The BBC has been testing a new service called SoundIndex, which lists the top 1,000 artists based on discussions crawled from Bebo, Last.fm, Google Groups, iTunes, MySpace and YouTube. The top five bands according to SoundIndex right now are Coldplay, Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Duffy and Mariah Carey , but the index is refreshed every six hours.
This is somewhat similar to Songkick’s “Battle Of The Bands,” which we covered in March. Songkick uses different data - MySpace, Amazon and blogs - to determine rankings, and the results are completely different.
SoundIndex also lets users sort by popular tracks, search by artist, or create customized charts based on music preferences or filters by age range, sex or location. Results can also be limited to just one data source (such as Last.fm).
SoundIndex was created in partnership with IBM (IBM’s Semantic Super Computing is used to crawl and analyze sites), and the UK’s NovaRising produces the site. The project is coming out of BBC Switch, BBC’s new teen service delivering content to 12 to 17-year-olds across multiple platforms, TV, Radio 1 and online.
Thanks to Tyler McNally for the tip.
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Great, more publicly funded development edging into commercial spaces. I’d be very interested to know how this was funded, direct from the license fee we pay here in the UK?
I don’t!
Mariah has been around since 1991. Wonder how many 60s, 70, 80, Artists are anywhere near the top on those lists?
They need to work on their ranking algorithms… NiN and Radiohead are not even in the top 100. Browse that list and anyone with half a brain will know something ain’t right.
@Joffi - yeah some of my favourite bads didn’t make it either. Damn shame.
@Dan - well this is n owhere near as bad as the BBC playing the entire Top 40 every Sunday afternoon on BBC Radio 1. Assuming they still do that. Collation of statistics sounds like a fairly noble public service to me.
sound index is ok, but i still prefer the hype machine’s way. that is indexing mp3blogs and determines the top list based on the buzz. works properly.
http://hypem.com/popular
more publicly funded development edging into commercial spaces, but really?
http://www.digalexa.com