What a difference a day (or two) makes.  For a short while, it seemed like a music-lover’s dream come true – a site where they could legally download music for free and from a catalogue of 25 million songs.

It was a short-lived dream, however. Once the hype of the £500,000 launch in Cannes at the weekend had died down, it became apparent that not a single deal had been signed with any of the big players. Warner, EMI, Sony BMG and Universal have all stated that they have not agreed deals, although Warner and Universal have confirmed that they were in negotiations with the site.

Qtrax’s founders insist that it’s just a case of the ink not having dried on the deals yet, and that the service will be good to go in a matter of months. In the meantime, presumably, they will be contemplating the wisdom of launching a service that you cannot actually provide and where the hype you generate from the event struggles to outlast the hangovers.

I hope they are successful, though, because the idea behind the site is a beautiful and simple one: revenue from advertisers enables free content for the site’s users. This has worked well for the newspapers, and it is surely only a matter of time before the record industry realises that this is the way to go.

According to a report due out today by trends research consultancy The Future Laboratory, social networking sites are increasingly being used to generate income. The research was commissioned by MySpace and found that almost three million people in the UK have made money from their page. It seems that traditionally low-performing revenue sources have thrived on the opportunities offered by social networking, with nearly a million users starting a new business as a result.

The report, MySpace08, states: “MySpace has been the incubator of teen and twenty something ‘culturepreneurs’, a new generation of business-minded culture obsessives who generate income from arty pursuits - club nights, fanzines, handmade jewellery, street theatre, stand-up, indie clothing lines, films, street art, DVDs - that have previously been notoriously poor sources of revenue.”

The report concludes that this will be a phenomenon that really takes off in 2008, with millions more users set to follow those pioneering culturepreneurs.

Figures released in November last year would suggest that it’s not simply a teen/twenties thing; according to the Evening Standard, Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is the 25+ professional. A third of Britons now regularly use social networks at work, rising to 56% of 24 to 35 year olds.

Business social networks are steadily gaining popularity in the business community, with LinkedIn surging ahead of its competitors. In 2007, LinkedIn made 189% growth to over 16 million global members from 150 different industries. 2008 looks set to be the year in which social networking for businesses will really take off.