Next Big Sound Interview
Here’s an interview I did last year with Next Big Thing CEO and co-founder Alex White.
Next Big Sound provides a centralized place to monitor all the behavior and activity happening for artists both online and off.
It seems Nielsen is currently the dominate player, with Soundscan, but also with everything stats related. I assume thy’re your biggest competition? How do you guys do stuff differently?
Nielsen became the standard in the music industry by measuring the way music was primarily consumed - radio and physical purchases. While they have added digital purchases and streaming sources the billions of social music plays, views, fans and comments are still not being counted in Soundscan. The other big difference is that their numbers come out weekly and Next Big Sound’s are available daily.
Can you talk a little about how/why changing the music industry is ultimately a numbers game, using stats to measure things.
The old equation used to be simple: the more spins on terrestrial radio, the more sales you could expect. Everyone is looking for the new equation but there isn’t one. It’s going to be different for almost every band. The only way to figure out what is working, or not working for your artist is to measure the data of the key metrics you are trying to drive and adjust the strategy constantly.
Who’s the artist/band you been listening to the most in the past week or two?
Ben Howard
How do you personally discover new music and how do you share those artists you discover with your friends?
I listen to Hype Machine, We Are Hunted, and try to stream as many new records every Tuesday as possible. Once I find a song I can’t get out of my head I add it to a playlist and after trying it out there - I then start sharing with friends via Rdio and Spotify or emailing or posting YouTube videos.
What is the next logical evolution for NBS? (How do you broaden your reach, etc..)
We’ve built a great customer base with managers, labels and individual bands but will be focusing on expanding to all segments of the music industry (agents, publishers, promoters, radio etc.) this year.