Music Data Journalism: Redefine Industry Coverage

Using sales figures as an indicator of the state of the industry or an artist’s popularity is nothing new in music journalism. But as more and more people are sharing, enjoying and learning about new music across social media sites, through streaming services and in digital outlets, a wealth of data on artists and fan behavior is being gathered that can be highly useful to music press trying to understand and cover the industry.

What Data Sources are Potentially Useful to a Music Journalist?

Social Media e.g. Facebook, Twitter Streaming Services e.g. Spotify, Rdio,

Last.fm Video Sites e.g. Vevo, YouTube, Vimeo Digital Sales Data e.g. iTunes, Amazon

Why?Music Journalists can glean information from the data gathered from these sources.

Identify trends

Verify assumptions about artists.

Show how artists are growing their fan base.

With all of this data available to us, the question becomes whether we, as music journalists, can afford to ignore it?

Numbers should not be the center of the story, they are however an integral part of it.

Big data is changing the face of journalism everywhere, the same is true for the music journalism industry.