Tuesday, 10th November 2009. 7am. A phone call wakes me, but I let it ring out. Listening back to the voicemail later, I learn that it was Alex White from Next Big Sound calling from the States to verify the account I registered for Hunz, the Brisbane indietronic act who I co-manage.
Next Big Sound is a music analytics site that allows artists, managers, labels and the public to see who’s listening to and interacting with bands online.
Alex, I caught your interview on Gaebler. It seems like the site was in its early stages at the time. What’s changed with Next Big Sound since then?
That interview was conducted roughly a year ago and things have changed quite a bit! Our old site let anyone play the role of a record mogul and “sign” bands to their own fantasy record label. We then awarded points based on the number of people that signed a band after you to reward those who were able to spot the best talent before anyone else.
After a little less than a year we decided that we no longer had an interest in fighting to become an online streaming music destination site. However, the high-level idea of the initial site still got us very excited - how does a band become famous? How does a band go from 50 plays a day online to headlining a nationwide tour? We decided to change directions in June of this year to a more encompassing site. We now measure the growth and popularity of roughly half a million artists across the major web sites where people are already engaging with these artists.
I’ll re-ask a question from the interview, then: who are your main competitors, and how do you compete against them?
There are definitely a handful of people working in this area but fortunately we were early out of the gate with our public launch in August. To be honest we are focusing much more on building out what we hear from our users than what our competition is doing. I’m on the phone with regular early users of NBS every single day. Everything we are doing is so new, hell the list of band’s on Twitter a year ago was about a page long.
Can you describe some of the challenges you’ve faced with NBS so far?
Beyond the traditional startup challenges of being taken seriously, raising capital, and hiring a competent team we are struggling with the massive scale we are working on. We are quickly approaching half a billion data points. That’s in less than 6 months and we haven’t even released the YouTube integration.
Another challenge was dealing with media, which I’d learned first hand in college when I ran the biggest student group at Northwestern. We had a huge budget to book and produce acts like Kanye West, Counting Crows, Flight of the Conchords etc. and I was frequently interviewed for all the college publications. I quickly learned that after an hour-long interview they would take the stupidest thing you said and make that the center of the piece. When you’re words are published immediately to your peers, and they make fun of every quote in the article, you learn to think carefully about what you say and how you want to come across.
In your mind, what are the most important conversations within the music industry taking place online, and where are they taking place?
I’ve been living in this space for about a year so have kind of figured out how I like to keep up with things. I read Digital Music News every morning. Someone sent me a dashboard that The Orchard made on Netvibes that provides a great overview that I also skim each morning. I subscribe to dozens of industry blogs; Lefsetz, Music Think Tank, Hypebot, Derek Sivers, The New Rockstar Philosophy and of course Way Cool Jnr!
I appreciated the personal touch when you called me to verify my account. Do you take this approach for every account on the site?
Yeah, sorry again I called at 7am Australia time! I thought it was 9am. I suck at figuring out time zones.
Hundreds of artists have now verified accounts so I can’t call every single one, but I do try to touch base with as many as possible.
How did you decide upon this tactic?
It was never a tactic in the business plan, we aren’t that smart. We actually only built the verified accounts program after it was heavily requested. I saw all these requests coming in from individuals with their contact info and often they would ask a question or say how much time NBS has been saving them. I started calling a few and it led to very interesting and insightful conversations. People are all super surprised that someone from a website actually called them!
It’s all part of being close with our users. The industry is changing every week and people want to get a handle on how they can maintain their livelihood and thrive in the new world. We haven’t released our premium paid features so it’s hard to say its impact on us financially but it’s not about that at this point. I love talking to managers, bands and labels about the challenges they face and how we can help them.
Stepping away from the site - how do you find new music?
I use Hype Machine and We Are Hunted all the time. I subscribe to blogs like Crazed Hits and Kings of A&R.
I’ve fallen back in love with Tuesdays because I stream all the new releases on Lala each week (you can stream any song once in it’s entirety) and I read the reviews on All Music Guide. I then buy the albums I need to listen to over and over again.
It’s awesome plugging new artists into our system and tracking their rise.
Do you have a daily routine?
When I’m not on the road I like to wake up at 7 or 8 and read all the industry news over breakfast. If I’m feeling motivated I’ll go for a run through on one of the beautiful trails out here in Boulder, CO. Then I’ll usually head down to the office for calls, meetings and work late into the night.
How often do you get the chance to listen to new music through the site?
We blast music all day and night. Well we just launched a verified accounts program that allows artists and industry folk to verify the profiles for their artists. I get all those requests so I try to listen to as many as I can. I can’t wait for us to build our own fastest-rising charts from the data we are collecting, but we have a lot of work to do before we get there.
Get in touch with Alex via email or Twitter, and go try out Next Big Sound for yourself.
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