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, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sc ...

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

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

streaming services A streaming media service (also simply called a streaming service) is an online platform that allows users to watch or listen to content, such as film, movies, Television show, TV shows, music, or podcasts, over the internet. Instead of downloadi ...

, and radio. The company was acquired by

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

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. Utilizing a music recommender system known as "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm creates a detailed profile of each user's musical preferences by recording the details of the tracks they ...

MySpace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

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 ...

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 and ...

, 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 ...

. 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 (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

, 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 (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

s. The Next Big Sound received

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

25,000 in

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

. 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 List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city in Boulder County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the most ...

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

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

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

Billboard Magazine ''Billboard'' (stylized in lowercase since 2013) is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events and styles related to th ...

'' 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 in the United Kingdom and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC in the United States) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be on ...

. Next Big Sound raised $7.5 million in funding from Foundry Group, IA Ventures and others. On May 19, 2015, Pandora acquired the company. On October 1, 2021, the company announced in a blog post that the Next Big Sound platform would be shutting down on November 1. However, the team stated that they would be transitioning to working on Pandora's Artist Marketing Platform (AMP), which would continue to share data with partners such as ''Billboard''.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.nextbigsound.com/ American companies established in 2008 Technology companies established in 2008 Entertainment companies established in 2008 Internet properties established in 2008 Internet properties disestablished in 2021 2008 establishments in New York City 2015 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in New York City Defunct online companies of the United States Music companies of the United States