Where Music Breaks

Some interesting comments from Jimmy Guterman in a post over on O'Reilly Radar today. But this snippet about discoverability caught my eye:

Until the 1980s, record companies looked to radio to break new artists. Until five years ago, the place to launch new performers was video. For most of this decade, the breakdown of traditional music channels has led to new songs being noticed via video games, television shows, and -- most of all - commercials. Whoever is programming the music for Apple's television commercials may be, right now, the most powerful talent scout in the record industry.

To prove his point, Guterman uses the example of the current top selling song on the US iTunes store being the song used in the MacBook Air commercial.