From today, the 1,100 affiliated Australian and New Zealand artists on the Pandora internet radio site can access data about how their music is tracking.
The free Artist Marketing Platform (AMP) is set up to analyse fan engagement. It hopefully takes the guesswork from artists to see where their tracks are spinning the hardest, which songs are working the best, the demographic of the listeners who turning on to their music, and which ones have created a radio station dedicated to them.
It is information that could help when planning the next tour, selecting the next single and targeting the audience. It would also work out if their radio listeners are necessarily different from the hardcores who come to their gigs.
Tim Westergren, Pandora founder and a former touring musician himself, said, “When I was in a band, we had a rented van, a box of fliers, and a couple staple guns. The challenge faced by artists trying to find and build an audience was part of the original inspiration for Pandora. With AMP, the goal is simple: we want to harness the power of our scale and data to make artists’ lives easier.”
Troy Carter, CEO and founder of Los Angeles management company Atom Factory – whose clients include John Mayer, John Legend, Meghan Trainor and Sky Ferreira, said, “Actually seeing where people are listening to an artist’s music and being able to track listening spikes will be hugely beneficial. It is exciting to think about not only what I will learn about my artists, but how I will be able to use this information in the future. I love that Pandora has chosen to openly share this data with artists.”
Aussie blues and roots artists Claude Hay, for instance, found that his live audience – mostly males aged 24 to 35 – mirrored his Pandora listeners.
Pandora claims that AMP’s data is important because 80% of the artists on its site do not get played on traditional radio stations.
Available in the US, Australia and New Zealand, Pandora has over 125,000 artists. It has two million subscribers in Australia and New Zealand and claims over 76 million monthly listeners, who tune in for an average of 20 hours each. 50 billion-plus hours of music have been listened to in the past nine years on Pandora, with 45 billion-plus ‘Thumb’ inputs shared and seven billion stations created.
For more industry news, check out Christie Eliezer’s Industrial Strength column in the BRAG.
