Tag Archives: Band Metrics

Tech Sharecase, 30 October 2009

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Joseph Hartnett, Randy Hensley, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Ryan Phillips

Google Discover Music
Talked about new Google Discover Music service in which search results are more socially based and about October 23, 2009, radio story from On the Media, “Charting the Charts,” which noted how Billboard is waning in influence and new services are appearing that measure music success differently. One such services is Band Metrics that ranks popularity not by sales but by an aggregation of metrics, including social ones. Search is changing the economic model for music rankings. Big Champagne offers another service that measures rankings using social aspects. What is a credible or reliable metric is shifting from authorities like SoundScan or Billboard to services that look at social use of media.

Google Social Search
This experiment from Google looks at who is in your social graph (your collection of online friends) so that it can present you with search results that are refined by content that your friends have posted online.

Google Reader
We looked at the way that people who use Google Reader can friend others who use the service and share notable feed items with each other.

Google Site Search Tool
The Baruch College website today unveiled its new site search engine powered by Google. The library website will be changing its search site software to Google soon as well.

2D Barcodes
Following up on Arthur’s comments on an earlier blog post here, We talked about 2D barcodes, QR codes, and their potential uses by colleges and libraries. We looked at the barcode service from ScanLife and the video about how Case Western Reserve University used ScanLife codes.

Mobile Websites for Libraries
We talked about various strategies for creating library websites that would render well on browsers in mobile phones.

Amazon Kindle vs. Barnes & Noble Nook
While talking about basic differences between new Nook reader coming out in November, we also discussed the Kindle loan program at North Carolina State University and how the service also offers patron-driven acquisitions (hear all the details about this on the Library 2.0 Gang podcast from September 2009 in which Orion Pozo from NCSU was interviewed).

TinyURL vs. HugeURL
TinyURL is a well-known service that will shrink a long URL with a brief one that redirects you to the original site. HugeURL is a funny spoof that turns short URLs into obscenely long ones.

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Google Discover Music & Social Search

Google. Discover Music
Google just unveiled a landing page called Discover Music specifically designed for searching music. Google has partnered social media services like Imeem, LaLa, Myspace, Rhapsody, Pandora and music companies/label owners such as EMI, Sony Music, Universal and Warner Brothers to customize search results and provide music content. Users can search by band names, songs, albums, lyrics et cetera.

As with typical Google search, precision can be a problem when using common phrases or words as search terms. The first result in a search on my favorite band Low returns the Google Finance page for Lowe’s Companies. This is a surprising example given finance and music are separate search platforms. Another example is the search for the popular Manchester band Oasis. This yields results typical of a regular Google search with inclusions from a number of organizations using the O.A.S.I.S. acronym and even local search listing for businesses with the name Oasis.

But when the search is successful, and returns results as Google and the Discover Music partners have designed, the first results are options to listen to the band from music streaming sites like MySpace, iLike and so on. You can then listen and even buy songs. The remaining results consist of the band website, fan pages, additional social music networks, Wikipedia and so on.

Context of Social Search
What’s interesting about Google’s new search is the featuring of social networking tools in the results for users’ discovery of new music. Discover Music isn’t guiding users to traditional online music retailers to facilitate purchases but rather online networks for music discovery. Discover Music results are directing traffic to Pandora, MySpace, iLike which are designed to guide people to new music based on what other people are listening to.

Related to the results of Google’s music search, last week public radio’s On the Media focused on music in the digital age. Particularly, their segment on “Charting the Charts” explored current and upcoming methods of ranking music popularity given the multitude of avenues people are able to listen to music.

With the economics of the music industry shifting from stores sales, to digital sales and file sharing/streaming, some feel traditional sources for music rankings like Billboard Charts are failing to capture important aspects of music popularity.

The show featured two sources that are trying to capture music popularity in different ways. BigChampagne is a media measurement tool that tracks legal and illegal downloads, online streaming audio, tour merchandise et cetera. Band Metrics is a service that hopes to collect music data based on interest from social networking sites, radio and show attendance.

“Google Makes Searching for Music Even Easier Than It Already Is.” Pitchfork. October 29, 2009. Web.

“Charting the Charts.” On the Media. WNYC. October 23, 2009. Web.

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