In a world where the music industry is changing fast, it’s hard to keep up with who is really Top of The Pops any more, especially as that classic BBC show no longer runs. It’s all iTunes and illegal downloads these days, so in this evolving landscape of musical lists, is there a way of quantifying who fans really love and who is ‘hot’? Well, our friends over at Famecount think they’ve come up with a solution, and yeah, you guessed it, it involves tracking the big social networks. They’ve compiled the first music chart based not on sales by an artist, but by the musician’s popularity across the three biggest social networks, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. It’s simple really, all they’ve done is pull together the number of official ‘followers’, ‘fans’ and ’subscribers’ on the aforementioned sites for each artist and then aggregated the data to give each of them a Famecount index score.
At present Lady Gaga is at the top of the tree with 100% and shes the artist which all musicians are judged against, returning 8.8m Facebook fans, 4.6m Twitter followers and 307,000 Youtube subscribers. In second place, and some way behind is, Britney Spears with a Famecount ranking of 88.4% based on her 3m+ Facebook fans, 5m+ Twitter followers and 200 or so thousand Youtube subscribers. Other acts topping the ‘real’ music charts include Taylor Swift (86%), Michael Jackson, the only non-living pop-star to make it into the top ten (85.4%) and teenage sensation Justin Bieber (79.8%).
But things are always changing fast in the social media charts, so it’s important we (and the record companies) keep an eye on the fastest risers up the list. Lady Gaga is again top of the tree, gaining at an incredible 1.4m Facebook fans a month and nearly 500,000 Twitter followers in the same period … now that’s chart movement. Others to watch over the coming months are Eminen who’s gained an extra 850,000 Facebook fans, Shakira (increased half a million on Facebook and 360,000 on Twitter), Lil Wayne who is surging forward with 1m new Facebook fans and Avril Lavigne, nearly accumulating an extra 1m Facebookers in the past month alone. Are these just fun numbers, well yes and no … In a sense this has no true reflection on what is selling, but looking at just how many people are discovering music through new media and the social networks, record companies would be wise to keep an eye on these trends and make sure they utilise the platform to ensure they get the right message about their new and existing artists across.
Social Media Music Charts – Top 10 Overall popularity
Ranked by Famecount Across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
Wednesday June 23rd, 2010
Source: Famecount.com
Musician Facebook Fans Twitter Followers YouTube Subscribers Famecount Index (%)*
Lady Gaga 8,883,562 4,611,397 307,410 100.0%
Britney Spears 3,053,188 5,192,232 209,247 88.4%
Taylor Swift 5,431,112 3,464,096 442,799 86.0%
Michael Jackson 13,155,692 165,296 533,679 85.4%
Justin Bieber 5,309,789 3,236,657 103,214 79.8%
Ashley Tisdale 3,185,239 3,163,675 269,504 75.2%
Coldplay 4,463,914 2,867,079 74,235 74.1%
Katy Perry 3,344,676 2,696,261 96,580 69.5%
John Mayer 1,774,738 3,355,706 49,650 69.1%
Jonas Brothers 2,690,476 1,808,794 689,367 69.0%
*Formula based on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube fan data. Only Stars present on more than one network included. Index is relative to most popular worldwide social media entity, Lady Gaga, who carries a Famecount ranking of 100%.
http://www.beehivecity.com/hightech/...harts13270201/
