A couple of days ago I was on a panel discussion with some old and new friends about artist analytics at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville. We had a great conversation and since Denis Barnabé asked if there was a summary, I am providing an overview of the comments I made:

• Band Metrics is a data analytics and decision support system for the music industry. What that means is that our system collects comprehensive information about musicians and bands from across the Internet landscape, providing insights about this data in an easy-to-use dashboard. For example, Band Metrics can provide insight into what social networks are the most effective for an artist, helping an artist make decisions as to where he/she should spend their time, energy and resources.
• By understanding how your fans are using your music, and what they're saying about your music, you are unveiling your fans' online behaviors and personalities - likes and dislikes - a level of view never before possible. This in turn creates endless ways for you to engage and collaborate with them in meaningful ways.
• For Band Metrics, analysis of artist data is not about finding new ways to sell music; rather, it's about finding ways to build meaningful relationships with your fans, connecting with them in deeper ways. As such, increased sales for artists becomes a byproduct of building a great fan relationship.
• Getting to the question of why an artist and/or song is popular, while difficult and a long-term future capability, is exciting. That is to say, Band Metrics hopes to eventually understand why ground swells form from particular social communities around particular bands, songs and/or genres.
• The comment from our moderator that sometimes we measure the wrong things and rely on data we later learn is inaccurate is a true statement, and it’s one of the reasons why we believe that measuring artist data is a process. That is to say, it's going to take time and it will be a collaborative effort with bands and musicians, as artist data is only as good as the analysis and visualization performed.
• Band Metrics is tracking large amounts of data. For example, if you take one song from one band on one day, you’re going to have data relative to playing, downloading, commenting, sharing, recommending, liking, etc., so there are multiple challenges to collecting and analyzing this kind of data, for example: retrieval from disparate music services, data associations, storage, indexing and searching the data, data visualizations, and understanding behavioral patters surrounding the data, among other challenges.
• It's an exciting time to be an artist. There are more opportunities than ever before, and Band Metrics is aimed at helping artists tease out what those opportunities are through analyzing and experimenting over and over.