Shazam, VEVO Among Early Predictors of Radio Success

Green, along with Mark Tindle of MusicMetric, revealed their findings about consumer activity on social and online media, including Facebook, Twitter and BitTorrent. Nick Fishbaugh of Shazam also participated in the panel, the results of which could give radio programmers and record promoters a competitive edge in discovering and predicting new music.

“A funny thing happened on our way to determining the role social and online media have on making Country hits. We discovered a predictive model,” said Tindle, Sr. VP/Sales and Business Development at MusicMetric. ”Being able to reliably predict a hit song within the first four weeks of its release has a major impact on the business of music. Key social and online media sites such as Facebook, Shazam, Soundcloud, VEVO and even BitTorrent are showing ever-increasing roles in that success.”

“There is no foolproof method for determining probabilities for hits, but we’re seeing that data can provide a competitive edge in identifying a new single’s potential many weeks earlier in the artist development process,” added Green. “These statistics prove that what many thought were hunches are really true. We plan to dig into the numbers further to help provide additional insights.”

Here are some of the main takeaways from “Cracking the Code: Using Data to Discover the Hits” panel:

• Emerging Social and Online media outlets have fragmented the once linear exposure channel for music, making it harder to identify hits. By tracking 81 Country radio charting singles over 28 social and online metrics (including radio plays), Musicmetric was able to determine milestones in the journey of a hit and find the significant online drivers of that success.
• While more time and development is needed to perfect the model, MusicMetric found conclusive evidence that by achieving certain thresholds in online and social media consumer activity, it is possible to predict hit songs (top 10 and even No. 1s) in as little as 4 weeks from the track’s debut on the Country Aircheck/Mediabase chart.
• Key online drivers for Country genre success include: An increase in Facebook Fans, SoundCloud plays, Shazam tags, VEVO plays, Shazam tags per Radio Spin and BitTorrent file sharing.
• The Stone Door Media Lab found that Shazam and sales-per-spin ratios are powerful new tools to predict airplay success at an early stage. The data also supports a link between being No. 1 most added and reaching No. 1.
• The average peak on the Country Aircheck/Mediabase chart of a No. 1 Most Added single is 6, while the average peak of a No. 2 Most Added single is 12. These songs far outperform the average peak of all Country singles, which is 20.

Country Radio Seminar takes place Feb. 19-21 in downtown Nashville.