Chatting with….Alex White from The Next Big Sound

Posted on | February 10, 2010 | No Comments

What started as a project in an entrepreneur class at Northwestern University has evolved into one of the few analytics companies in the music industry that actually gets the kind of data bands should be looking at and the insights to make the numbers relevant. Even better, they’re the only music company that I’ve ever heard of to be funded through Boulder’s Tech Stars.

My interview with Alex began like any other interview I’ve ever done…by an email Q&A:

-Under what context was the idea for NBS created?

Well I’ve been around music my whole life, my dad is a professional cellist and I played in bands and worked in a recording studio in high school. I quickly got more into the business side of things and interned at Universal Records in New York and Chicago during college. It was during this time, when I wanted to be a record mogul that the original idea was conceived. The first version of Next Big Sound let anyone play the role of a record executive and “sign” they thought were going to become famous to their own online record label. We gave people points based on the number of people that signed a band after them so we would award people for finding good talent before anyone else. My senior year I found an amazing team and together we built the first version of thenextbigsound.com.

-What did you think your chances were of getting a spot in Tech Stars considering they rarely ever accept music-related companies?

We thought we had no chance. I was living on a couch in Chicago and we were actually about to shut the company down before we got accepted into the program.

-Do you find your service to be more A&R-driven or for artists to monitor themselves?

We are piloting an A&R tool with a couple labels but mostly we have artists, managers, labels, and agents signing up and subscribing to reports on their artists.

-What sort of insights into this data do you hope artists to discover?

We want to help artists and industry professionals discover which explicit actions and events drive artist awareness, fan engagement and revenue.

-For plays – what other sites do you plan on adding? grooveshark? pandora? hype machine? lala?

We have a long list of data sources that we are slowly rolling out as we establish partnerships. We launched with 5 sources and now have 16 (most recently adding Wikipedia). We plan to double the number of sources over the next several months.

-For views – is it just Youtube or is it also Vevo and other video sites?

In the tests we’ve run, the play counts for Vevo videos matches their total on YouTube (which incorporates embedded videos). We are closely monitoring this as we aren’t sure this will always be the case.

-How do you find your company different or superior to other music industry analytics companies such as Band Metrics?

We display more data, for more bands, in a way that is easy to understand. We’ve received inbound interest from professionals throughout the industry saying they’ve been trying tons of these services and were so relieved to find one that just…worked? We know this space is really heating up but we honestly don’t really keep too close of tabs on our competitors – we are focused on delivering real value to an industry that is in a state of extreme transformation.

-If you’re allowed to tell me, how do you plan on monetizing these services? Do you think artists or labels will be interested in paying and why?

We are going to charge artists and industry professionals for context and recommendations around the data we are collecting. We’ve made sure to involve our users in the development process since the beginning so that when we launch our paid service it’s based on direct input about what would be valuable enough to pay for.

After I had a chance to absorb his answers and mess around with the site (see below screenshots), I scheduled a call with Alex on Monday night and was ready to rock n roll with a legit convo of where he’s headed in 2010.

Right off the bat, I was curious how he planned on keeping the lights on. Alex, with complete confidence, responded that he would help musicians to “understand the context around the data.” The average musician would look at the above charts and be either confused what it meant or wouldn’t be able to look into the data to analyze it the way someone in the tech space would, but most of the tech folk don’t have the insight to the music side of things, so Alex is at an interesting cross-section.

Although NBS is based out of Boulder, he routinely flies to LA and NYC to meet with labels and other industry professionals to discuss the potential of why his service is imperative to their understanding of the market. After all, “all of the behavior [of music consumers] is moving online and we want to capture it all”. The labels know that and are open to discussing with him whereas 5 fives years ago, they probably would have ignored him.

Browse around the site and figure out what you or your band can gain from the services. In general, I’m really excited to see where the future will bring Alex and the rest of the NBS gang. Will labels buy out tech companies like they did with indie labels and digital distributors…who knows???