ethan Chandler, a Manhattan banking center manager, who provoked much of the ridicule with his earnest interpretation and also for straying a bit far from U2's lyrics with lines like "Integration has never had us feeling so good/and we'll make lots of money."

Mr. Chandler, who has independently released an album and is working on another, said he was asked to write and perform the song for an August meeting of credit card division executives at MBNA headquarters in Wilmington, Del.

He said he was surprised to learn about the cease-and-desist letter, stressing that his performance was meant for an internal audience. "There was an approved list of songs to use," he said, "and as far I knew, that was an approved song."

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, is seen as part of a strategy by Universal to test provisions of a federal law that provides a "safe harbor" to Internet companies that follow certain procedures to filter out copyrighted works. The law requires sites to remove such content after being notified by the copyright holder.

If Universal can win in court, it is likely to gain leverage in negotiating licensing terms with user-driven services - just at the moment that those services are attracting deep-pocketed partners.

Earlier this year, Universal's chief executive, Doug Morris, publicly identified the YouTube video-sharing site and MySpace as copyright infringers. Universal successfully negotiated to take a stake in YouTube shortly before it was sold to Google for $1.65 billion, according to executives briefed on the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity. But licensing talks with MySpace recently reached an impasse.

MySpace said in a statement yesterday that it complied with the requirements of federal law. The company said it had kept Universal, a unit of Vivendi, "closely apprised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights, and it's unfortunate they decided to file this unnecessary and meritless litigation."

But Sony will also actively encourage fan sites and bloggers--who are mostly used to receiving cease-and-desist letters from studios--to link to the material. Links for adding Musicbox content are displayed on the site. Individuals thus could create sites focused around certain artists by linking to video channels on the Musicbox site dedicated to them, or link to several channels which, in the aggregate, comprise the most mawkish artists (in the view of the blogger) that Sony has to offer.

The turnabout largely comes amid a revamp of the company being conducted by CEO Howard Stringer. It is also taking place because the videos, in Flash, can't be pirated, at least not easily.

"In 2006, the new horizon for music is the Internet. And I don't mean MP3 piracy, which is old news by now. It's taken a long time to arrive, but I feel the true Internet music revolution is finally upon us. I'm talking about musicians having the ability to reach out to their fans and make music in close to real time, in their own back room, while never having to put themselves in hock to large corporations."

"I believe we're about to enter a fascinating new era for musicians and music fans, and I want a front row seat. So I’m putting my enterpreneurial activities behind me, and going back on the road. This is just the first step - before embarking on new songs I'm feeling a strong need to reconnect with my original music and my core fans, who (unbelievably!) have never stopped arguing about my songs and lyrics, even with the total dearth of fresh material. Certain music has the ability to become part of the fabric of your life, and it’s something you never outgrow. This tour will be a way for me, as well as the audiences, to rekindle the old excitement. Getting road-ready is a complicated process, but it's fun as hell. I'll be recording some of the process here on my blog. Hope you enjoy it!"

The engine and power of the movement is the blog. The blog will allow us to link hand in hand, one to another. Even those who are not Hammer Fans but appreciate blogging's empowerment are welcomed supporters. The blog is our commonality. My goal is to connect with Hammer Fans. Make new Hammer friends and meet with like minds. Those who believe in God, family and community. Through the blog I will eliminate sensationalism. You will have access to my many thoughts and truly get to know me without an intermediate.

That initial title will feature a mix of tracks by major-label, independent-label and unsigned acts, including Weezer, the All-American Rejects, Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, AFI, Against Me, Plain White T's, New Year's Day and Hollywood Undead.

The latter act, a Los Angeles rock/rap act, is MySpace's first signing. The group will issue its own album on the label early in the second quarter of 2006.

MySpace Records should find an immediate audience in users of the Web site that spawned it. MySpace, founded as an online community where members could share their likes and dislikes, has become a heavily trafficked home for musicians and music fans of all stripes.