Music popularity index

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A music popularity index is a recorded music ranking, classified by popularity, which can be measured in many different ways. Nowadays, they are very common in musical websites, since they offer useful statistics suitable for many applications, such as musical recommendations. There are hundreds of methods to measure the popularity of an artist, and most websites have their own measurement system. The leading systems are as follows:

Music form of art using sound

Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time. General definitions of music include common elements such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. Different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and vocal techniques ranging from singing to rapping; there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces and pieces that combine singing and instruments. The word derives from Greek μουσική . See glossary of musical terminology.

Statistics study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data

Statistics is a branch of mathematics dealing with data collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation. In applying statistics to, for example, a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model process to be studied. Populations can be diverse topics such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments. See glossary of probability and statistics.

Contents

Last.fm music charts

Features

Last.fm is Internet's reference to musical social networks. It has a huge database, based on all the information provided by their users when they listen to music in different ways, storing all the information in their profiles.

Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, either from Internet radio stations, or the user's computer or many portable music devices. This information is transferred ("scrobbled") to Last.fm's database either via the music player itself or via a plug-in installed into the user's music player. The data is then displayed on the user's profile page and compiled to create reference pages for individual artists.

Internet Global system of connected computer networks

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing. Some publications no longer capitalize "internet".

Database organized collection of data

A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. Where databases are more complex they are often developed using formal design and modeling techniques.

Every week, Last.fm updates its music charts, based on all the information stored last week by the millions of users through the Audioscrobbler plug-in or the Last.fm radio. The website has many different charts, including Top Artists, Top Tracks, Top Albums, Weekly Top Artists and Weekly Top Tracks. The Top Tracks and the Top Albums of an artist are also available. In a user's profile we have his/her Top Tracks and Top Artists. All these information can be classified in different time periods, such as last week, last month, last 3 months, last 6 months, last year or overall.

Plug-in (computing) software component that adds a specific feature to an existing software application

In computing, a plug-in is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. When a program supports plug-ins, it enables customization.

Website set of related web pages served from a single web domain

A website or Web site is a collection of related network web resources, such as web pages, multimedia content, which are typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server. Notable examples are wikipedia.org, google.com, and amazon.com.

Main problems and uprising solutions

Since the generated music charts depend on what the users register and on the tags from their music files, Last.fm made up a system based on the listens of the users which corrects a song's tag if it differs from what most people registered. On the other hand, the system has errors, like not noticing the difference between two artists with the same name or not taking track length into consideration. Artists with many short tracks will have many more listens than artists with a few but very long ones.

Song composition for voice(s)

A song is a single work of music that is typically intended to be sung by the human voice with distinct and fixed pitches and patterns using sound and silence and a variety of forms that often include the repetition of sections. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word "song" may refer to instrumentals.

ReverbNation's Band Equity

Features

The website ReverbNation also has joined the great amount of uprising musical social networks, contributing with their particular version. They developed a system to measure artists' popularity called Band Equity.

ReverbNation is an online platform that provides marketing tools and industry opportunities for musicians, artists, and bands to manage their careers [3]. Since its launch, the platform has introduced a number of applications and services such as music industry opportunities, Crowd Review, Band Profile Facebook app, CONNECT, Promote It [7][8], and TuneWidget.

Band Equity measures popularity taking into account the interaction between the artist and the fans or listeners. Any artist registered in ReverbNation is measured automatically and the score is tracked over time. Band Equity compares artists with similar styles, so their progress can be benchmarked.

What It Measures

BBC's Sound Index

This was in beta testing during mid-2008, but closed down in July of that year. [1] As of 2011 the website still shows the beta trial as closed. [2]

The BBC created its own system called Sound Index, which measured the popularity of the top 1000 artists, based on discussions taken from: Bebo, Last.fm, Google Groups, iTunes, Myspace and YouTube. The index updated every 6 hours, so it was easy to appreciate fluctuations in popularity. The more blog mentions, comments, listens, downloads or profile views an artist or track had the higher up in the Sound Index they were. The system also allowed the information to be filtered by sources, allowing an index only based on information coming from Last.fm, for example. [1]

Related Research Articles

Music radio is a radio format in which music is the main broadcast content. After television replaced old time radio's dramatic content, music formats became dominant in many countries. Radio drama and comedy continue, often on public radio.

Reverberation, in psychoacoustics and acoustics, is a persistence of sound after the sound is produced. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing a large number of reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is absorbed by the surfaces of objects in the space – which could include furniture, people, and air. This is most noticeable when the sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude, until they reach zero amplitude.

.fm is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Federated States of Micronesia, an independent island nation located in the Pacific Ocean.

Online music store business selling music on the internet

An online music store is an online business which sells audio files over the Internet, usually sound recordings of music songs or classical pieces, in which the user pays on a per-song or subscription basis. It may be differentiated from music streaming services in that the online music store sells the purchaser the actual digital music file, while streaming services offer the patron partial or full listening without the actually owning the source file. However, online music stores generally offer partial streaming previews of songs, with some songs even available for full length listening. Online music stores typically show a picture of the album art or of the performer or band for each song. Some online music stores also sell recorded speech files, such as podcasts and video files of movies.

Yahoo! Music Radio

Yahoo! Music Radio was an Internet radio service offered by Clear Channel Communications' iHeartRadio through Yahoo! Music. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! on June 28, 2001. Previously, LAUNCHcast combined with CBS Radio beginning in 2009, then iHeartRadio in 2012. The service closed in 2013 or 2014.

