The countdown has begun

It’s been a long wait, but it’s finally happening! Tomorrow all the Music4point5ers will gather in a cozy conference center close to Oxford Circus to talk about the future of the industry.

Some of you might remember Musicmetric who are doing a give-away at the conference. There’s been some interest in the company since our last post. So here it is, a Q&A with company co-founder Marie-Alicia Chang who talks about why the future of music is digital.

What is MusicMetric?

Musicmetric is a technology company dedicated to providing comprehensive, real-time analysis and semantic analysis to the music industry.

The company is delivering a number of new social media and network related charts and has created a desktop application which allows detailed tracking of an artists’ online activity and fans.

For example the app allows you to view online artist buzz at an hourly resolution, so we capture any important spikes, plus we collect P2P download information, hourly, globally and to a postcode level.

The app is relevant to all areas of the music industry and comes in three distinct tiers to ensure that everyone – from managers and indie labels to management agencies, major labels and DIY artists – is catered for.

How did you come up with the idea?

I think before founding of the company in 2007, both myself and co-founder Greg Mead were looking at the changes that were happening in music at the time and believed that future of music would soon be digital, and that the way an artist might be launched or marketed was going to change dramatically.

The idea for Musicmetric was spawned out of a desire to create a highly granular music-specific web search engine. So that the tracking of online activity for any artist could be made less problematic and available for all those that might need it.

Much of the analytics around music that already existed was very noisy. The initial aim of Musicmetric was to build an engine that could be ontology specific for music, allowing cleaner and far more granular results.

How does the business model work?

The Musicmetric application is available in three tiers: Essentials – for DIY artists or managers of a small roster, Professional – aimed at indie labels, brands and management companies, and Enterprise – a customisable offering for major record labels and other music related enterprise level businesses. All three tiers of the Musicmetric desktop application are available through a subscription model. That is a year subscription to a monthly fee.

What are your plans for the future?

Currently Musicmetric is building a loyal following in Britain and parts of Europe, and we are looking to expand that into the US and South America.

We have a translator working on making the app available in other languages and we are also finalising details to license data to broadcasters.

We are also looking at partnership opportunities presented by other artist-related tools. This would allow our data to be integrated into other platforms so that in the future, for instance, the DIY artist’s tier of the application, Essentials, could also be accessed as a bolt-on of other services.

Why is it useful to analyse statistics?

Currently the infrastructure around the music industry is becoming quite fragmented, and I see this as another sign that the industry is not just changing, but evolving to support new structures and revenue models.

I believe that having objective and firm analysis of statistics is important for any business, but during times of transition is it fundamental for survival. Just as important, is knowing how to cater to your niche market.

Whilst many people appear to be panicking or constantly jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon, being in control of the facts that matter most to you is something we feel passionately to be a necessity, not a luxury.

The service we provide is helping many different factions of the industry to understand how the online environment is actually just another facet of the physical world, and not a separate one..

How do you think artists and the music industry will make money in the future?

Targeting the fans appropriate to your niche and being really responsive to their demands is what will be important across the board, it is how this is achieved that will differ depending on what you can learn about the wants and needs of the fans you are addressing.

For more established artists giving away music may be a good promotional device to increase revenue on tour ticket sales and through merch. For other emerging artists this model would not be viable, so the direct artist to fan channel becomes very important in order to promote and sell music as well as to gain visibility amongst your fans.