Influence your Local Music Scene with Gigwish

Gigwish is a webapp that enables music enthusiasts to help influence their local music scene by voting for artists to play in their area, and then sharing their votes with their friends to encourage additional voting. The goal for music fans is to generate enough votes to influence promoters, booking agencies and venues to hire the acts they want to see (might be useful for an artist's street team).

SoundHound vs. Shazam

Out of curiosity, over the weekend I compared SoundHound and Shazam to see which one is the superior music identification app for the iPhone; below are my results:

Install time:
Shazam was slightly faster

Identification time:
no significant difference

User Interface:
SoundHound seems to offer slightly more features, but Shazam has a clean UI

Identification Test (all songs tested were played over my laptop via Pandora):
Airstream Driver by Gomez
SoundHound - identified the song/version/artist correctly
Shazam - failed first attempt; identified the song/version/artist correctly the second time

Hang 'Em High by The Meters
SoundHound - identified the song/version/artist correctly
Shazam - identified the song/version/artist correctly

Hope She Falls In Love by The Blue Dogs
SoundHound - failed to correctly identify the song/version/artist (tested twice)
Shazam - failed to correctly identify the song/version/artist (tested twice)

Hurricane Party (Live) by James McMurty
SoundHound - identified the song/version/artist correctly
Shazam - identified the song/version/artist correctly

Come Talk To Me by Get Busy Committee
SoundHound - failed first attempt; identified the song/version/artist incorrectly the second time as Come And Talk To Me (Remix) by Jodeci
Shazam - identified the song/version/artist incorrectly (tested twice; each time Come And Talk To Me (Remix) by Jodeci was identified

Artist Information:
Once the song/artist has been correctly identified, Shazam provides useful and readily accessible artist information (e.g. tour dates and Twitter/Facebook profile information), but SoundHound provides features Shazam does not, like a list of the albums the song has been featured on.

Price:
Both offer trial versions where Shazam appears to allow 5 free identifications per month, while SoundHound appears to only allow 5 total. Their paid versions both cost $4.99 and include unlimited music identifications. However, they should both increase the number of identifications provided with their trial versions to 10, as seemingly this would encourage use, which would probably lead to higher purchase rates.

Conclusion:
It's a draw, as both seem to identify music equally, and both have difficulty identifying non-mainstream music (interesting to note that it was the same songs), so it's going to come down to your personal preference.

How Does Social Influence Effect Music Discovery?

Yesterday Bob Lefsetz wrote about the challenges of getting people to pay attention to your music. While he's correct that music recommendation and discovery is difficult, partly due to the increased amount of music content (i.e. signal-to-noise), democratically filtering out which songs and artists are the rising ones based on quantifiable and qualifiable information will require technology. For example, The Hype Machine does this well by mining the blogosphere and Twitter. The question is, will a human element remain necessary to the process? If so, what does that look like? Who are the social gatekeepers? Does their influence on an artist's popularity help or hinder music discovery? How are the social gatekeepers determined?

Seemingly, it's too early to see how social influence will impact music discovery, but I'd like to hear what artists, managers, labels and the like think by contributing to this post with their thoughts.

JELLI, a User Controlled Voting Service for Broadcast Radio Goes Nationwide

Earlier today, Jelli, a user controlled voting service for broadcast radio stations announced its expansion into the following 10 markets across the US:

• WBOS Boston, MA
• WPST Philadelphia, PA
• KXTE Las Vegas, NV
• WJBX Fort Myers, FL
• WJLK Jersey Shore, NJ
• WKRL Syracuse, NY
• WKLL Utica, NY
• KISN Bozeman, MT
• KBAZ Missoula, MT
• KTRS Casper, WY

I've been a fan of Jelli for quite sometime, and even interviewed Jelli about 6 months ago, as the idea of allowing listeners and music enthusiasts to control broadcast radio is the right direction for terrestrial radio. It could reduce a station's operating expenses by eliminating or reducing the need for traditional on-air personalities, so their expansion is not a surprise, nor is their recent press coverage in USAToday - it's just a matter of time before more radio stations adopt this kind of technology.

If you're not familiar with Jelli, the service allows users to control what's played on a local broadcast radio station via their web browser through simple acceptance voting. For example, "when a song is actually playing on the air, listeners can also vote whether it Rocks or Sucks. If enough players think it Sucks, the song is taken off the air instantly, even if it’s mid-song" (via Jelli's press release). According to Dave MacDonald, senior vice president and market manager at CBS Radio, “we were excited about the success of Jelli’s initial launch in San Francisco, and are now putting X107.5 Las Vegas in the hands of the listeners, allowing them to control the broadcast in real time.”

