Music-focused Facebook Fido's special trick is to help sell more digital downloads

Yesterday, I wrote that music is not a consumer good. Today, I write about how music is a consumer good.

The current issue of Wired magazine introduced me to Music Pets, a Facebook-linked virtual-pet game where the little darlings demand to be fed with music. Music that you have to buy. Or, eventually, the pet will starve. (You can go to the full article by clicking on the image, above.)

The article points out that more than 1 million people have signed up to Music Pets since it was launched a month ago. Under all the virtual-pet cuteness (which has made my skin crawl since the day of the Tamagotchi) is smart software very similar to what Amazon uses to track our purchases: if you bought this, you might like that...

Whether or not we approve of all the sites that follow us around, taking note of our preferences and tastes, you have to admit, that is exactly how most people consume culture. For a generation raised with a mouse in one hand and a wiimote in the other, Music Pets makes perfect sense.