This is Part 10 of 10 in a series analyzing the way that Reverbnation, the popular artist/dj/rapper/band ranking website, ranks artists
(scroll below for a super long play list of awesome electronic music you can stream for free)
Background: After nearly 3 gruelling days, we completed our Focus Group. And then, for the first time, we showed our 5 Judges the results of their music evaluations. The results sheet we provided them listed the name of the top songs/tracks (sorted in their final order), the name of the artist/group who created the song, and the artist’s rank on the Reverbnation Charts. We then gave our Judges an hour to surf through the Reverbnation website. We concluded with a final debrief. Excerpts of this final debrief are included below.
MONSTER LOOP: First, thanks for undertaking this monumental task – listening to so much music. We promised we’d give you a chance to provide your final thoughts.
Seth. I’m reading the final results. I have a lot of thoughts going on in my head… but I can’t get any words out…
MONSTER LOOP: No problem, we’ll help start the discussion. So, looking through the list of the final 20 tracks based on your results… any surprises? A couple things we noticed were, a lot of different styles are represented in your list and that, out of the 100 different artists and 260 tracks we began with, your final 20 has one artist, Burn in Noise with two tracks in your top 5, and then there are two artists, Laura Escude’ and Going after Zen,who both have 2 tracks in your top 20. Maybe you could talk about that briefly.
Mike. I did not have a preconceived idea of where [the final rankings list] would end up. I’m not surprised there’s an artist or two with more than a track in our top 20 but I am surprised we have an artist in our Top 5 twice – none of us even realized those two tracks were by the same artist. So, you know, we are for sure curious about him.
Jose. Burn in Noise, that guy – I see that his name is Gustavo Manfroni – he’s the real deal. He puts out some intense, crazy <bleep>.
Jason. What makes Gustavo so good is, it all comes together… production, sounds, rhythm, beat, and you never get bored, he keeps changing it up and takes you on a journey. Cheers to him.
MONSTER LOOP: The other artists with multiple songs in your list, Laura Escude’ and ‘Going after Zen‘ aka Chris Hirons – any comments you want to add?
Seth I have a comment. ‘Going after Zen‘ – Chris Hirons you say? (yes) He is super smooth – very polished, incredibly talented – it’s obvious. It’s pretty flawless, his work. It’s also very interesting and gets better the more you hear it. He’s a pro, pure and simple. I think the same goes for Laura Escude’ – those two have a very polished product. You can also tell those two are thinkers – it comes out in the music. There are a lot of subtle complex things going on in their tracks that are like, “whoa” – I never would have thought to do that. But they make it sound simple.
Katja If you’re into power or intensity in techno, those two aren’t for you. It’s downbeat, IDM, ambient. And very good.
MONSTER LOOP: When we noticed those two receiving high scores, we did a little research on them. Laura Escude’ is actually an Ableton Live instructor and appears to work behind the scenes with some major global artists. Chris Hirons is a bit of an enigma – it was not easy to find out much about him or Stickleback (aka Ben Heppel).
Mike It’s interesting you say that because, maybe it partly explains why, in this anonymous listening process, we liked them so much, but those 3 artists were ranked between 1000-1050 – which is just shocking honestly. What I’m wondering is, you know, if they aren’t ranked higher because they don’t put much effort into marketing themselves. Their music is just phenomenal.
MONSTER LOOP: The very reason for putting this Focus Group together was to find and promote artists that are extremely talented but that people might not know about. Let’s shift topics for a moment. Right now we hear a lot about Dubstep, but Burn in Noise, which did very well in your reviews, his Electronic Music style is Psytrance, as is the case with Amit Bharadwaj and Infected Mushroom, who also did well. Scanning through your final 20, Psytrance and a Downbeat-type sound seem strongly represented.
Jason. Yeah, but I’m not sure how much you can read into that. It could be we just heard artists this weekend that are really good that happen to make those styles.
Jose. And I did hear some dubstep that was really good. I think Downlink is Dubstep. And Excision… Datsik, those artists from Canada that did Dubstep were good.
MONSTER LOOP: Let’s talk about that briefly. After day 1, some of the highest scores were by 3 or 4 artists that make Dubstep. But we noticed their scores started to decrease a bit as the weekend went on.
Seth. I’m one of those who started decreasing their score. I was not super familiar with Dubstep. Sure, I’ve heard about it, but it’s still relatively new on the scene so I haven’t heard as much of that style. So when I heard it this weekend- my first reaction was “WOW, this is some powerful <bleep>. It’s new, it’s different, it has a lot of bells and whistles. I wouldn’t say it’s “cool” because there’s nothing laid back about it. It’s kind of hyper. But then, after hearing it over and over I, you know, it started to wear on me a bit. So as the competition went on, and tracks were eliminated, the Dubstep music was being compared against some great Psytrance and other styles and, for me at least, it wasn’t quite as good. In contrast, the music by Amit Bharadwaj & Burn in Noise seemed to sound better the more I heard it, to hold up better..
