April 9th, 2010
For the third installment of MySpace’s Introducing program the four artists selected are Taio Cruz, AM Taxi, Delphic and Janelle Monae. “Introducing…” is a MySpace initiative to present new artists to the social network’s online music community. Past artists participating in the program include NeverShoutNever and Jason Derulo, both of whom went on to score top 25 hits.
It’s unclear how the artists are selected for the program but with 3 of 4 artists in this showcase having over a million profile views and Taio Cruz riding the smash radio hit “Heartbreaker ft. Ludacris,” it seems like they are selecting artists with at least a moderate level of success. In looking at the above graph of Views to their MySpace and Wikipedia pages you can see that Delphic and Janelle Monae saw a jump in activity in January and that Taio Cruz has seen sustained attention since last fall when his album, Rokstarr, was released in the UK. As you can see from the chart below he’s really started to pick up steam around the re-release of the album in the US last month (March 10, 2010).
November 20th, 2009
Fans: Total Last.fm iLike Facebook Myspace
On my last trip to New York City I had the pleasure of meeting with Mike McCready who runs a company called Music XRay. Prior to his current endeavor he was at the helm of Platinum Blue – a company that analyzed songs based on a wide range of structural components and could predict, with 80% accuracy, whether a song would be a hit.
As Gladwell writes in an old New Yorker column, Platinum Blue ran hundreds of CDs through their software and one album returned an impossible 9 out of 14 songs as probable hits. The artist at the time was an unheard of singer/pianist by the name of Norah Jones. The album was called Come Away With Me and, as you well know, it took the industry by storm selling 20 million albums worldwide and winning eight Grammys.
On Tuesday Norah Jones released her fourth studio album entitled, The Fall. As you can see in the Fans graph above she saw a nice spike in her social music activity despite having a slightly older fan base. She still has that low-key texture that makes her a great artist to put on anytime of day but retains the edge that catapulted her to fame to begin with.
September 22nd, 2009
The start of Autumn marks the beginning of the holiday season. This Tuesday seems to be particularly crowded as new efforts by artists including Harry Connick, Jr., Basement Jaxx, Mika, David Gray, Islands, Mae, The Noisettes, Sea Wolf, Angel Taylor, They Might Be Giants, Three Days Grace, Vertical Horizon, Rufus Wainwright and many others hit the shelves.
Spotlighted in the graph are 4 artists with new albums in stores today: Pearl Jam, Monsters of Folk, Sean Kingston and Brand New. Pearl Jam and Brand New are both up over 20% in FANS (Facebook, Twitter, iLike, Last.fm, & MySpace) from the previous month. Super-group Monsters of Folk has been heavily hyped, including a full feature in the NYTimes. I find it interesting that Monsters of Folk has seen a disproportionate amount of activity on their MySpace page.
Happy listening!
September 19th, 2009
Justin Bieber has had the career trajectory that many only dream of. At 12 years old he entered into a singing competition in his home town of Stratford, Ontario and came in second place. To share his competition video and singing with family and friends he began posting videos to YouTube, singing covers of artists like Usher and Justin Timberlake. These videos have since been watched over 10,000,000 times.
Just seven months after posting his first video he was contacted by his now-current manager Scooter Braun. Bieber took a meeting with Justin Timberlake who wanted to sign the youngster to his Tennman imprint but that was before Braun flew Bieber to Atlanta to meet with Usher, who had himself been discovered off a singing contest (Usher was on Star Search when he was 13 and was discovered by an A&R rep. from LaFace). Here is his audition video in front of Usher.
The huge jump in traffic to Bieber’s MySpace page on August 10th, 2009, demonstrates the power of his promotional network as that was the date he began doing live web streams from his MySpace. The most impressive part is the sustained level of traffic.
Bieber’s single “One Time” is at radio, the video is in heavy rotation, his album is scheduled for release in October and at 15 years old Justin seems to have plenty of time left as the new teen heartthrob.
September 7th, 2009
Adam Goldstein, better known as DJ AM, was found dead in his apartment on Friday August 28th, 2009. He was a member of the rock band Crazy Town and also made appearances on albums by Papa Roach, Madonna, Will Smith and frequently collaborated with Blink-182‘s Travis Barker. Travis and Adam Goldstein survived a terrifying plane wreck last September that killed four others. The speculation around his death is that painkillers and drugs were involved. His memorial was held at the Hollywood Palladium on September 3rd and was well attended by hundreds of invited guests, including his ex-fiance Nicole Richie.
DJ AM‘s online activity saw a giant spike following the news of his tragic death.
While attending the memorial service is obviously the biggest tribute a fan can give it is interesting to see how fans express their affinity for an artist online surrounding their death. R.I.P. comments abound on his profile pages and other indicators of friendship skyrocketed.
In the months leading up to his death, DJ AM was averaging around 1,000 plays a day. The weekend after his death his play count spiked over 65,000% as his music was streamed over 1 million times in just two days. Fans, comments, and MySpace views also jumped exponentially. A week and a half after his passing his online activity remains elevated, though it’s nothing like the spike during the weekend after his death.