Social.FM was a free social music network run by Mercora that was shut down in August 2008. Social.FM allowed Internet users to search and listen to a digital radio network of over three million songs, express their musical identity via a customizable profile page, and webcast music to other Social.FM users.

The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in Billboard magazine. Billboard biz, the online extension of the Billboard charts, provides additional weekly charts. There are also Year End charts. The charts may be dedicated to specific genre such as R&B, country or rock, or they may cover all genres. The charts can be ranked according to sales, streams or airplay, and for main song charts such as the Hot 100 song chart, all three pools of data are used to compile the charts. For the Billboard 200 album chart, streams and track sales are included in addition to album sales.

Nizlopi were an English folk and alternative duo formed in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire by Luke Concannon on vocals, guitar and bodhrán and John Parker on double bass, human beatbox and backing vocals.

Pandora Radio Music streaming and recommendation website

Pandora Radio is a music streaming and automated music recommendation internet radio service powered by the Music Genome Project. The service, operated by Sirius XM Satellite Radio, is available in the United States. The service plays songs that have similar musical traits. The user then provides positive or negative feedback for songs chosen by the service, and the feedback is taken into account in the subsequent selection of other songs to play. The service can be accessed either through a web browser or with its mobile app. Pandora is a freemium service; basic features are free with advertisements or limitations, while additional features, such as improved streaming quality, music downloads and offline channels are offered via paid subscriptions.

An unsigned artist, unsigned band or independent artist is a musician or musical group not under a contract with a record label. The terms are used in the music industry as a marketing technique. Bands that release their own material on self-published CDs can also be considered unsigned bands. Often unsigned bands primarily exist to perform at concerts.

Libre.fm

Libre.fm is a music community website that aims to provide a Free Software replacement for last.fm. The website was founded in 2009 by Matt Lee.

Internet radio audio service transmitted via the Internet

Internet radio is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not transmitted broadly through wireless means. It can either be used as a stand-alone device running through the internet, or as a software running through a single computer.

This is a list of jazz and popular music terms that are likely to be encountered in printed popular music songbooks, fake books and vocal scores, big band scores, jazz, and rock concert reviews, and album liner notes. This glossary includes terms for musical instruments, playing or singing techniques, amplifiers, effects units, sound reinforcement equipment, and recording gear and techniques which are widely used in jazz and popular music. Most of the terms are in English, but in some cases, terms from other languages are encountered.

8tracks.com internet radio and social networking website

8tracks.com is an internet radio and social networking website revolving around the concept of streaming user-curated playlists consisting of at least 8 tracks. Users create free accounts and can either browse the site and listen to other user-created mixes, and/or they can create their own mixes. The site also has a subscription-based service, 8 tracks plus, although its features are still evolving. Currently, a $25 payment purchases a 6-month subscription, during which time advertisements are removed from the website interface while subscribers are logged in. Specific DJ-focused features are in the works, but will likely include profile customization, mix analytics, and unlimited uploads.

Raditaz was an internet radio streaming music service for the web, iOS, and Android. Raditaz was a free product, and users could create stations, listen to over 200 custom-curated stations, and utilize a tagging system to personalize their stations. Users could find stations not just based on artists, songs, and genres, but also based on metadata tags, such as @work, @gym, #happy or @driving. Raditaz had a location layer that enables users to listen to and share stations that are trending throughout the US. The explore feature let a user discover the latest music trends by location. Users could also share songs or stations by email, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Raditaz had more than 23 million songs and uses The Echo Nest music intelligence platform for creating stations. When a user inputs the name of a specific band, artist or song, Raditaz could create a station based on that musician along with similar artists. Users also had the option to add an additional 9 artists to customize a station further. Listeners could adjust the popularity level of the artists and songs found within the station. However, the site has gone offline to undergo a complete makeover, with new features expected when it returns. Listeners using the website had access to free lyrics. The Raditaz revenue model is location-based advertising but no target date for ads has been set.

Mixcrate was an online audio distribution platform based in California, United States that enabled its users to upload, promote and share their DJ mixes to a worldwide audience and to help DJs promote and grow their careers as professional DJs. It was a community-based platform designed for DJs mainly aimed at promoting their mixes and for fans to follow the work of their favorite DJs. It also catered to music listeners, club promoters, radio stations and event organizers looking to discover new talent.

The Billboard Twitter Real-Time charts were four interactive Billboard music magazine charts first published on May 27, 2014. The charts ranked trending songs from popular and emerging artists based on how often they are mentioned in messages called "tweets" sent by social networking site Twitter in the United States.

SoundayMusic is a geosocial networking mobile music streaming app that enables users to listen to and track the music their friends and neighbors are playing in real time. The service provides over 32 million tracks and allows users to create "music stations" choosing between a mix of up to three artists, or choosing a music genre. In the free version users can create up to 10 personalized stations, look at the stations that are being played nearby in real time, and interact with other users through instant chat. The paid, premium subscription removes advertisements and allows users to create an unlimited number of stations. It was launched in 2009 by Soundtracker, and as of December 2014 the service has 1.3 million registered users. Soundtracker is available for iOS App Store, Android Google Play, Windows Phone Store, Windows store, Google Glass, BlackBerry World, Samsung Apps, Amazon Appstore, Nook, and Samsung Smart TV, in 10 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese Simplified, Japanese, Korean and Russian. Soundtracker is a registered trademark.

References

  1. 1 2 Butcher, Mike. "BBC's Sound Index is good, but we won't get the data". eu.techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2011-11-22.
  2. ↑ "BBC - Switch - Sound Index". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-11-22.
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