Mike. I thought Infected Mushroom was very slick. I liked the track that made our list a lot. Those guys remind me of Depeche Mode or early Ministry. But that’s also what worries me about them.
MONSTER LOOP: Worries? What do you mean?
Mike. Well, back in the mid-1980′s, Ministry released this EP called “Twitch” which I think is one of the best Electronic Music releases ever. Part of what made it so good was that it was just way ahead of its time. They actually made most of those tracks back in 1982, which I think was around the same time Soft Cell released their version of “Tainted Love.” ”Twitch” – and you’d have to hear it really to appreciate it – was radical. It was RADICAL compared to the music being created at that time. And it was a key link in the chain of what we know called “Electronica.” After they released “Twitch,” though, Ministry went into this very different direction with “Land of Rape and Honey.” They go full-on metal with an army of electric guitars, etc. And Ministry became, for me, the Darth Vader of electronic music – they went to the dark side. And a lot of people stopped listening to them at that point, including me. Of course, a lot of people started to listen to them. They reinvented themselves basically. But in a way that was not techno or electronica.
Jose. If Ministry was Darth Vader who was Obi-Wan Kanobi? (laughter)
Mike. Obi-Wan Kanobi was Front 242. Both bands were on the cutting edge at that time. And they even worked together for awhile. But compare their sound by the late 1980′s. Ministry releases “The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste” around the same time Front 242 releases “Front by Front.” Front by Front, that’s one of the greatest electronic dance music releases by any artist, ever. Front by Front did more to grow Techno music that possibly anything else at the time, and it was a time when Techno needed a force like Front 242. A band not only creative, powerful, but also polished. Their production was as good as anyone’s production in any genre.
MONSTER LOOP: Interesting. So what’s the connection between this and your comment about Infected Mushroom?
Mike. Infected Mushroom is very good. Their track that did best in our review (“Can’t Stop“), it has a lot of diverse elements in it. A few minutes into the song, the guitars kick in and I start having flashbacks to Ministry. What worries me is that, talented Electronica artists in the US, like Infected Mushroom, might take the path Ministry took. I mean, Ministry basically went to the dark side from Industrial Techno to Industrial Metal and I’m sure made millions in the process screaming into microphones to the cacophonous screech of grinding guitars. Another example is Nine Inch Nails (aka Trent Reznor), though not as extreme. Nine Inch Nails was, in the beginning techno – google “Down in it“, his first release. 
It sounds nothing like Reznor’s later work. Nine Inch Nails was at that time working with Adrian Sherwood. Sherwood produced both ‘Pretty Hate Machine‘ with Nine Inch Nails and ‘Twitch‘ with Ministry. Brilliant productions and way ahead of their time. But they never worked with Sherwood again, as far as I’m aware. And it’s a <bleep> shame. Now, when I hear Infected Mushroom, and I think “NUDE !” from Germany also falls into this category – I think there is the potential for those artists to take that Ministry direction. My advice would be, “Don’t go to the dark side of the force! Follow the example of Front 242.” On the other hand, Front 242 became a bit harsh years later. The dark side is tempting.
Don‘t misinterpret what I‘m saying though. Al Jourgensen is a genius. I just think – and let me interrupt myself to say, “what the <bleep> do I know?” – I never met the guy, just read a lot. Listened to a lot. Anyway, I think Jourgensen just went into this dark place within himself and, you know, it comes out in the music. So he did a brilliant job of expressing this absolute darkness. Can people relate to that? Sure. And this is when I bring it back to my Darth Vader analogy. The dark side is powerful. That is part of its lure. But remember, it’s the dark side of the force. I’m just saying, I hope talented bands like Infected Mushroom, NUDE ! and new kids coming up know that you can be creative, you can make money, you can kick <bleep> with your music without joining the Evil Empire. You mentioned the “New Beat” movement in one of our breaks – that underground electronic music movement came out of Belgium in the late 1980′s, so at the time Front 242 was peaking. And we discussed the “Lords of Acid.” 
I think the same applies with them. The New Beat was incredible there for awhile and was influenced by the Chicago Acid House, releases like ’House Hallucinates.’ They took the Chicago sound, harnessed it, and made it something highly original. But again, the Lords of Acid - these great pioneers of New Beat – abandoned this incredibly powerful and cool style and went to the dark side. I mean, it started to get ridiculous, like porn videos with an over-the-top aggressive beat. Why? They felt it would help them sell music maybe? I really don’t know.
I’m from Chicago. Grew up here. Love Chicago. Ministry is from here and Rezner is, I believe from Detroit – so also from the Midwest. A lot of great music comes from Chicago – the whole acid house scene started on the south side of Chicago you know – and so this hits close to home for me. TWICE we’ve started something major in Chicago with Techno but then, both times it was Central Europe that took it to the next level. So maybe now with you guys (Monster Loop), maybe you can take Chicago back to being the epicenter of the cutting edge music, as is our tradition.