Adam Goldstein, better known as DJ AM, was found dead in his apartment on Friday August 28th, 2009. He was a member of the rock band CrazyTown and also made appearances on albums by Papa Roach, Madonna, Will Smith and frequently collaborated with Blink-182′s Travis Barker. It was with Travis that the two survived a terrifying plane wreck last September that killed four others. The speculation around his death is that painkillers and drugs were involved. His memorial was held at the Hollywood Palladium on September 3rd and well attended by hundreds of invited guests including his ex-fiance Nicole Richie.
DJ AM’s online activity saw a giant spike following the news of his tragic death.
While attending the memorial service is obviously the biggest tribute a fan can give it is interesting to see how fans express their affinity for an artist online surrounding their death. R.I.P. comments abound on his profile pages and other indicators of friendship skyrocketed.
In the months leading up to his death, DJ AM was averaging around 1,000 plays a day. The weekend after his death his play count spiked over 65,000% as his music was streamed over 1 million times in just two days. Fans, comments, and MySpace views also jumped exponentially. A week and a half after his passing his online activity remains elevated though nothing like the spike the first weekend.
September 4th, 2009
MySpace disabled its autoplay feature last month to cut monthly costs by at least $10 million, resulting in a 32% drop in total plays the very next day, according to Next Big Sound data. In fact, the site’s monthly average for plays decreased 38% from July.
Though the goal may be to shrink expenses at MySpace, disabling auto-play has allowed us to paint a more accurate picture of an artist’s online activity for professionals in the music industry. The number of streams MySpace reports is no longer inflated by auto-play and is more directly impacted by true fans listening to their favorite songs.
Moreover, online streaming services at other sites now play a more significant role (read: A Band’s Guide to Surviving Online). Last.fm’s fraction of control in the online streaming world increased from 26% in July to 36% in August according to our data.
As we continue to add more services, it will be interesting to see what role MySpace plays in the online streaming world. For now, I’m glad I don’t have to press pause every time I visit a MySpace profile page. This is death of auto-play, moment of silence.
August 24th, 2009
The group has spent 20 weeks on the top of the Billboard singles chart, a new record. I’ve pulled up the graph of their plays over the past month and it appears that their decline in online activity over the last couple of weeks (not unusual for the vacation-filled end of summer) hasn’t hurt their chart position in the slightest.
Their first single from E.N.D., Boom Boom Pow, spent 12 weeks in the top spot and was replaced by their second single, I’ve Gotta Feeling. The group joins an elite group of 11 artists that have held the number 1 and 2 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time.
Look for their internet activity to pick up in the fall as they kick off their live tour Sept. 15th in support of their latest record.
August 18th, 2009
Third Eye Blind’s album was slated for release Tuesday, August 18th but was leaked while the band was overseas performing a benefit concert in Jakarta. In light of the leak they decided to release the full album for streaming on their MySpace page and the 10x jump in page views on August 14th was the date they posted the tracks. They’ve also moved the release date up a day to Monday, August 17th.
While I think Stephen Jenkins is a killer songwriter I’ll admit he has had some trouble recreating the magic of their self-titled album that put them on the map. I am in the middle of enjoying my first listen of their newest album, Ursa Major. I’ve found gems on all their previous releases (1000 Julys, Slow Motion, and Crystal Baller to name a few) and am sure I will find strong cuts on their latest effort.
The album currently sits at number 1 on iTunes and Amazon proving that the 90s rock band still has relevance in 2009.
August 13th, 2009
Last year I went out on the road with an awesome up-and-coming band called Sing It Loud. They were the opening act on Cobra Starship’s nationwide Sassyback Tour this past fall. We got to hang out with the Cobra gang (Gabe, Alex, Ryland, Vicky and Nate) everywhere from Vicky’s house in Malibu to the clubs where Gabe DJ’d in Dallas, LA and others. They couldn’t have been nicer or more humble.
Things have really started clicking for them on the strength of their single “Good Girls Go Bad.” With the release of their latest album and upcoming Hot Mess Across the US tour, the future only looks brighter!
In this graph of their fans this past month you can see a steady climb up to the release of their album August 11th. However, it is important to note that the day when they added the most friends was August 4th when the album first leaked on P2P networks in its entirety.
August 10th, 2009
I always love watching which artists play which festivals each summer. Last summer in Chicago Next Big Sound took a company trip to the Pitchfork Music Festival and saw Animal Collective, Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes along with many others. All of these bands also played at the “other Chicago music festival” this past weekend.
It is interesting looking at their graphs over the past month and seeing them all basically trend together. Not surprisingly, these artists see the majority of their plays from people’s iTunes libraries which we capture via last.fm’s scrobbling technology.
I was curious to see which bands saw a spike in play counts after the big festival. The numbers for the bands over the weekend were fairly level but Animal Collective’s play counts from Sunday to Monday doubled from 40,000 to 80,000. Even though they performed Saturday night it looks like people waited until the start of the work week to start jamming them.
