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Stats / Basics

• What is Next Big Sound?

  Next Big Sound measures the popularity of bands online. Every day millions of fans interact with music online and Next Big Sound tracks these interactions.

• How are fans, plays, views, and comments defined?

  Artists add a fan when someone becomes their friend, follower, or fan; a play when a song is listened to or streamed; a view when their page or profile is looked at; and a comment when someone leaves a comment on the page of an artist.

• How far into the past does Next Big Sound go?

  It depends on the artist and network you're looking at. The start date for data collection can be any date on or after June 6th, 2009, when we first started tracking data. The past 90 days are available in stats and as much data as we have is available in premier.

• How reliable is this data?

  We're consistently tracking over 700,000 artist profiles across more than 15 networks. Data quality, accuracy, and reliability is our highest priority. If you're curious about the status of Next Big Sound see status.nextbigsound.com.

• What do the percentage change increases and decreases mean?

  Increase/decrease percentage change is calculated by comparing the current time period to the previous time period. For example, if you're looking at a month of fans data it's compared to the month before.

• Why is the percentage change negative?

  Next Big Sound graphs show the number added rather than the total number. Having a negative percentage change doesn't usually mean anything was lost, just that less were added than during the previous time period.

• Are negative values possible?

  Yes. Comments can show a negative value after a lot of spam comments are removed, or if comments are removed in general. Fans can show a negative value if spam friends are deleted by the network or if the friendship, following, or fan relationship is removed by either the fan or the owner of the page.

• What causes huge spikes and dips?

  There's a lot of things that can cause spikes and dips. Many times events like album releases and press mentions are the cause. If you see a spike or dip you're not sure about you can report it to us and ask for clarification by clicking the "help" button on the bottom-right of the window.

Stats / Artists & Networks

• How are the networks below the graph determined?

  Not all networks track the same metrics. If you're looking at an artist with both Twitter and MySpace profile tracked on Next Big Sound, on twitter their number of followers is tracked. On MySpace their number of Fans, Plays, Views, and Comments are tracked. If you're looking at the fans graph for this artist you'll see the combination of fans from Twitter and MySpace. And if you look at plays you'll only see plays from MySpace since plays don't exist on twitter.

• Can I see that status of a particular network?

  Check out our status page for any important changes to the networks tracked: status.nextbigsound.com.

• Can I add an artist to be tracked by Next Big Sound?

  Sure thing. All you need is their name and the address of at least one of their pages. Head over to the add artist page to get started. After they're added their graphs will start showing up about three days later.

• Can I edit the profiles being tracked for an artist?

  Yes. If you're logged in you can edit the profiles for any artist except ones that are verified by other users. Edit a profile by searching for the artist then clicking "edit & add profiles" at the bottom left of the page.

• Why are certain profiles locked?

  Profiles are locked when we know they're correct. If you see an error with a locked profile please email support@nextbigsound.com. If you're an artist or work with an artist and would like to restrict access to editing profiles please verify your account.

• How do I remove duplicate entries for a band?

  Email support@nextbigsound.com with the band name and we'll remove it. If the duplicates are both legitimate bands we won't remove either.

• How come when I try to add a profile it says "Not Found"?

  Not Found shows up when we're not able to find the data we're looking for at the URL entered. This generally happens for specific reasons depending on the network.
  
  Facebook: Make sure you're trying to track a Fan Page and not a profile page or group. If your band doesn't have a Fan Page you can create one here: facebook.com/pages/create.php. Occasionally location and/or age restrictions on a Facebook fan page can prevent it from being accessible. To fix this check your fan page settings on Facebook to make sure your page is viewable by everyone.
  
  ReverbNation: ReverbNation has an option to hide your stats from public view and if they're hidden Next Big Sound can't track them. You can change the stats privacy setting when you're logged in to ReverbNation. Click "Control Room" at the top of the page, then click the Profile button, click "Customize" and make sure "Stats" is an active module on the left side. If you needed to switch it, try adding the artist's profile back on NBS afterwards and it should work.
  
  MySpace: Make sure the page you're trying to track is an artist profile and has a song player on it.
  
  Last.fm: Make sure the profile you're trying to track is an artist page.
  
  OurStage: In order to track your profile you need to have at least one fan.
  
  If "Not Found" comes up for any other networks or you have trouble with the network listed above email support.

• How do I change the name of an artist if it's incorrect?

  Email support@nextbigsound.com with the currently listed band name on Next Big Sound and the correct band name. We'll change it for you.

• How do I change my artist's photo?

  Artist photos come from Last.fm, Twitter, and Facebook. If an artist doesn't have any of these networks listed on their Next Big Sound page click "edit & add profiles" to add them. If an artist already has a photo but you would like to change it simply visit the artist's page, hover over the bottom right corner of the image, and tap the circular arrow to refresh the image.

• Can I track a MySpace Beta profile?

