Measuring Artist/Band Buzz In Real Time with Social Media Monitoring

I worked in the music industry for over a decade. The number one thing that the record labels always asked about first in regards to the release of a new record was always the same: Is there a buzz?
Traditionally the most popular way of answering this question was to simply ask the tastemakers and test it at radio. That was then…. this is now:
As I have become entrenched in  the world of monitoring social media over the past year, I found it to be an untapped goldmine for record labels both big and small.
Imagine being able to track the buzz of your artist in real time across the entire Internet. The information is all out there buzzing through the various social networks, blogs, forums, etc. just waiting to be acted upon, you just need to know how to find and interpret it. If I were the head of a record label or the manager of a band here is how I would use social media monitoring to quantify my band’s buzz.
First you need a reliable monitoring tool that can scour the internet in real time for mentions of the artist. I suggest Radian 6. It can be a bit confusing at first, but with a few quick tutorials it actually becomes quite fun. 
With Radian 6 you can very easily track the mentions of your band with the keyword tool and see the conversations that are taking place. It’s like sitting in on a room of music fans and hearing every word they speak about an artist. It is all out there happening in real time, you just need to listen!
Here’s what to monitor for:
1.    Who is talking about the band?
2.    What are they saying about that artist?
3.    Where are the conversations taking place?
4.    What are the influencers saying about the band?
How is this helpful? It is real time buzz (or lack thereof in many cases) that can help you make informed decisions in situations such as:
  • An artist has a new single out, is it reacting, are people talking about it?
  • Do we need to release a full album?
  • What are the fans asking for? (how can we upsell them)
  • Should we release a live album?
  • Are they sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Amazon, Rdio?
  • Which markets should the band focus on?
These are all questions that can be answered with real time monitoring of social media. It pretty much takes the guesswork out of product management. 
Knowing this type of information along the way can easily keep a project on track and steer it away from what is not working. The future of music marketing will be based on real time feedback. These conversations are opportunities and should not be overlooked but rather acted and engaged upon directly.
This of course is just a brief summary of how to accomplish this, but let me reiterate again, this is how to measure buzz on a band in real time and the future of music marketing.

Questions or comments please ask away. Need some ideas on getting started? I am here to help. 

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Jason Miller
Jason Miller

Jason Miller is a leading digital B2B marketer, who’s held senior roles at LinkedIn, Marketo, and ActiveCampaign. Before entering the B2B space, he spent ten years at Sony, developing and executing marketing campaigns around the biggest names in music. He is a prolific keynote speaker, digital marketing instructor at UC Berkeley, and best-selling author. Also an accomplished rock concert photographer, his work appears in books, magazines, and album covers.

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