Bloggers, the new Digital Gatekeepers?

In a music world were artists increasingly find themselves competing for attention and listeners have endless opportunities to discover new music, bloggers are gaining trust and credibility among other fans in recommending new music. Most bloggers are true music fans who want to discover great new music and share it with other fans. They can serve a very crucial role of promoters and filters, becoming, in fact, real taste makers and directing new listeners toward new music. Acknowledging the fact that bloggers can truly help bands to get attention is the first step for artists and labels toward a less hierarchical relationship with their audience. Bloggers are also more approachable then most print journalists. Fans respect bloggers because they are passionate about music and they write for love instead of a paycheck. Hypebot confirms this opinion in this recent post and in another post of a while ago where they mentioned about a study made by New York University's Stern Business School which monitored blogs chats for 108 albums for four weeks before and after their release dates. According to Hypebot the study showed that the volume of blog posts led to future sales, but that large increases in an artist’s Myspace friends had a weaker correlation to sales. You can access the whole report here. It would be interesting to know to which extent bloggers are receiving any sort of pressure from record labels to talk about their artists.