Band Metrics Opens Up its Private Beta

About time, right? Yeah, we agree. Unfortunately we encountered some significant hurdles during the past 10 months that put us behind schedule, and while many of you have been waiting for several months (we truly appreciate your patience!), please know that we plowed through these hurdles as fast as we could. The good news is that they're behind us, so you should now see faster updates and features from us going forward.

What I can say is that data analytics for the music industry is all that we do, and we're working on delivering a sophisticated system, not just a web app. Additionally, we're doing some innovative development through our patent-pending band scoring system, and initiatives like the Music Data Exchange Format (mDef). So hang in there with us, because at the end of the day, I think you'll be glad you did. Moreover, we're not planning on charging for our service anytime soon, as understanding your needs and building the appropriate music metrics for you is a joint effort that we're committed to, and so you get to enjoy Band Metrics as we build it to meet your needs.

With that said, we're excited to announce that we let several thousand users in our system this morning. However, some of our features may not function correctly or fully, but we're working to fix and expand them as soon as possible, as well as rollout additional features. Because of this, we're going to remain in private beta a little while longer while we polish our service. So if you didn't receive a welcome email from us this morning, than please use the code indiemusictech to gain access, but it will only be good for the next 25 people that use it.

In case you're curious what you can do with Band Metrics today, here's a brief list:

• track plays, fans, profile views and comments across MySpace, Last.fm, iLike, SoundCloud and YouTube
• track radio plays from over 3,500 terrestrial radio stations 
• view real-time reviews about your music on Musebin  
• view real-time comments about your band on Twitter
• view 8 different types of scores relative to your music including hotnes, fandom, and brand strength, among others

And here's a screenshot of the inside of Band Metrics:

  
Curious about what's next for Band Metrics?

• daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly stats/reports
• enhanced charts and visualizations
• advanced data porting
• additional social media site monitoring and management
• automated actions
• manage multiple bands from one login
• view real-time comments about your band in Facebook and within the blogosphere
• API
• Sentiment Analysis

We also have a few tricks up our sleeve that we have not yet disclosed, so stay tuned for some exciting announcements.

Finally, if you tell us in the comments section of this post why you think your band should be displayed on our home page, we'll select the top five artists we believe gave the best reasons.

NECODO's Open Platform for Selling Digital Music

While the old digital music store is still around, NECODO is now focused on developing an open platform for record labels, digital distributors, online retailers and artists to sell their music. Essentially, they're building a customizable commerce platform for the music industry. Looks like it's a beta offering so I'm just going to provide a quick overview below. For more information, go here.

• catalog management via a simplified and easy-to-use CMS
• online wizard to quickly and easily create operational stores for single releases, your entire catalog, and/or one of your artists
• wholesale and custom pricing control
• retail offering  
• real-time sales reports
• Marketing tools such as widgets, buy buttons, and HTML links for websites, emails, social networks and blogs
• custom solutions
• an API 
• No start-up costs
• No monthly charges

Ian Rogers' Keynote Interview from NARM 2009

Ian Rogers of Topspin gave an insightful keynote interview on the music industry at NARM about two weeks ago that's not to be missed:

Techdirt Founder Mike Masnick's Presentation on the State of the Music Industry

Techdirt founder Mike Masnick's latest must see presentation on the state of the music industry, which he gave at NARM a couple of weeks ago is now available:

If you've never had a chance to see Mike's presentation on Serving your Fans, the Trent Reznor Case Study, you should take the time here as well.

Selling your Music via Smirp is so Simple it's Brilliant!

Last month I was contacted by Smirp, and I finally had time today to explore their service. I'm amazed at how easy it is to create an account, upload your music, and sell it with fan determined pricing - to the point of elegant brilliance!

Inspired by In Rainbows, Smirp provides you with the ability to create your own "name your price" page for your music, allowing your fans to pay whatever they desire, which could be more or less than you expect, but also allowing you to set a minimum price. After you receive payment, a link is sent to your customer's email address. After 12 hours, the link is no longer valid, helping to prevent your music from being illegally copied. Here's an example of the band, theWANDAS using Smirp.