MONSTER LOOP: That’s kind of you to say that. Thank you.
Mike. I think we have to protect Electronic Music on several fronts: America, in particular, has this tradition with electric guitars. It’s become this cliche’ – that a band has a lead vocalist, a bass guitarist, an electric guitarist, and then a drummer. C’mon – it’s antiquated. So the first “front” to protect is – you don’t have to have guitar! I think this is partly because there’s the temptation to want to have that instrument for live performance. So then the second front, is hip hop. Rap music is really strong in the US. I like rap music, a lot actually, especially old school. But I think that, as Electronica gets more and more popular – and we’re seeing that now – we have to protect Electronica from being overtaken by rappers. Electronica is not rap music. We already have rap music. Rap music can benefit from the developments in Electronica. But I’d prefer not to see Electronica co-opted by these other styles. Pretty Lights is a great example of a good balance of rap/techno. There’s a third front, vocals in general, singers. Listen to Goldfrapp, great vocals. Great music. But it’s in balance. It doesn’t take over. It works with the music. They get equal footing. trezOra – check out his song ‘Loving You.’ Singing. But it doesn’t overpower the song. The French band Air is great about this – great balance between the music and the vocals. So the third front isn’t to resist vocals, it’s that the electronic music not get over powered by them, that the vocals not take center stage. And I think the first clue that the vocals are trying to take center stage is when the band highlights the singer instead of the creators of the music. I never cared for that. It never made sense to me.
I think the risk is related to a desire to perform live. Let’s face it, techno is really studio music. 
It really is. Live techno sounds like crap – and I’m sorry if I piss someone off saying it. If it doesn’t sound like crap, it’s because you’re triggering pre-recorded loops. And there’s no shame in saying that techno sounds best in a studio setting. So I think there is a temptation to, you know, want a vocalist – it makes more sense live because you can sing live. And a guitar – because it makes sense to play a guitar live, and it’s fun. But good electronic music, it’s layered and it takes hours and hours and hours to craft. It’s just not a “live” style of music. So that’s why DJs got big – because people want a face with the music, so the face became the DJ. And even that got absurd. There’s footage of a DJ – Tiesto maybe? I don’t recall. Anyway, there’s a large crowd, and they’re seated. And they are, they’re basically just watching him DJ up there on stage. So he’s up there playing other people’s music. And they’re cheering for him like he’s a rock star. I don’t get it. I think at that point, that was the point where people began to start moving away from DJs back to creators of electronic music – who, I know, can also be DJs. I think people have to just accept that, this style of music – at least at this stage – the great heavily layered music, as created by the original artist – it’s not a “live” production. Avoid the temptation to try to make it a live production. It is what it is. If you start to shift focus to the vocals and the guitars, and all that – well that’s all good and well, and the music might be fine. But if the focus isn’t on the electronic music, well it’s really not Electronica, is it? If someone reads what I’m saying at some point in the future, I would say, listen to these 20 tracks. THIS is techno.
Well that’s all for now – Monster Loop will post be posting more of the final Focus Group session soon. Right now, we have to fly to San Francisco.
This is Part 6 of a multi-part blog posting analyzing the way that Reverbnation, the popular artist/dj/rapper/band ranking website, ranks artists (see Parts 1 & 2 for background)
(scroll below for a super long play list of awesome electronic music you can stream for free)
Recap: We hired a focus group of 5 individuals , each of whom is a big fan & heavy listener of electronic music. We asked them to listen to 3 tracks by each artist ranked in the Global Top 50 on Reverbnation’s Electronica Charts. We also asked them to listen to 3 tracks by each artist ranked from 1001 to 1050. We did not tell these participants which artist made which song, or what each artist was ranked, so as not to bias them for or against an artist based on that artist’s ranking. Some artists only posted 1 or 2 tracks on their Reverbnation page, so the total number of tracks our group of 5 heard was around 260. Our 5 judges assigned each track a score between 1 (lowest) and 10 (highest), based simply on how much they “liked” the track – we left that vague standard to their own interpretation. After the first day, in which they listened to all or part of these 260 tracks, we tallied each tracks average score, and “cut” from our list any track that did not receive an average score of at least a 7.5 from our 5 judges. This left 126 tracks. We then put these 126 tracks in a “head to head” competition, randomly pitting one track against another, and asking our judges to select their favorite between the two. We used a special software to match tracks based on how well each track was doing.