Below is a recent interview with InformationWeek:

Band Metrics Releases Public Beta

Its been a long time coming, but I'm happy to announce that we finally released the public beta of Band Metrics this morning from Midem.

What took so long? Great question. We had to re-engineer the entire system, as the previous two versions were flawed. This was a difficult decision that consumed our time, but it's better to get the architecture right before releasing it to the public. We now feel confident we've built a system, which is entirely Ruby/Rails that will not only collect, store and analyze artist data accurately, but will be fast and scale rapidly, as we also moved our entire system into the cloud via Engine Yard. As an example, Band Metrics now pulls-in and displays initial artist data within seconds, not days or hours. Needless to say, I'm proud of our developers.

We also streamlined the site, and added a couple of new features, including Fan Segmentation and Influence Measurement. Essentially, this allows artists, managers, labels and the like to see a breakdown of fans (based initially on Twitter comments), and a fan's influence among their friends (below is a brief screencast).

We still have lots of work to do, including design enhancements and new features, as well as incorporate our existing analytical tools into the new site (we ran out of time as we wanted to release at Midem), so we greatly appreciate your ongoing support, as this is just the beginning!

AudioTag: identify music

AudioTag is a free music recognition service that allows you to identify over 1 million songs by simply uploading a 15 second clip (almost any audio file format and bit-rate is accepted), or by submitting a YouTube URL.

It's an interesting service, especially since it's free so I tested AudioTag several times with well known songs and with only two exceptions, AudioTag provided the correct results each time, displaying the track title, artist name and album title. So it's fairly accurate recognizing mainstream music, but not so much with independent music. AudioTag also has a difficult time recognizing cover songs, but I can only assume that they will improve both as their database grows.

If you're wondering how AudioTag works, according to their FAQ, AudioTag is based on "sophisticated audio recognition algorithms combined with advanced audio fingerprinting technology, and a large song database. When you upload an audio file, it is being analyzed by an audio engine. During the analysis its audio fingerprint is extracted and identified by comparing it to the music database. At the completion of this recognition process, information about songs with their matching probabilities are displayed on screen."

Introducing Music Scout

As briefly mentioned last week, I've been quietly working on another project for the past few months, separately from my work on Band Metrics. Needless to say, I'm pretty tired, but today I'm pleased to announce that the initial beta of Music Scout is live.

While there's still a ton of work to do, and the design is rudimentary, we wanted to go ahead and get it out there so we could get some feedback, and incorporate your changes and feature requests, as we've got a significant product road-map for Music Scout in 2010.

Essentially, Music Scout is location-aware mobile music app for the Android and iPhone that enables music enthusiasts to express their thoughts and sentiments about the band they're watching in real-time directly from the venue. Not only can users rate and express their feelings about a band or musician, but Music Scout will begin to trace and identify the individuals that are actually scouting and discovering the next hot bands before they become known acts, providing of course, they're using the service, but to help encourage use we're building in a future reward system.

But it's not just a tool for music aficionados, critics and music lovers, just imagine the kind of feedback that this app could produce for a band, manager, A&R rep, etc. - from the live sound, to the songs selected for each show, to the venue, etc.

The Android app is available now for FREE, and the FREE iPhone app will be available once it's approved by Apple (should be in about 2 weeks). Again, this is just the initial release - we have miles to go before we sleep.

Band Metrics Selected as one of 15 Music Tech Startups to Showcase at MIDEM

It's an honor, and I'm humbled as the competition was strong, so my sincere thanks to Midem, the judges and Music Ally for their support! Go here to read the official news release.

If you're going to Midem and would like to meetup, please send me an email.

Band Metrics on NPR

If you were listening to NPR this weekend, you may have caught a fantastic segment of On the Media called "Charting the Charts" by Mark Phillips, airing on over 100 U.S. radio stations yesterday and Saturday. It's a must listen for anyone interested in music charts like Billboard's Hot 100, as Mark eloquently explores how the art of ranking artists has evolved, and where the evolution is headed from industry leaders like Robert Levine of Billboard, Chicago Tribune music critic and author Greg Kot, Chris Molanphy of Idolator, Eric Garland and myself. If you missed the show, you can listen to it here or below if you have Flash enabled, and many thanks to Mark for his excellent research and production - it was an honor to be a part of it.

Inference is the Difference: Gaining Insight from Music Data Analytics

One of the goals of Band Metrics is to help artists and music industry professionals gain insight from the quantitative and qualitative data we collect, as identifying correlations can be the difference between increasing revenue for your band, or spinning your wheels guessing as to how your fans interact, share and listen to your music. Below are two recent screencasts that help demonstrate a couple of the areas we're working on to make meaning out of your music data (view more of our screencasts here).