Uploading your music files to Smirp is easy too. Essentially, you can upload almost any file of just about any size. Once uploaded, you provide the title, pricing options, give it a unique url, and can even set a release date for timed releases.

Presently, Smirp has two pricing options, a free plan where they take 20 percent of each sale and a professional account with a few more features for a flat rate of $6 per month.

Smirp is a great hassle free way to quickly sell your music with fan determined pricing. My only suggestion at this point is Smirp should create the ability to listen to each song before buying, but hats off to a great app. For more information, go here.

Band Metrics to Present at C/O Pop in Cologne

Band Metrics is excited to announce that we're presenting at this year's C/O Pop music festival and conference in Cologne, Germany. It's one of the leading international music events that brings together over 30,000 artists, publishers, labels, technology companies, music enthusiasts and investors, and we're honored we've been invited. In addition to presenting, I'm also speaking on the Creative Music Business panel and I'll provide more details as soon as I have them. We're also going to make an announcement during the conference, so please keep in touch, and let us know if you're going to be there too so we can meetup. In the meantime, you can learn more about the conference by downloading the C/O Pop press kit.

CD Baby to Unveil New Website and Single Sales in July

Its been a couple of years since CD Baby made significant changes to the design of their web site, but in about a month (July) they're going to unveil a new sleek design, while maintaining a minimalist UI (one of the design attributes which helped make CD Baby successful). Below is a screenshot that Brian Felsen posted about a week ago - note the cool new logo!

They're also rolling out some new features with the new website, such as the ability to sell singles at the price artists want to charge. These improvements should help increase revenue for artists, as more of their fans will opt to purchase music from CD Baby. Not to mention, artists should encourage their fans to purchase their music directly form CD Baby instead, as they will earn a larger percentage of the sales price for each song sold directly on cdbaby.com.

Band Metrics Announces Music Data Exchange Format (MDEF)

With the enormous amount of data being created online by artists of all sizes (e.g. digital music, photos, blog posts, videos, etc.), and by their fans each day (e.g. plays, downloads, likes, faves, sharing, recommending, commenting etc.), it seems there needs to be a way to organize and share this kind of data relative to musicians and bands effectively and efficiently. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a free, open and portable format for exchanging this kind of artist data, and RSS is not sufficient. Additionally, each music provider, from iLike to PureVolume is expressing artist data a bit differently, making the exchange process cumbersome.

With that said, Band Metrics decided to create the Music Data Exchange Format (MDEF), a free, open and portable XML based format for the purpose of sharing data relative to musicians and bands, and we're announcing it today at the SanFran MusicTech Summit.

We created this format for two reasons. First, measuring artist data is what we do, and we wanted to help other companies, developers and artists collaborate on this effort, as presently, there is no effective and efficient way to exchange artist data. (if you know of a format that already exists, please let us know, as we'd welcome the opportunity to utilize it)  Secondly, we wanted to standardize the way companies, developers and artists exchange data with our soon-to-be-released API.

To provide your feedback, comments and/or suggestions about the MDEF, please go here and tell us what you think.

Btw, the initial schema for the Music Data Exchange Format (MDEF), version 0.1, while operational, is in the very early stages, so we welcome your thoughts on how to improve it.

Band Metrics to Present at SanFran MusicTech Summit

Just a reminder, we're presenting at the SanFran MusicTech Summit this coming Monday, May 18th at the Hotel Kabuki around 1pm. We're excited to finally showcase the initial version of our technology at this premier one-day music tech event. If you would like to meetup on Monday and learn more about Band Metrics, just send me an email. Go here, to purchase your tickets to the summit.

2008/2009 Georgia Music Production Sourcebook

Are you an artist living in Georgia or thinking about moving here, than take a look at this in-depth publication about the Georgia Music industry. From audio engineers to venues, to Georgia music industry trends and more - it's covered in this free digital e-book. My only suggestion is they should consider adding a music technology section listing some of these companies and GTCMT.