Fast forward to the present: After 3 rounds of this head-to-head competition, 64 of the 126 songs/tracks left – roughly half – have “won” two out of their three head-to-head matches and, to narrow the field, we cut the 62 tracks that had only 1 win (or less). So, in summary, after 3 rounds, out of the 100 artists we began with, 43 artists still have at least 1 track in the competition (note that some of these 43 artists have 2 or more tracks still remaining) and from an initial pool of 260 songs/tracks, 64 were left:
Artists ranked in Reverbnation Global Top 50 (at time Focus Group began, listed alphabetically) that still have at least 1 track left in the competition:
- Alderec King (Spain)
- beats antique (USA)
- BILLY (Canada)
- Counting Clouds (Germany)
- Datsik (Canada)
- Downlink (Canada)
- Dr. Kucho! (Spain)
- Excision (Canada)
- Infected Mushroom (USA)
- Inna (Romania)
- Jakeamon (UK)
- Levent Aydogan (Turkey)
- nickasaur! (USA)
- NOISIA (Netherlands)
- NUDE! (Germany)
- Pretty Lights (USA)
- Serge Devant (USA)
- Steve Transcoder (Germany)
- TRANXGO (Argentina)
- trezOra (Georgia)
- Umek (Slovenia)
- UNCLEMAD (Italy)
- Underworld (UK)
Artists ranked in between 1001 and 1050 at time Focus Group began (listed alphabetically) that still have at least 1 track left in the competition:
- 2drops (Israel)
- Amit Bharadwaj (India)
- Biofear (Canada)
- Bong-Ra (Netherlands)
- Burn in Noise (Brazil)
- Etnica (Spain)
- GarGO!! (Italy)
- Going after Zen (UK)
- Goldfrapp (UK)
- Kostistlac (Slovakia)
- K-toh (UK)
- Laura Escude (USA)
- MC CONRAD (UK)
- MOODMUSIC (France)
- ORION (Germany)
- Palenke Soultribe (USA)
- Psextreme (Serbia)
- Set Prometheus Aflame (USA)
- Stickleback (Australia)
- Tom Hades (Belgium)
Before closing this blog, a few observations:
- We were very surprised that, based on the results of our Focus Group so far, 20 of the 43 artists were ranked between 1000 – 1050. We didn’t see that coming. To reiterate, when hearing a track, our 5 judges were not told who produced the track, or the artists’ rank on the Reverbnation Electronica Charts.
- For those doing a country count, here are the number of artists that made the cut, listed by country: USA (8), UK (6), Canada (5), Germany (4), Spain (3), Netherlands (2), Italy (2), then many countries with (1).
- Of the 100 artists we began with, however, some countries had a higher percentage of artists make the cut: Canada (83%), Spain (68%), Italy (67%), Germany (50%), Netherlands (50%), UK (38%), USA (30%).
- This data – while no means a large enough data set to draw definitive conclusions, leads to the following question: is it possible that the Reverbnation charts are somehow, unintentionally biased in favor of American artists? Being American artists ourselves, we certainly hope that’s not the case. It is interesting to note that 4 of our 5 judges are American. An alternate interpretation is that, because Reverbnation is based in the US, it’s likely to attract more US artists whereas non-US artists might be less likely to register unless they already are very very good. Canada comes off looking the best so far – in terms of the percentage of their artists on the Reverb charts and how well they have done so far in the competition.
- In truth, we’re not sure how to interpret these preliminary results.
Next up: the final 32 tracks.
This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog posting analyzing the way that Reverbnation, the popular artist/dj/rapper/band ranking website, ranks artists
In Part 3, our Focus Group of 5 Electronic Music “Power Listeners” had narrowed down an initial list of 260 tracks by 100 different Electronica artists roughly in half – down to 126. Tracks by 17 of these 100 artists comprised over 40% of the 126 tracks and represented an eclectic range of styles. What we didn’t relay, was that 65 of the 126 tracks – a little over half – were produced by artists ranked in the Global Top 50. In contrast, 61 of the 126 tracks were produced by artists ranked on the Reverbnation Electronica Charts between 1001 and 1050. This near-even divide between Top 50 & Top 1001-1050 artists was, to us, unexpected. Once we narrowed the number of tracks down further, would this trend continue? We would soon find out.
Day 2 – Narrowing 126 tracks down further
Day 2 started early as there was a lot of ground to cover. The plan for Day 2 was to further narrow our list – and do so in an unconventional fashion: through the use of a software designed for large debate tournaments, “Tab Room on the PC.” Tab Room on the PC was designed by a college debate coach, Rich Edwards, in order to determine which debate teams were – for lack of a better term – the “best” out of a large pool of teams (e.g., up to 400 teams). Given time-constraints, it was impossible for each team to debate each other round-robin style, so Edwards designed a software to reflect a technique commonly used to run Debate tournaments.