  If you are using a MySpace Beta profile, you have the option to hide your stats from public view. If they're hidden Next Big Sound can't track them. You can change the stats privacy setting when you're logged in to MySpace. Once logged in, in the top main navigation you'll see a "profile" option, hover over that and then select "customize profile". You'll see a floating window that will have a heading with the title "Build My Own Theme", below this you'll see a few other headings including "modules". Click on it and you'll see all the module options for your MySpace page, including the ones that are currently being used. Click "+Add" on the one that is titled "General Info". You should now be able to track your MySpace Beta profile on Next Big Sound.

• Do Facebook applications have an effect on analytics?

  Yes. Apps such as BandPage and other page enhancement applications can result in higher than expected engagement numbers in Facebook Insights. It is important to note the presence of BandPage or any equivalent application when comparing artists with Facebook Insights connected so that assumptions are made on a level playing field.

Stats / Verification

• What's a verified account?

  Verified accounts give you early access to new features, exclusive control over your profile URLs, and a verified badge. Head to the verification page to verify artists.

• How long does it take to verify my account?

  It normally takes about a week.

• How do I edit my profiles after my account is verified?

  Make sure you're logged in and go to the artist's page you want to edit. Then click "Verified By You" at the bottom-right of the page. You can also edit profiles from the settings page.

Premier / Overview

• How are comparable artists determined?

  Comparable artists are determined by applying a series of filters before taking a distance measure. The first filter is genre (so Taylor Swift isn't compared to Slayer), the second is the amount of online activity (so a brand new MC isn't compared to Kanye West).

• What is the ticker at the bottom of my screen?

  The ticker is a way to quickly see the latest numbers for the stocks, err, bands that you are working with. You can toggle the view by metric or disable it altogether by clicking on the New Fans Yesterday button in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

• Why is my Twitter feed empty?

  First make sure that we are tracking the correct URL. We only track @replies on the overview page so mentions of your band that don't formally include the @bandname won't be picked up here.

• How come my Twitter feed isn't loading?

  Twitter limits the amount of calls we are able to make an hour so if you leave the page open for long periods of time, the Twitter feed will stop loading temporarily.

• What data can I get on other artists that I don't work with directly?

  All publicly facing data is available for any artist in the system. This includes social music geographic data, the activity and event stream events but will never include any imported data or proprietary data such Google Analytics, sales or activity stream events added manually or via automated population.

Premier / Graphs

• What data can I import?

  Right now you can import your Google Analytics data and we are visualizing the page views/visits on our graphs as overlays along with our tracked networks. You can also import your iTunes sales data and Facebook Insights in the standard .csv file formats those services provide. And you can opt-in for licensed data from our partners for P2P monitoring and Radio and bring that data into your Premier environment as well. Our longer term vision is to add everything and anything with a date and a number - if that is deemed relevant by our customers and as long as we can automate the importation.

• Can I automate the importation of my data?

  Automation saves time and that is important for both of us. Our Google Analytics sync is an automated process. We are already exploring how to make this happen with other import sources.

• Will the data I import be shared with everyone?

  Absolutely, positively and without question that answer is no. Your data is just that - yours. The NBS Team recognizes the sensitivity of an artist's proprietary data so we take extreme measures to protect it.

• How do I import Google Analytics?

  Just go to an artist's graph and click "manage data" to the top right of their graph. Follow the simple instructions to sync Google Analytics. This should only take a minute or two. Unlike social media pages that only start tracking when we add them to the system, we can pull in historical data on pageviews, visitors, and unique visitors.

• Can I import Omniture data if I use that to track my site?

  Not at this time. We will enable this functionality if requested enough by our customers.

• How does Next Big Sound decide which data sources will be tracked?

  After all the darts have been thrown, we look for relevance to the artist community, consensus of requests from users, the consistency and integrity of the data and areas of data strength or specialization. But we really weight the requests we get heavily.

• How do you distinguish plays on Vevo from plays on You Tube?

  Every Vevo video has a unique YouTube ID that we track. Right now we don't distinguish plays by service.

• Do you have sales data?

  Next Big Sound does not have your physical or digital sales data automatically in our platform, it must be imported.

• Who is your source for P2P data?

  Peer Media Technologies

• How come the PDFs I export don't match my graph settings?

  Right now the PDFs are only available in one format no matter what date range or data you are looking at on the graph. That format is social media data for the previous month and is based on templates we saw from our early customers.

• If I set up alerts, what is considered a significant spike?

  Warning: math heavy answer - We take a regression on the totals for an artist over the last 30 days and then predict a range of reasonable values for the next point based on how tight the regression fit to the actual data. If the data is outside the range we can reasonably expect, an alert is triggered and an email sent to the subscriber.

• What sources populate the activity and event stream?

  The activity and event stream is comprised of blog mentions, news mentions, chart appearances, live performances, and custom events.

  • Blog mentions are pulled from thousands of music-focused blogs from around the web
  • News mentions are like blog mentions but for mainstream traditional publications
  • Chart appearances are from Billboard and iTunes
  • Live performances are sourced from SongKick
  • You have the option to manually enter activities and events

• Why didn't the blog or news piece I was in show up?

