Twitter Music Charts
Anthony and the team at Hype Machine have made another great innovation over there. They’ve added the concept of Twitter charting to popular blogged about songs. So what the thing does is look at which people are tweeting about which tunes that are blogged and then it compiles all of that into a chart based on the status of the person tweeting.
It’s pretty damn cool.
It is, of course, as all of these things are, a proprietary algorithm. But it appears principally driven by the number of followers each person has and then it must have some calculus that deducts for the number of people that they follow.
This seems to be intended to accomodate for the traditional Twitter growth strategy of following people that will then follow you back (which I have partially adopted, btw) and, over time, building up your Twitter fan base. The algorithm tries to account for that by partially deducting points for following too many people.
The way it works is that you re-tweet a specific code for each song and Hype Machine tabulates that code and adds into an aggregated points counter for each song. It’s pretty smart actually.
The principal drawback I see (besides the implicit commentary on what good Twitter protocol is, ie you shouldn’t follow too many people but I like the noise of following lots of people and having a perspective into the hive mind) is that the system will get clogged with spam very quickly and, as with all systems, easily gamed. The pandering and preening and begging of indie artists to get people to re-tweet their songs may very quickly become annoying. I did it myself today and I already felt a little weird about it. But only a little.
Because, on the other hand, as of right now, the Pieholden Suite cover we did is the 20th ranked tune on all of Hype Machine. Which, however you slice it, is pretty cool. Because I expect this to change soon, here’s a screen shot:
I think after there’s more liquidity in the system and more people know about it, it will presumably be harder to game. But for the time being, asking people to re-tweet your song had the nice little effect of putting TFC on the front page of a well-trafficked website for all to see.
If you’d like to help out the cause, re-tweet the following code:
Pieholden Suite (Wilco cover) at http://hypem.com/track/857383 #hypem
Here’s the other cool thing about the this. The biggest thing I hate about promotion is the not knowing and the not doing. See, most of the time when you’re promoting something, it’s like sending a carrier pigeon out into the world. You shout it out and then you listen for an echo. But the set of actions that you’re able to take are limited and so you kind of pin so much onto one or two discrete behaviors without having much else to do.
Put another way: Before Twitter and before the Hype Machine Twitter charts and, further back, before WordPress, Blogger and modern blogging technology, what did you do if you were an unsigned independent artist and you’d just done a cool cover? The answer is unclear. Most likely, you’d send out an email to your mailing list letting them know and then, well, if you’re a typical band, nothing much would happen.
Now there’s something to do. It’s still up to the individual as to whether they blog the song or listen to it or re-tweet it or whatever. But now there’s a clear and obvious strategy. The strategy is, give it to some well-placed bloggers, tweet about the fact that you’re doing it, then get people to re-tweet the Hype Machine charting information. Meanwhile, send out the same email you would have before but this time you can tell your fans that you’re (or were at one time) #20 on the Hype Machine Twitter charts and, maybe, you can get a few more people to listen and pay attention. And the odds are still low that anything huge will happen but, in the words of Paulie, irregardless of all that, you have steps you can take. More steps. And they make sense.
Even if it’s merely the feeling of more control, your destiny is one step closer to being in your hands. If the song sucks, well, I can’t help you. But if it’s good, you now have another tool to get it heard and tell people about it. Less up to chance. More up to hard work. And as the saying goes, work works.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Hey, thanks for this writeup!
By the way, the points algorithm is explained here, so have a look: http://blog.hypem.com/ should answer the rest of your questions. We are happy sharing it so that others can suggest a better one or audit what we are doing.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Thanks for stopping by Anthony. I should have checked before I said it
was a confidential proprietary algorithm. That's just what I'm used
to.
The charts are great. as is the rest of hype machine. Don't let it get
shut down!
July 9th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
The other interesting thing is that the chart is a reference point not
just to a song but to a specific version of that song posted on a
specific blog. This has the benefit of highlighting the individual
blogger to a greater, and to my mind, more positive degree.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Thanks for stopping by Anthony. I should have checked before I said it
was a confidential proprietary algorithm. That's just what I'm used
to.
The charts are great. as is the rest of hype machine. Don't let it get
shut down!
July 9th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
The other interesting thing is that the chart is a reference point not
just to a song but to a specific version of that song posted on a
specific blog. This has the benefit of highlighting the individual
blogger to a greater, and to my mind, more positive degree.