In a nutshell, ‘Tab Room in the PC’ works this way: Assume a tournament has 120 teams. In the first round, the software randomly matches opponents, and so 60 debates take place simultaneously with opponents randomly assigned. Here’s where it gets interesting: after ballots are turned in with the results of the Round 1 debates, Round 2 is then matched based on the outcome of the Round 1 debates. After the 60 round 1 matches, 30 teams will have a 1-0 record and 30 will have an 0-1 record. The software then matches 1-0 teams against one another, and 0-1 teams against one another. This process is repeated in round 3, round 4, etc. so that after Round 4, it matches a 4-0 team against a 4-0 team, a 3-1 team against a 3-1 team, a 2-2 team against a 2-2 team, etc. A tournament may have 6 rounds (high school) or as many as 8 (college). This approach is designed to efficiently find who is “best” (or in our case, the “preferred,” given the fact music is so much more heavily affected by taste). After 8 rounds of this process, the computer runs a report of the top 16 teams (i.e., the teams that have the best record, points assigned each round serve as tie-breakers) and it becomes a single-elimination tournament. If only college football in the USA was run this way!
This was the software we used. Time consuming, but thorough.
Head-to-Head “Competition” Begins
The software randomly matched up the remaining 126 tracks and our 5 participants spread out to different stations. Each round, they were going to listen to 2 tracks and making 2 determinations: (1) which of the tracks did they like better? and (2) on a scale of 1-10, what would they rank each of the 2 tracks – this would serve later as a tie-breaker, if needed. It took some time to explain the process to the Focus Group, but once they got the idea, a buzz of excitement seemed to go through the group.
Round 1 took awhile – our 5 participants still appeared a bit confused with the process (our fault probably). Then settled in. Because they had all heard the tracks once, things began to move faster. Rather than having 5 people hear each song, our participants were assigned a different head-to-head track “match.”
Results after two rounds
Because Round 1 was randomly assigned, we did not pay much attention to the results. We began to become interested, however, once the results of Round 2 rolled in, but it was still too early to conclude much because of the luck of the draw – good for some, not so good for others (the very reason tournaments have at least 5 preliminary rounds). After 2 rounds, 32 tracks were 2-0. They are as follows, in alphabetical order:
For those counting countries Olympic-style, that’s US (5), Canada (4), UK (4) and 1 apiece for Australia, Brazil, Georgia, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey. Not bad for the US, but remember that there are 14 artists in the Top 50 from the US, 6 from the UK, and 4 from Canada.
More results soon.
Peace,
Monster Loop
This is Part 3 of a multi-part blog posting analyzing the way that Reverbnation, the popular artist/dj/rapper/band ranking website, ranks artists
In Part 2, we relayed forming a “focus group” of 5 people who listened to Electronic Music. We referred to them as “Power Listeners” due to the fact that they listened to Electronica more than the average fan. The idea was to play them music by some of the top Electronica artists in the world and get their opinion.
Early Saturday morning, each of the 5 showed up and we explained we’d be playing portions of 3 tracks produced by 100 different Electronica artists. The total number of tracks was 260 because many artists had only 1 or 2 tracks on their Reverb page. We did not tell the participants who the artists were or their ranking. Music stations were arranged so participants could not tell which artist they were hearing. At times, participants recognized various tracks. In fact, it became a game for them to try to do so.
For the benefit of our readers, here are the artists who were evaluated:
Electronic Music Artists – Top 50* (*ranked in Top 50 at the time Focus Group began, sorted in alphabetical order)
- 99 posse (Italy)
- Alderec King (Spain)
- Anda Adam (Romania)
- ATB (Germany)
- Bassnectar (USA)
- beats antique (USA)
- BILLY (Canada)
- BT (USA)
- CARLPRIT (Germany)
- Celldweller (USA)
- Counting Clouds (Germany)
- DarkAnkh (Bulgaria)
- Datsik (Canada)
- DITRADEM (Belgium)
- DJ Antonio (Spain)
- Downlink (Canada)
- Dr. Kucho (Spain)
- Excision (Canada)
- Frankie O. Solovely (USA)
- GOLDFISH (South Africa)
- Ibrahim Celik (Turkey)
- iio (USA)
- INCOLIDE (USA)
- Infected Mushroom (USA)
- Inna (Romania)
- Jakeamon (UK)
- Jillian Ann (USA)
- Levent AYDOGAN (Turkey)
- LIQUIDEEP (South Africa)
- MikeWhitePresents (UK)
- Milton Pacheco (Mexico)
- Muratkardes (Turkey)
- nickasaur! (USA)
- NOISIA (Netherlands)
- NUDE! (Germany)
- Paul van Dyk (Germany)
- Pretty Lights (USA)
- Quade77 (UK)
- Ravana (USA)
- Robbie Rivera (USA)
- Serge Devant (USA)
- Skreamizm (UK)
- Somaya Reece (UK)
- Steve Transcoder (Germany)
- Syntopia Music (Germany)
