The BBC has been testing a new service called SoundIndex , which lists the top 1,000 artists based on discussions crawled from Bebo, Last.fm, Google Groups, iTunes, MySpace and YouTube. The top five bands according to SoundIndex right now are Coldplay, Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Duffy and Mariah Carey , but the index is refreshed every six hours. This is somewhat similar to Songkick’s “Battle Of The Bands,” which we covered in March. Songkick uses different data – MySpace, Amazon and blogs – to determine rankings, and the results are completely different.
SoundIndex also lets users sort by popular tracks , search by artist, or create customized charts based on music preferences or filters by age range, sex or location. Results can also be limited to just one data source (such as Last.fm). SoundIndex was created in partnership with IBM (IBM’s Semantic Super Computing is used to crawl and analyze sites), and the UK’s NovaRising produces the site. The project is coming out of BBC Switch, BBC’s new teen service delivering content to 12 to 17-year-olds across multiple platforms, TV, Radio 1 and online. Thanks to Tyler McNally for the tip.
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