The Next Big Sound

Have you ever wanted an easy way to figure out how much buzz a band is building?  If so, you should check out the analytics website The Next Big Sound.  By compiling statistics from social media sites such as MySpace, Last.fm, iLike, Facebook, Twitter, and Bebo to determine a band's or artist's popularity.


It's able to show how the number of fans, plays, or comments for a certain band increases over a week, month or all time.  For instance, look at the graph at the top of this blog which is based on Local Natives.  It's no coincidence that a sharp increase in the number of fans occured around March 23 because that was when they were playing at South by Southwest.

The Next Big Sound also provides you with amusing yet disturbing information such as Canadian reggae musician Snow somehow gaining 24 new fans on March 28th.  I can't believe there's even 24 people who like Snow, forget new people.

You can even compare bands to see whose fan base is growing faster, although it might just be depressing to see someone like Ke$ha having more fans than a real band.

Of course, the The Next Big Sound is really the ultimate hipster tool.  Now they can know exactly when a band has become too cool to like anymore.  Better yet, you could out hipster them by citing exactly how popular their favorite obscure indie band has become.