The Blog

July 19th, 2010

This Data Feels Cold

Someone in the music industry once told us that there is a “terrible coldness to all of this data.” This came as a surprise since we talk to artists, labels, managers and others in the industry all day, listen to music every possible second we can and talk about hot new bands as soon as we find them. We’ve never felt very far removed from the music but I realize that someone spending 30 seconds on Next Big Sound might think that our graphs remove the love and magic of an incredible band or hit song.

That is, until you take a minute to understand what our charts represent. Each day millions of people are interacting with thousands of bands in hundreds of different ways online. Type any artist into nextbigsound.com and hover over any point on the graph. It may say 4,235 new plays or 800 new fans. It’s important to remember that each number represents real music lovers and that behind each number is a real human interacting with an artist or the music directly. There is nothing cold about that.