- TRANXGO (Argentina)
- trezOra (Georgia)
- Umek (Slovenia)
- UNCLEMAD (Italy)
- Underworld (UK)
Electronic Music Artists – Ranked 1001 – 1050 on Global Charts* (*ranked at time Focus Group began, sorted in alphabetical order)
- 2drops (Israel)
- Amari (Romania)
- Amit Bharadwaj (India)
- Armin van Buuren (Netherlands)
- Biofear (a/k/a Paul Baraka) (Canada)
- Bong-Ra (Netherlands)
- BornKiwi (New Zealand)
- Bucie Nqwiliso (South Africa)
- Burn in Noise (Brazil)
- Cally Gage (UK)
- Clancy and holoJean (USA)
- DISCOMOJOYO (Indonesia)
- Etnica (Spain)
- Etostone (Greece)
- Experiment Haywire (USA)
- GarGO!! (Italy)
- Gary Noakes (UK)
- General Tornado (UK)
- Going After Zen (UK)
- Goldfrap (UK)
- Itchy Robot (UK)
- Kostistlac (Slovakia)
- K-Toh (UK)
- Laura Escude’ (USA)
- Little Buddha (UK)
- Little Star (Indonesia)
- Marrow (USA)
- MC CONRAD (UK)
- Mechanical Renegade (USA)
- Michael Faraci (USA)
- Mike Shiver (Sweden)
- MOODMUSIC (France)
- Nav-Vii (USA)
- ORION (Germany)
- Palenke Soultribe (USA)
- Psextreme (Serbia)
- Pure (UK)
- Quiet Entertainer (USA)
- Roughhausen (Taiwan)
- Set Prometheus Aflame (USA)
- Silver Medallion (USA)
- Stickleback (Australia)
- The Entranced (Netherlands)
- The Swiss (Australia)
- Thievery Corporation (USA)
- Todoticket (Guatemala)
- Tom Hades (Belgium)
- Ultravision Records (Spain)
- Worldwide Groove Corporation (USA)
- Yuki Damon (Canada)
Throughout the day, our Focus Group participants listened to tracks by these artists, scoring each track on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (best). As previously mentioned, we did not provide any guidance on what constituted “best,” but left that to each participant. We did, however, suggest that they score “tough” because there were a lot of great artists they were about to hear. Each song play received 5 scores which were immediately averaged. Participants did not know at the time each track’s average score.
Tallying the Results
And at the end of a very loooong day, we sorted each track by the average score it received from our 5 judges. But we weren’t done yet. The following day we were going to have them listen to many of these tracks again, only a narrowed down list. Specifically, we flagged the tracks that received an overall average score of at least 7.5 (we erroneously wrote 7 earlier today). Recall that, we began with 260 tracks. At the end of Day 1 (which went into the night), after reducing our list so that it only included tracks that received at least an average score of 7.5, we had a narrowed-down list of 126 tracks. The analysis of those tracks will be the subject to the next blog.
Before signing off, we want to recognize the artists who received an average of 7.5 or higher for each of their 3 tracks. Out of the 100 artists, only 17 had all three of their tracks score at least 7.5. Keep in mind, however, that several of these 17 artists barely met the 7.5 threshold for 3 tracks and, more importantly, that some of the highest scoring tracks were not necessarily produced by artists who made this list. Here’s something else: Of the 17 artists listed, six were from the artists currently ranked between 1001-1050. This was somewhat surprising to us. This is all discussed in the next blog.
Artists whose 3 tracks all made the “cut” (alphabetical order)
- Amit Bharadwaj (India) (1001-1050)
- Counting Clouds (Germany) (top 50)
- Downlink (Canada) (top 50)
- Dr. Kucho (Spain) (top 50)
- Etnica (Spain) (1001-1050)
- Excision (Canada) (top 50)
- GarGO!! (Italy) (1001-1050)
- Going after Zen (UK) (1001-1050) (accidentally left off earlier – sorry)
- Infected Mushroom (USA) (top 50)
- Jillian Ann (USA) (top 50)
- Levent AYDOGAN (Turkey) (top 50)
- NUDE! (Germany) (top 50)
- Steve Transcoder (Germany) (top 50)
- Stickleback (Australia) (1001-1050)
- Tom Hades (Belgium) (1001-1050)
- Umek (Slovenia) (top 50)
- Worldwide Groove Corporation (USA) (1001-1050)
A few final observations
- From a pool of 100 artists, tracks by these 17 represented over 40% of our final 126 tracks. Several artists (not listed here) had 2 of their 3 tracks in the “final 126,” some of which only posted 2 tracks on their Reverbnation page (e.g., Goldfrap).
- Of the 100 artists we began with, 27 were from the USA. However, only 3 artists from the USA made the list of 17 despite the fact that 4 of our 5 judges were American. Put another way, 27% of the 100 artists were American; 18% of the 17 artists listed above are from the USA. This at least suggested there was no foreign bias. Of course, unless our listeners happened to recognize a track, they had no idea who produced a track and/or where they were from – Electronic Music generally has no vocal overlay and, when it does, the language you hear may have nothing to do with where the artist is from.
- We suspected that 1 or 2 artists from the group ranked 1001 – 1050 would sneak in this list. We did not, however, expect that slightly over 40% of the list of 17 artists would have come from the 1001 – 1050 ranks. Frankly, we found this astonishing. More on that later.