Gauging Artist Popularity

Traditional music rankings seem to display an antiquated way of determining popularity and gauging success. For example, companies like Billboard and CMJ posit to accurately rank/chart artists based on variables such as CD sales, digital downloads, radio plays and ticket sales. However, CD sales are diminishing, and digital downloads and ticket sales represent only a portion of how an artist's popularity can be measured, as music enthusiasts have changed the way in which they consume music. Not to mention, many artists are giving away some of their music, and tours are only temporary reflections of popularity.

Online music providers from Deezer to Rhapsody also fall short, as true popularity can not be determined from web silos that collect data solely from within their own community.

With that said, a more holistic approach must be developed - one that considers the dynamics and trends of plays, sharing, recommending, comments, blog posts, faves, et al. from scores of web apps, and this is part of the service that we at Band Metrics have been working on long before our announcement at TechCrunch50. Internally, we call it the Popularity Profiling System, a patent-pending technology that scores bands and musicians using algorithms and other approaches. At present, there are 10 ways in which we score bands and musicians, and many of these scores are now available on our system. Since only a limited group of bands and individuals have seen our service in action, I'm not going to tip our hat at this time as to what these scores are, but, thousands of bands and musicians will be able to see their scores over the next few days as we continue to expand our private beta, so I'm sure word will begin to travel, and we'd love to hear your feedback!

In sum, my hypothesis is not intended to be critical of music ranking companies, but rather, cursorily unpack how we understand and gauge popularity relative to bands and musicians, as it seems this can only be sufficiently achieved through a scoring system that examines online information about artists from across the Internet landscape.

Btw, our system is far from perfect, but it will continue to evolve and adapt so please be patient, and please let us know how we can improve our scoring and analytics.

Wildscreen.TV for Artists

There are scores of video communities aimed at helping artists promote their work like Vimeo, Blastro, AudioTube, Plugo.LA, Babelgum, and many others including newcomer, Wildscreen.TV, an online video portal for filmmakers, musicians, labels and an artistically-minded audience with a focus on high quality user-generated content from creative people. What video sites do you like besides YouTube for sharing your music on?

Below are the basics of wildscreen.TV:

Goal of wildscreen.TV:

Offer viewers an abundant pool of artistic, fresh and top-quality videos in 6 categories:

• Music videos and live music performances (gigs, interviews, studio out-takes, etc.)
• Short films
• Performing art
• Webisodes
• Video art & animation
• Fashion & design

Some of the Features of wildscreen.TV:

• free fully-customizable channel - use CSS to design it
• get 100% of ad revenue if you place advertising on your channel - use an affiliate ad program
• HD-quality player
• no upload-limit (either in terms of video length or size of data)
• create compilations as video mix-tapes. Make your own or get involved
• boost your creative output by connecting with other wild videologists
• fast support
  

How to build awareness of your music videos on wildscreen.TV:

• contact other users of wildscreen.TV and comment on their videos and compilations
• invite friends to watch your videos
• pimp your channel and make descriptions of your art, your videos and your compilations to make people talk about you AND with you.
• use the blog function in your channel to inform people about you and your stuff, and talk about things that thrill you.
• Encourage friends and interested people to embed your channel on their web page or blog
• Link to your channel on wildscreen.TV.

For any questions about wildscreen.TV, please contact Chris Wochagg or drop him an email at chris@wildscreen.tv

Insight into Retaining your Fans

Brian Mansfield of USATODAY wrote a great piece in Friday's edition about different ways artists are retaining their fans through interaction. Here's a snippet: "As CD sales decline, advances from record labels dwindle and audience demographics break up into smaller niches, more and more artists from all levels of popularity are seeking to retain fans by including them in the creative process."

The article may give you some ideas, and the comment thread is interesting as well.

Music Licensing Landscape

Below is a brief list of some of the companies that can help bands and musicians place their music in film, television, commercials, games, etc. What companies did I miss?

Rumblefish (licensing for television, film, advertisements, websites, videos, games, podcasts, and sonic branding - e.g. your music inside your local Gap)
Gamecues (licensing for the gaming industry)
YouLicense (music licensing marketplace - essentially, their system enables artists and those seeking music to conduct business directly with each other)
Pump Audio (artists can license their music in television and advertising without giving up any ownership
BeatPick (music licensing provider)
Ricall (music licensing marketplace, connecting users wanting to license music directly with the relevant copyright owners)
SoundReef (private beta service exchanging music for promotion in television, film, advertising, etc.)

