Matt Rosoff's Digital Noise blog has a post on a Fast Company article on Duncan Watts (now with Yahoo!, on sabbatical from Columbia University) that touches upon the cumulative advantage (I've posted about that a few times). In a nutshell, Watts says companies are wasting their money trying to reach trendsetters and that highly connected people aren't crucial to a viral message spreading. In the age of social media and user recommendations, that's more true than ever. It's a good article for fans of "The Tipping Point" and "Freakonomics" (Gladwell is quoted, and Levitt is mentioned).

In the context of the music industry, labels and managers spend a great deal of time and money courting trendsetters (journalists, club goers, bloggers, insiders, all-purpose scenesters) in hopes that the word will spread. For a dollars and cents point of view, viral campaigns certainly have their advantages over the typical means of influence.