Next Big Sound (NBS) is a New York-based company which provides

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...

for online music. The company analyses the popularity of musicians in

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

streaming services An over-the-top media service is a streaming media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms, the companies that traditionally act as a controller or distributors of s ...

, and radio. The company was acquired by

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the "Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying indiv ...

in May 2015.

Business model

Next Big Sound allows users to track mentions of bands and musical artists across several music websites, such as

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

, MySpace,

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

iLike iLike was an online service that allowed users to download and share music founded by brothers Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi. The website made use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's Windows Media Player. The program a ...

, and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. NBS calculates and graphs each of these statistics over time and compares the data to that of other similar bands. The site has been tracking this data since June 2009, and reports analyzing over 486,000 bands.

History

The business grew from a class assignment at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, where founders Samir Rayani (CTO), Alex White (CEO), Jason Sosnovsky (since parted with NBS) and David Hoffman (CPO) attended. As part of the entrepreneur class, students present their ideas to

venture capitalist Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

s. The Next Big Sound received

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

25,000 in

seed money Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' ...

. In the summer of 2009, the company was chosen to participate in the TechStars incubator program for online startups in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

. On June 1, 2012, the company moved its headquarters from Boulder to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Next Big Sound was named one of the 10 best music startups of 2010 by ''

Billboard Magazine ''Billboard'' (stylized as ''billboard'') is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music ...

'' and CEO Alex White was named to Billboard's 30 Under 30 executives to watch list. On May 25, 2014, the company announced a new division, Next Big Book, and a partnership with

Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

. Next Big Sound raised $7.5 million in funding from Foundry Group, IA Ventures and others. On May 19, 2015, Pandora acquired the company.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.nextbigsound.com/ 2008 establishments in New York City Companies based in New York City Music companies of the United States American companies established in 2008