Notes from the New Metrics Panel at the Leadership Music Digital Summit

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.

Serving Your Fans: The Trent Reznor Case Study

You may have seen this before, but I just watched Techdirt founder Michael Masnick's keynote presentation at The Leadership Music Digital Summit, and I gotta say, it was fantastic, a must watch for anyone in the music industry. Here's the one he gave at Midem, but I missed due to meetings:

The difference between today's presentation and the one he gave at Midem is an additional 160 slides for a total of 440! Hopefully, the folks at LMDS will post the video soon.

Social Influences on our Music Tastes

One of the reasons Band Metrics is being developed is to provide an application that will help display insight into some of the social interactions that influence success for bands, musicians and songs. To help further understand these social drivers, I've been going back to some of the sociologists and philosophers I've studied in the past. The one I've been focusing on lately is the German philosophical sociologist and musicologist, Theodor W. Adorno.

If I understand Adorno correctly, he seems to suggest that our individual music tastes within our social groups only contain minor differences, as the different artists we are listening to are producing similar music. Interesting position, and if that's correct, then what are the social drivers that cause one band to break out above all of the other bands we like? What impact do the influencers (i.e. tastemakers) of a group have on the band's rise? Do these tastemakers change overtime, within particular demographics and/or geographic locations?

It seems that part of Adorno's premise is that our musical tastes are not developed in a vacuum. Rather, they are developed out of contexts, and intricately and subtly constructed from within the social groups we are apart of (e.g. friends, family, colleagues, etc.). But, they are also seemingly deconstructed overtime, for example, as our social groups change, like when one transitions from high school to college.

Do you think Adorno's position is valid? What and/or who do you think are the influencers of the music you listen to? Do you tend to agree with them on their music recommendations?

ArtistDish Releases Podcast #5

The ArtistDish released its 5th podcast today about some of the shifts and trends in print and digital media, gatekeepers, fandom, the gaming industry and more. It's our longest episode to date (1 full hour), and we are joined by music industry veteran, Barney Kilpatrick of Rattlesby Records, and one of our advisors, who provides a great deal of insight and sage advice, so if you’re an artist, you definitely want to listen to this episode.

Special thanks to Montana Skies for providing the intro music with their song, Gringo Flamenco.

Music Tech Investment Companies

I was recently asked if I knew the names of some of the venture capital firms that have invested in music tech companies, so I reviewed my 2008 investment recap post, and here are the firms I found (in no particular order):

• www.foundrygroup.com
• www.opuscapitalventures.com
• rock-creek-ventures.com/
• www.venrock.com/
• www.battery.com/
• www.sheltercap.com/
• www.redpoint.com/
• www.anthemvp.com/ 
• www.commonwealthvc.com/
• www.benchmark.com/
• www.mosaiccapital.com/
• www.baincapital.com/
• www.waldenvc.com/
• www.softtechvc.com/
• the-accelerator.blogspot.com/
• www.softbank.com
• novakbiddle.com
• www.southerncapitalventures.com/ 
• www.mentortechventures.com/
• www.benfranklin.org
• www.crosslinkcapital.com/ 
• www.kpcb.com/
• www.sequoiacap.com
• www.sherpalo.com/
• www.dagventures.com/ 
• www.nbvp.com/
• www.ptv.com/
• www.balderton.com/
• www.sparkventures.com

There are plenty more than just these, so feel free to add to the list.

Band Metrics to Present at SanFran MusicTech Summit

I'm a big fan of the SanFran MusicTech Summit, an intimate gathering of music technology developers, evangelists and companies. I attended the second summit, and wrote about the last one this past October. So I'm pretty excited to announce that we're presenting at the 4th summit this May. Because they're only having one Summit this year (last year they had three), it should be a really great event, so I'd make sure and follow their announcements, as well as buy your tickets early, as it always sells out.