The first screencast demonstrates how radio play data (soon social data) could help you build relationships with broadcast stations that are, or are not playing your music. The second one provides a suggested tour map based on the data we're collecting about your band. These are both experimental mapping features at this point, one of the reasons why we're still in private beta, but we thought you might like to see them if you don't have an account:

Band Metrics Turns One

I can't believe it, but one year ago today we announced our service from TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. While we've been working on Band Metrics for much longer, today marks our one year anniversary since this is when we came out of stealth mode and debuted our plans publicly.

Yep, it has taken us much longer to build our initial application than we had planned, but without elaborating as to why, let me just say that it's behind us, and we're now developing steadily with some exciting and powerful features in the works, and my commitment is that we'll continue to innovate and build compelling analytics for artists and the music industry. In appreciation of everyone's support, if you don't already have a private beta account, please register and I'll provide access for the next 25 signups.

Cheers!

Duncan

Characteristics of Sound Data Analysis for Artists and the Music Industry

At the core of the analytics engine Band Metrics is developing for the music industry is a Decision Support System for artists and music industry professionals, something we've been professing since the formation of our business plan. But, there are several characteristics our data analysis should have before it can draw significant conclusions about artists and their songs - this is one of the reasons why we're only visualizing artist data and insights at this time. Here are a few aims and characteristics for our data analysis, relative to the analytics we're providing and developing:

• Longitudinal: simply put, we make sound correlations when the artist data we analyze has been collected over an extended period of time, so we store all data for each artist ad infinitum
• Quantitative: diverse structured data that can be measured in terms of units, for example, the number of radio plays or fan interactions an artist has for any given time period - we're doing this now from almost ten different sources, but we'll continue to add more
• Qualitative: diverse unstructured data that aims to gather an understanding of why attitudes and behaviors are formed towards an artist, for example, why are music enthusiasts listening to a particular artist, and what are the social constructs that have influenced the fan base - we're doing the initial work for this now by pulling artist comments and reviews from two different sources (soon to be five), but we have a great deal of development that still needs to be done
• Spatial: diverse geographic data to draw correlations and patterns - we're doing this now with the Artist Mapping Platform we invented, but much more work still needs to be done
• Cross-sectional: meaning, deep and diverse artist data from within various sociographic populations and genres
• Iterative: our collection processes, data sources, statistical calculations, descriptive insights, predictive/forecasting models, recommendations, visualizations, etc. have to be continually evaluated and improved - it's a process, not an end

There are other characteristics as well. Not to mention, our data analysis needs to account for missing artist data, duplicate data, and outlier data, among other data variables. So, we're continually improving Band Metrics, as data collection and analysis is both an art and a science that is evolutionary, so be skeptical of sweeping claims about artist correlations from general observations, as the cause might be linked to something else.

Two Quick Band Metrics Demos

Below are a couple of quick screencasts on using Band Metrics. The first one demonstrates how to view historical data for an artist. The second one shows how to add and manage multiple bands within one account. As we make enhancements to Band Metrics, we'll provide new screencasts. If you have any questions, let us know here.

Music and Society: Segmenting your Fan Community

Yesterday I gave this presentation at the C/O POP Music Festival and Conference in Cologne, Germany. Essentially, I explored the relationship between music and society, and how artists can better understand their own fan community through segmentation, which can lead to fan growth and increased revenue for them. Since I had several people ask for a copy so they could see the Facebook example and the resources again, here it is. Btw, Band Metrics will begin providing fan segmentation next week.

Tell Us What We Need To Know

We're now releasing new features and/or enhancements at least one per week, and we'll continue to do so from now on, but we want to make sure we're building the features you need, so please let us know what you would like to see us build. You can post your comments here or on help.bandmetrics.com.

Yeah, we know there are a couple of companies that have recently launched trying to imitate us and they've been actively following our news (even using our service), so your feedback will give them more free "product research," but hey, what can we do, as we're believers in working and collaborating with our users and the music community in an open conversation.

Band Metrics Adds Multiple Band Management

If you haven't yet noticed, we quietly released our latest product feature earlier this week that allows you to manage multiple bands through one login - it's a fantastic tool for artist management companies, labels, venues, A&R reps, promoters, music supervisors, publicists, marketing agencies and others. We're still tweaking it, so please let us know how we can improve.

Btw, this is a premium service, so please call us to get access at +1/404.492-6511.

Historical Reporting Now Live

You asked for em, so we released em - historical charts for artists - just login to your account to get started. It's only our first take so expect significant improvements and functionality over the coming weeks, but if you have any suggestions/comments before then, please let us know here. Below are a few examples of what you can now do with the historical data Band Metrics is collecting for your band (individual songs coming soon).

