This 28-Year-Old Knows Which Artists You’ll Be Listening to 6 Months From Now
Alex White could have predicted it. Actually, he did. White, 28, is the co-founder of a company called Next Big Sound (“Making data useful”), which, as its name and slogan imply, uses computer algorithms to determine which musical acts are about to take off.
“We are making these predictions and drawing a line in the sand…It is sort of a mix of art and science.”
Launched in 2009, and widely consulted by the mainstream music industry, the company crunches consumption data from social media and music-streaming sites, tracks buzz on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, and YouTube, and collects private sales figures from clients and partners to inform its predictions. Its engineers and analysts—some of whom hail from data positions at Microsoft, the New York Yankees (think Moneyball), and the Department of Defense—compile everything into a ranking system.
The company’s Social 50 chart lists the internet’s most talked-about acts—the Beyoncé’s of the world—while its Next Big Sound chart lists the hottest up-and-comers. St. Paul and the Broken Bones, as it happens, showed up at the top of the latter chart about a week before its March SXSW showcase. “I learned that we were number one on something,” Janeway recalls with a full-bodied laugh. “And I thought, ‘Oh! We are number one on something!’”
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