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.

Local Natives - Gorilla Manor

I highlighted the LA band Local Natives and their "Daytrotter EP" in this space back in September.   At the time, they had finished recording their full length album "Gorilla Manor," but didn't have a US release date for it yet.

Well now, this band is starting to generate some serious buzz.  It finally released "Gorilla Manor" on February 16th and followed up last year's successful appearance at the South by Southwest Festival with another one at SXSW 2010.

The album lives up to the promise of the EP and even features all five songs from the EP (including an amazing cover of the Talking Heads' "Warning Sign" which I forgot to mentioned before).

In addition to those five songs, there are nine new ones such as "Wide Eyes," "Camera Talk," and "Cubism Dream."  Overall, it's a quality album if you're into their style of music.

I'm not all that familiar with Fleet Foxes, but I'm told Local Natives kind of have a similar same sound.

Check out Local Natives' performance at SXSW 2010 here and judge for yourself.

Local Natives

I slacked on a Friday post so I'll make it up with a rare Saturday one telling you about a cool band called Local Natives. They're an unsigned LA band that I've been listening to a lot, but I only found out about them when someone else who saw Local Natives live gave me their five track "Daytrotter EP."

The standout song on this EP is the song "Airplanes."  You may have unknowingly heard it before because it was used on the TV show "Chuck" last season.   A BBC Radio One performance of this song is featured below.



The rest of the EP is good as well including my second favorite song on it "World News."  They've completed a full length album "Gorilla Manor," but I'm not really sure if that's readily available yet. Although you can download most of the tracks on the "Daytrotter EP" from here or listen to them on the Local Natives myspace page.