How the ‘Facebook of music’ is using big data to find the next pop star
Online music hub ReverbNation was founded in 2006 as a social networking and career-building tool for up-and-coming artists. Since then, the company has had a continued track record of success in bringing new talent to the fore in popular music.
Grammy-winning acts like Imagine Dragons, Alabama Shakes, and The Civil Wars all started their careers through ReverbNation, and 35,000 new artists sign up for the site each month, in hopes of finding a similar stepping stone to music stardom.
Simon Perry, the chief creative office at ReverbNation, spoke to Business Insider about how his company has evolved in recent years to reach a positive “inflection point” in its business.
No longer simply a platform for uploading and discovering new music, the site has employed big-data analysis and large-scale human curation of its artists to become the go-to “farm system” for record labels and music festivals seeking out new talent.
Unlike SoundCloud and the many other music sites struggling to stay afloat in a similar domain, Perry says ReverbNation has been steadily growing — and remaining profitable — due to its inventive shift in business model.
In 2013, ReverbNation’s executives realized that they could carve out a distinct lane in the music industry by crafting a system for artist discovery that would be founded in the big-data analytic techniques of companies like Facebook and Google.
By performing what Perry calls the “huge undertaking” of analyzing the dense volumes of music and personal information that artists upload to their site, the company has been able to identify which acts stand out as potential successes early on in their careers.
“Artists tell us everything about themselves. It’s the Facebook of music,” Perry said. “They aggregate their social media with us. More [concert] show listings for emerging artists are posted with us than any other single site in the world. Hundreds of millions of minutes of music are streamed on our site, and we send hundreds of millions of emails on behalf of our artists.