This example displays an overview of how an artist is trending on MySpace during a 30-day period. You can set your own time range, and/or review many other sources including YouTube, Bebo, SoundCloud and more.

You can also drill down individual sources to easily see spikes in your band's growth like in this chart:

This example displays a comparison between sources relative to your total social plays (e.g. how many people are playing your music on iLike or Last.fm. You can also set your own time range, compare other variables like fans, comments, views, and/or compare multiple sources at the same time.

With our historical trends, you'll be able to gain insights into fan activities related to your music, for example, traffic spikes like above, helping you to see what activities you need to replicate or capitalize on to grow your fan base. Btw, we discovered a few bugs after we released this feature so you may notice a few discrepancies with your data, but hang tight as we fix them as soon as we can.

Band Metrics Partners with The Orchard

Are you looking for deep social, radio, and fan analytics that show geographical correlations to your digital and physical CD sales? Than our new partnership with The Orchard (NASDAQ: ORCD), which has a client base that represents 15% of all digital music may be what you're looking for, as that's what we aim to provide in the coming months.

Below is a clip from The Orchard's press release this morning:

The Orchard announced that it is launching a groundbreaking platform, using an API (Application Programming Interface) to provide clients access to third party business solutions from a marketplace within The Orchard’s proprietary client Workstation. For the launch, The Orchard has tapped many of the entertainment industry’s leading marketing, sales, and analytics application companies, including ArtistData, Band Metrics, TheBizmo, BMAT, FanBridge, Mediaguide, Mobile Roadie, New Reach Technologies, Peekok, Topspin, Trendrr, and uPlaya.

These launch partners will offer turn-key products geared to serve the needs of Orchard’s global client base, which represents 15% of all music available digitally. Within the Workstation’s marketplace, clients will be able to easily choose from this broad array of tools, each the best in its class. Over time, as the market continues to proliferate with innovative applications and services, Orchard will include additional qualified partners and continue to build out and manage the largest and most robust platform of third-party developers in the industry.

At launch, the applications, all selected with client needs in mind, will include various forms of sales and analytic tools, marketing vehicles, email and mobile services, widget creation, iPhone App creation, and data tracking. Orchard clients will receive a discounted rate for the services they choose, enabling these clients yet one more way of reducing their operating costs through their Orchard affiliation, without sacrificing sophistication or reach. Payment for use of the third party apps is secured through The Orchard and is reflected in client billing.

When clients opt in to a third party tool, the application will draw information (e.g. metadata, audio and video files, art work) from The Orchard’s secure interface to power customized marketing tools. To close the loop, clients can choose a data solution, which uses The Orchard’s metadata, to track their online exposure.

Band Metrics Expands Artists Mapping Platform

Last week we announced our Artists Mapping Platform for Band Metrics, and today we're excited to say that we've expanded it to now also display how your fans are sharing your music from over 20 sources, including the following:

• Blip.fm
• Foxytunes 
• IMEEM
• Lala 
• Last.fm 
• Napster
• Song.ly
• Songtwit
• Songza 
• Spotify 
• TinySong 
• Trackz
• Tweetj 
• Twisten 
• Twitum 
• Twt.fm
• #musicmonday and scores of other hashtags

Why is this important? Great question. Let's suppose you're trying to figure out where your hot markets (fan bases) are so you can earn the highest profit margin while on tour, because in this economy, you're better off playing 10 at capacity or oversold shows than 20 shows at 50 percent capacity. With today's addition of the social sharing display to our mapping platform, artists, managers, venue owners, booking agencies, promoters and the like can now gain insight into what cities have the highest concentration of not only your fans, but the highest concentration of your passionate fans and music enthusiasts talking about your band and/or music. The conclusion here is that the more passionate a fan base you have in a particular city, the more likely you are to draw a large crowd to your show. Below is what it looks like, but please know we've still got a great deal of work left to do on it, and you may encounter some bugs, but we thought you all would like to start using it anyway, so please let us know how we can improve it for you.

 

Band Metrics Releases Artists Mapping Platform

For the past few months, one of the things we've been working on that we're really proud and excited about is the Band Metrics Artist Mapping Platform. Essentially, it displays all kinds of data relative to artists, and their fans' activities. Earlier this week, we unveiled our initial Conversation Map that displays where your fans, non-fans, and music enthusiasts are talking about your band online from around the world as seen here:

We also unveiled our Popularity Map which displays the countries where your band has fans, ranging from the least amount of fans to the most by color intensity and popularity numbers as seen here:


Today, we unveiled our terrestrial Radio Map which displays not only the geographic locations where your band is getting plays, but also which stations, and the total number of plays.


We're still polishing our maps and mapping platform, so hang tight while we refine them and fix some bugs, but the above maps are only the beginning, so please stay connected as we add even more!