- We were concerned that songs that scored high might all be one particular Electronica sub-genre, like Dubstep, etc. We were pleasantly surprised to see that many diverse styles were represented. One has only to listen to music by the 3 American artists – styles that couldn’t be more different from one another, for example – to see what we mean.
- Our 5 participants requested that we please relay the following caveat (paraphrased, but you’ll get the idea): “We’re normal people with our own personal tastes in music. Do not put too much stock in what we come up with. We’ve been wrong before and it won’t be the last time.”
- Finally, keep in mind that some of the highest scoring tracks were not recorded by these 17 artists, as you’ll shortly read about. In fact, the track that had the highest overall average score from day 1 is not by an artist in this list of 17. No track had a perfect 10 average from our judging panel, but 2 tracks came close. In a somewhat humorous moment, when one of these tracks was being played, ‘Rain Man’ (one of our 5 Judges) spontaneously blurted out: “HOLY <bleep>!!” Based on his score, it was meant positively.
That’s all for today. More to come soon.
This is Part 1 of a new 
multi-part discussion analyzing the way that Reverbnation, the popular artist/dj/rapper/band ranking website, ranks artists.
Background for those unfamiliar with Reverbnation
Reverbnation is perhaps the leading online music-marketing platform. Used by over 1.7 million DJs/artists/bands, managers, and record labels, to increase their presence (and sales) on the internet, Reverbnation provides valuable marketing tools to music professionals (e.g., promotion, fan relationship & measurement, digital distribution, marketing, and concert booking ). A significant part of Reverbnation.com, though, is the sites rankings/charts, which are organized by musical category (e.g., country, rock, pop, rap, heavy metal, electronica, etc.) These can be viewed locally (a 25-mile radius), nationally, and globally.
The higher an artist is ranked, the more opportunities generally come the artists’ way because (1) Reverbnation is now working more closely with music industry professionals and insiders and (2) Reverbnation’s charts are becoming an efficient way for record company professionals to sort through the large group of emerging artists (a subject of a future blog entry). The rankings are viewed by many as a “screen” of sorts. It is, therefore, in an artists’ interest to rise in the Reverbnation rankings. The following is an image of “Infected Mushroom,” from L.A., currently #1 in the US, #4 Globally, in the Electronica category.
So, how are the rankings decided?
According to its website, the Reverbnation charts are based on Band Equity Score, or “BES.” BES is designed to measure popularity based on 4 factors: Reach, Influence, Access, and Recency. Reverbnation points out, however, that BES ”encompasses hundreds of things on the Reverbnation site,” including statistics not made available to the artists. Examples given are promoter plays, percentage of emails opened by your fans, and shared widgets.
How do these factors play out?
Those familiar with Reverbnation are already aware that each artist has its own webpage, similar in many ways to a Facebook page. On this page, artists have the option of sharing with their fans various information including the number of the artists (1) fans, (2) song plays (songs may be streamed for free on each artists’ page), (3) visits, and (4) widget hits (widgets are mini mp3 players fans can place on their own websites - the point being, widgets are a way for people to play an artists’ music from a different location).
But which factor is most important? And what are the relative weight of these, and other, factors? Reverbnation is secretive about the mathematical formula used to determine BET, which in turn determines an artists ranking. Let’s see what we can deduce about BET.
The value of factors can be deceptive
The following illustrates why many artists are confused by the method used to rank artists. At the moment, the top 10 Electronica artists on the Global Charts are as follows:
- Inna (Romania)
- Paul van Dyk (Germany)
- ATB (Germany)
- Infected Mushroom (US – L.A.)
- Bassnectar (US – San Francisco)
- Datsik (Canada)
- Ibrahimcelik (Turkey)
- Pretty Lights (US – Denver)
- Excision (Canada)
- Alderec King (Spain)
The artists, #4 “Infected Mushroom ” and #8 “Pretty Lights” chose not to make their fan data public, so for purposes of this example, we’re using #11 Frankie O. Solovely and #12 Umek, to have 10 artists.
How important are the number of fans? #1 Inna clearly leads this category (has by far the largest number of fans). So far that seems a key metric. However, #12 “Umek” has over 350,000 fans, while #10 “Alderec King” has only around 60,000 – almost 300,000 less than Umek, yet is ranked higher. Is this because Alderec pulled in a large number of fans in the past 2 weeks? Or is the number of fans not a key factor? We’ll come back to this.
How important are visits to an artists Reverbnation page? ”Excision,” rated #9 on the Global Charts, leads this category with around 215,000 visits, but Inna has less than half as many visits, yet Inna is #1. Again, this conceivably could be due to recency, or perhaps artist visits is not a key factor in one’s ranking.
