If data is the new gold, then The Next Big Sound is the latest gold mining tool to help you unlock it. It provides a one-stop shop for in-depth reporting and insights for any artist. The platform essentially aggregates numerous information across social network, streaming sites and content into an easy to understand platform dashboard that helps you make sense of it all.

For a promoter, you essentially have a fail safe mechanism to see which artists people are listening to especially when you are not looking at obvious big hitters but upcoming rising stars. You can alter and prioritize what metrics you most care about, be it social media engagement, influence to streaming data.

Not only can you drill down the data types and sources yourself (this is important depending on the industry/genre focus) you immediately get a sense when comparing artists through the platforms’ aggregation system of their “audience reach” and “audience engagement”.

So a mega superstar would obviously have an “enormous” reach but say you were working for a client in a new niche you were less familiar with, you can start to compare more analytically between artists their reach as interpreted by the platform with easy to understand descriptors such as “large”, “enormous” against their engagement or follower count. The demographics of where the most engagement comes from will further segment the data so you can understand it in the context of the event location, which audiences are most likely to be pulled for the event geographically. This is incredibly rich data because an upcoming artist with a large reach and moderate engagement versus another upcoming artist with a moderate reach but passionate engagement level can make the difference when optimising an events bottom line in terms of ticket sales.

Similarly, marketers care just as much about data like engagement levels because they impact how likely the audience will convert for merchandised goods and services. This can sometimes be an issue within the popular influential blogger space where followers on a platform can be ‘hyped’ or quite frankly bought. Since you are analysing numerous types and sources of data, and especially measuring their influence and engagement level, this is much harder to ‘hype’ and a better method than simply looking at just a single follower score on one platform. You need the cross-data to improve the confidence level in your decision making.

In addition, knowing what platforms they excel on and their growth rates means you can align your marketing more precisely to the right influencer. If a product requires more visuals or a younger audience more engaged on a visual platform like Instagram you can use this data source to drive your decision making when comparing artists against your other factors. The headline summaries of trend, gender, location and social stage also work hand in hand to provide more insight allowing you see where and with whom an artist is performing strongest. They could help you uncover promising new stars or hidden niches that would pay a premium for an artist without serious mainstream appeal but a passionate audience engagement that is growing and looks promising.

When you arrive on the platform, its easy to use interface allows you to quickly start by searching for any given artist you may be interested in. You can opt to follow the artist and have them included in a weekly report to keep up to date with whats happening with them.

The headline dashboard covers:

1. Audience Reach

2. Audience Engagement

3. Metric Trend

4. Social Stage

These are not quantitatively presented results but descriptors which work better in providing precise and quick data at a high level before drilling down to analyse the numeric data.

In terms of the authenticity of the data, it provides “data notices” that allow the user interpret the information within the right context with special foot notes whenever applicable. Included are downloadable pdf options as well as an insight into the data over weeks to a year. This provides an opportunity to see if there is real growth or stagnation with the artist especially if you are concerened recent news around them may or may not influence their audience engagement and interest.

In summary, the platform provides planners, marketers and promoters the key advantages of:

• Quick data analysis of artists through easy to understand descriptors

• 4 key metrics to easily understand how influential an artist is

• Opportunity to alter data sources and manage your report output to drill down

With a dashboard, charts, reports to monitor popularity, activity, and metrics for musicians, albums, authors and books across social media; its an invaluable tool to improve your confidence level when analyzing data, especially social data for making key decisions around artist selection.