BigChampagne was a technology-driven media measurement company acquired by

Live Nation Entertainment Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. is an American multinational entertainment company that was founded in 2010 following the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It promotes, operates and manages ticket sales for live entertainment internation ...

. The BigChampagne dashboard was used primarily by music industry professionals such as concert promoters, venues, radio programmers, managers, agents, and marketers to access information about the popularity of artists and songs across radio airplay, online streaming, social activity, sales, and live events. BigChampagne provided a number of services related to producing

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

(BI) and

competitive intelligence Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge about the competitive environment to improve organizational performance. Competitive intelligence involves systematically collecting and anal ...

(CI) for users of the dashboard via access to proprietary data and data management (integration and analysis) combined with web applications and other technologies.

Background

BigChampagne was co-founded by Eric Garland, Adam Toll, and Zachary Allison in 2000. The company was funded entirely by the founders, without outside capital. Musician Glen Phillips was an early adviser and supporter. The company's earliest service tracked the popularity of songs on the original Napster file-sharing service. Co-founder Adam Toll has said that the company was named for a lyric in the

Peter Tosh Winston Hubert McIntosh (19 October 1944 – 11 September 1987), professionally known as Peter Tosh, was a Jamaican reggae musician. Along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, he was one of the core members of the band Bob Marley and the Wa ...

song "Downpressor Man": "You drink your big champagne and laugh." BigChampagne has courted some controversy; the company's early focus on Napster and other file sharing networks originally discouraged major music companies from working with them. In 2003, founder Eric Garland testified before the California State Senate that online file sharing was "fundamentally unstoppable." The

Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

publicly criticized his remarks. Beginning in 2002 BigChampagne was involved in a lawsuit with a company called Webspins. Both companies alleged defamation and unfair business practices. The suit was settled out of court in 2003 but the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Also in 2003, Altnet, a distribution partner of file sharing service Kazaa, sent legal threats to BigChampagne and eight other companies alleging patent infringement. BigChampagne was dropped from the list of targeted companies almost immediately. The

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

hoped to use the record industry's relationship with BigChampagne to defend file sharing networks like

Kazaa Kazaa Media Desktop ( ) (once stylized as "KaZaA", but later usually written "Kazaa") was a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequ ...

as they believed using the networks for market information constituted a non-infringing use of the networks. This defense proved unsuccessful. Data provided by BigChampagne is used by companies to help make decisions about signing artists and promoting music online and to radio stations; broadcasters use BigChampagne to inform playlist decisions.

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin were an English rock music, rock band formed in London in 1968. The band comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones (musician), John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham. With a he ...

used BigChampagne to choose songs for a 2007 reunion "with good results." BigChampagne also collaborated with

Radiohead Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon-on-Thames, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band members are Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Gre ...

to assess the impact of the band's pay-what-you-wish album

In Rainbows ''In Rainbows'' is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 10 October 2007 as a download, followed by a retail release internationally through XL Recordings on 3 December 2007 and in North America t ...

. In 2006, BigChampagne contributed data and analysis to

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

editor-in-chief Chris Anderson and was featured in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' best-seller "The Long Tail: Why the Future Business is Selling Less of More". BigChampagne's metrics and analysis have been cited by media outlets including ''The New York Times'', ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'', ''

The Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'', ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

'', and

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

(NPR). In 2011, BigChampagne was acquired by

and is currently part of OnTour with Ticketmaster.

Business model

BigChampagne generates revenue from dashboard subscription fees and consulting fees. The company is primarily a "B2B", selling information "business-to-business," though some aspects of BigChampagne's data and analysis are available to the general public. The company's business model is similar to the

Bloomberg Terminal The Bloomberg Terminal is a computer software system provided by the financial data vendor Bloomberg L.P. that enables professionals in the financial service sector and other industries to access Bloomberg Professional Services through which use ...

Omniture Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics business unit in Orem, Utah. It was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2009. Until 2011, Omniture operated as a business unit within Adobe as the "Omniture Business Unit", but as of 2012 Adobe began ret ...

, or a number of

Nielsen Company Nielsen Holdings plc (or Nielsen) is an American media audience measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 15,000 people worldwide. For most of its history, the company was known for its two subsidiarie ...

products and services.

Products

BC Dash

BigChampagne's BC Dash is a software platform for integrating, analyzing, and reporting information about radio airplay, online streaming, social activity, sales, and live events. Partners and data sources include

iHeartMedia iHeartMedia, Inc., or CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc., formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc., a company founded by ...

Mediabase Mediabase is a music industry service that monitors radio station airplay in 180 US and Canadian markets. Mediabase publishes music charts and data based on the most played songs on terrestrial and satellite radio, and provides in-depth analytic ...

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

, TIDAL,

VEVO Vevo LLC ( , an abbreviation for "Video Evolution", stylized in all caps until 2013) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational video hosting service, best known for providing music videos to YouTube. The service is also available ...

Napster Napster was an American proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared ...

Slacker A slacker is someone who habitually work aversion, avoids work or lacks work ethic. Origin According to different sources, the term "slacker" dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the UK, British Gezira Sche ...

, StreetPulse,

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

, and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

Ultimate Chart

The Ultimate Chart is a ranked list of the most popular music based on sales, radio, streaming, & social media. Available charts include Artists, Songs, Top Tours, Emerging Artists, and genre charts (Country, EDM, and Latin).

Background

Business model

Products

BC Dash

Ultimate Chart

References

Further reading