  We track thousands of music-focused blogs but obviously can't capture every single piece of related content (particularly since we don't want to show a lot of noise for bands like Phoenix, Girls, Hockey etc.). You should add the piece as a custom event to the stream or email us a link to the RSS feed so we can start tracking that blog if you think it's relevant for us to track continuously.

• Can I add an event that happened last week?

  Yep! Just click in the box at the top of the activity and event stream, type in your event and select the date it occurred whether it's last week, last month or last year.

• Who sees the events that I add to the system?

  All imported and inputted data is kept safe and secure and will only be shared within your group account (this sharing can be turned off completely on an event-by-event basis).

• What are benchmarks?

  Benchmarks give you context around your data by showing how you are doing compared to all artists on a particular social networks or against artists of the same genres. The purpose of benchmarks is to help determine if a bump in activity on a social network was specific to an artist or if it was the effect of a more macro-level event high traffic day on a social network (i.e. did Facebook switch it's Become a Fan buttons to Like buttons? Is techno becoming more and more popular etc.).

• How are network benchmarks calculated (i.e. Facebook, Twitter)?

  Network benchmarks simply take an average of the data we collect for profiles of artists on that network.

• How are genre benchmarks calculated?

  Genre benchmarks simply take an average of the data we collect for artists of the same genres across the social networks.

• What data can I export?

  You can export artist statistics, track-level statistics and geographic and demographic information by country and by DMA.

• How come my exported data doesn't include all my fans?

  The data is limited because the data sources don't let you see more than 40,000 fans.

• How do I import my Facebook Insights and iTunes Sales data?

  Just click the "manage data" link in Graphs. Download .CSV file formats of your data and email those files to the dedicated email address shown in the instructions. Just click on the email shown in the instructions and it should load to your email client.

• Why can I only see social media data from two days back?

  At Next Big Sound, we're collecting data constantly, so in order to accurately report the values for a given day, we have to wait until the next day to show the total values for a that day. When we show the "delta" values (the change from day to day) for a metric, we display the difference between some day 1 and some day 2 on day 1 because all of the plays, views, etc. actually happened on day 1. Therefore, the most recent delta value that we can report is one day behind the most recent total value, which is one day behind the current day.

• Why can't I see any benchmarks for my artist?

  We try to make the benchmarks as best a match for each artist as possible. It can require several days of data collection for an artist before we can create an index best suited to them.

Premier / Geo & Demo

• What networks are available in Geo?

  At this time MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are available.

• What sources populate the Geo application?

  The sources that populate our basic Geo application are Twitter followers, MySpace friends, and YouTube subscribers.

• How do you choose which of an artist's fans are plotted on the map?

  We plot a random sample of roughly 3,000 fans on the map. If we tried to plot any more it would crash your browser.

• Can you filter the fans to show only the cutest female fans on the map?

  No.

• Do you have international data?

  Yes and no. If a social network's users, and subsequently an artist's fans, are in x-U.S. territories, and we can capture that data, then yes. But we are not currently grabbing data from Country or Regionally specific sites. That is something we will probably do down the road but isn't part of our data portfolio presently.

• What imported sources can contribute to my geographic information? An email list?

  Right now our basic geographic application doesn't display imported data on the map. Look for increased display in our advanced geographic application.

• Is my geo/demo data a composite of all of my followers, subscribers and friends?

  Like Arbitron and other services that extrapolate samples to develop summaries, NBS samples your fans to build the overview presented in our platform.

Premier / Admin

• How long does it take for data to start showing up when I first sign up? Will I be billed?

  It can take up to 72 hours for data to start showing up but typically takes much less time. You will be in the free trial so you will not be paying for the time it takes to spin up the data.

• What if my email address changes?

  Then update it! https://premier.nextbigsound.com/users/edit

• How do I add/remove artists from my account?

  Go to the billing page and choose remove artist. You'll still be subscribed to emails on them, but you can remove them entirely by going to the artists section of settings.

• Are there limitations on my logins?

  Yes, logins are limited depending on your plan. Enterprise accounts are available if you need more than one or two logins.

• What browsers do you support?

  We support all major browsers with the exception of Internet Explorer. Google Chrome is the recommended browser for the best experience on Premier followed by Safari and then Mozilla Firefox.

• How do I cancel my Premier account?

  If you must, head to the billing page.

Premier / Future Features

• Have you thought about allowing users to set-up advanced alerts so I can monitor a marketing campaign on a specific network, over specific date and designed to build a specific metric?

  Yes.

• I'd like to be able to create a PDF that reflects the settings I constructed on the graph. Have you thought about advanced exportation and/or PDFs?

  Yes.

• Have you thought visualizing song-level detail audio and video on the graphs?

  Yes.

• It would be great to have a tool that can help me easily measure results of the actions that are taking place on behalf of the artist ... even results versus hard costs? Has anyone thought of creating such a tool?

  An ROI calculator? Indeed.

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