How important are song plays? In terms of the number of times music on an artists’ Reverbnation page has been played (streamed), the clear leaders in our example are “Ibrahimcelik” and “Datsik.” Both have over 2 million plays; in contrast, Inna has only around 150,000 plays - a sizable difference – yet Inna is #1. Does this suggest song plays are given little weight or can this be explained away if, for example, song plays for Ibrahimcelik and Datsik occurred several months back? Is it possible Reverbation is concerned that heavily weighting song plays leads to rankings distorted by artists continuously playing their own music and/or entering into pacts with other artists to play each other’s music non-stop and therefore artificially increase their BES?
And there’s another angle here. These statistics may suggest that the average fan of Ibrahimcelik (112,019 fans), plays 19 of his tracks on average, while an Inna fan (3.6 million fans) does not, on average, play an Inna song even once (0.5 plays per fan - total of 167,497 plays). Huh? Something seems odd here. Are Inna’s fans that much less into playing her music than Ibrahimcelik’s fans? Does Inna just have a more organized fan-collection system? If Ibrahimcelik’s fans are playing each of his songs that many more times, should Reverbnation assist in promoting a lesser known artist (at least lesser known to us, but maybe that’s not saying much). Assuming his fans are streaming Ibrahimcelik’s music that often, should he only be #7 while Inna is #1, that is, what constitutes a genuine “fan”? It appears Reverbnation partly attempts to address this by purportedly giving more “credit” to fans that are registered on Reverbnation.
How important are widget hits/impressions? The leader here is Bassnectar, with over 300,000. Paul Van Dyk has 14,000, but Van Dyk is ranked #2 and Bassnectar is ranked #5. So widgets are important, but the rankings don’t appear to be driven by this factor.
Post more music? Another interesting factor is whether an artist is penalized/rewarded for posting more music. “Frankie O. Solovely” (#11) has over 125 tracks posted, while “Alderec King” (#10) has just 2. Solovely has around 2,500 total song plays, while King has 8,182. In other words, a track composed by King averages around 4,000 plays per track, while a track by Solovely averages 21 plays per track – quite a difference - yet the two artists are neck-in-neck in the ratings. And Bassnectar (ahead of both at #5) averages around 1,000 plays per track, so plays-per-track does not appear to be a key factor. Should it be? And should an artist be rewarded for posting more material? What incentive do artists already selling their music have to post loads of their music on Reverbnation to be streamed for free?
We ran some back-of-the-envelope calculations and it appears there is a penalty for having more than 3 songs, increasing in severity up to around 10-12 tracks, and then capping (i.e., once you hit 12 tracks, there’s no additional penalty for posting more than 12 tracks). We are not entirely sure of our conclusion here, but based on these 10 artists, the data supports this preliminary conclusion. In other words, it appears that an artists number of listens/widget hits, etc. is divided by the number of tracks (though using a more complex formula – at least it appears this is the case).
While it appears confusing, a factor does appear to stand out
In Reverbnation’s Questions & Answers section, it addresses this confusion by reminding artists of two key components: (1) recency and (2) there are dozens – perhaps over a hundred – factors they consider.
So one can never truly decipher Reverbnation’s formula, right? That’s probably wrong, and the answer is pretty basic.
The ranking of the 10 Electronica artists shows a very strong correlation between one’s BES and the number of fans. For math nerds reading this, we calculate a correlation of .8303. Based on the example featured in this blog – and we admit 10 artists is a VERY small data set and not enough to draw broad conclusions - the number of one’s fans, for example, is 2-3 times more important than the number of fan visits to one’s reverbnation page.
There’s a logical reason for this (we suppose). Put yourself in Reverbnation’s shoes. Reverb wants to attract top talent – among other reasons, doing so will further increase its credibility in the music industry. 
Assume Lady Gaga was considering Reverbnation (she may already be on there, we have not checked). If the key criteria were the number of visits or plays, it would seem that Lady Gaga would have a large disadvantage because visits = visits on Reverbnation and plays = plays on Reverbnation music players. Lady Gaga purportedly has over 10 million fans on her Facebook page. Reverbnation allows artists to carry fans over. This way Lady Gaga could, if she chose to register on Reverbnation, instantly be ranked #1 (at least, I assume that would be enough to carry the day!). Reverbnation surely is aware that a hot artist would shy away from having to prove themselves among a large group of unknown but very talented, emerging artists.
A problem with this is, it is difficult to authenticate a fan list. A band can simply provide a huge excel file with fan email addresses and get credit for this list. To reduce the risk of distortion, Reverbnation “quarantines” such contacts for 3 days, in which time the new fan has a chance to accept or reject their status as a fan for Reverbnation purposes. If the person does nothing, they are counted.
Soooo, what’s the bottom line? We’re not sure (yet), sorry. We’re still analyzing it with the help of an autistic friend. Our view is – and we’re not going out on a limb here – there is no perfect way to rank artists, and Reverbnation appears to be making a genuine attempt to come up with a fair system. We assume they keep it secret so that artists won’t discover and take advantage of loop holes in the scoring. The idea is to come up with a way to discover talented artists – even if the artist doesn’t happen to have friends at a large record label. Time will tell.