Atlas Genius
“Back Seat”
I predict I will be into this cut for a while.
Can data predict hits?
My friends at social music analytics company Next Big Sound think so. They wrote a post about trend data on this song, and how the numbers predict it’s hot enough to hype. I’ve thought a lot about this, and how a lot of services are working on predictive analytics that might take the music biz in the direction of Moneyball. On the one hand, it seems that they’re simply interpreting wildly far-flung play stats that grow organically on their own. If it worked, we’d likely see more home-grown success stories. But on the other, my jaded side thinks that what’s more likely is that these sorts of analytics only reenforce the industry status quo. The players with the money will always dominate the playlists because they have the PR power to get their artists up on P4K, Vevo, Spin, Rolling Stone and the like on a regular basis.
What do you think?
This Adelaide, Australian band’s new Through the Glass EP comes out on June 12th.
