MTV UK & Ireland, this year used social media buzz as part of their judging criteria for their Brand New For 2012 competition.
The MTV Brand New For 2012 competition sources the best upcoming talent from all over the world, fans are then offered the opportunity to vote for their favourite.
Traditionally ‘ones to watch’ lists have been put together through a combination of tastemakers tips and a level of label marketing, however MTV teamed up with Musicmetrics to take social media buzz into account.
With more and more fans discovering and interacting with bands online, looking at online buzz as a major part of Brand New for 2012 is a fresh and forward looking take. The metrics they chart add a completely new and dimension, arguably giving more realistic insight as to how the artist will fare in the real world – beyond the list and label marketing.
During the course of the unsigned competition The 500 long-list artists together generated the following across social media –
New Fans: 107,181
New Plays: 3,552,848
From the start of the competition and throughout, each artist has been tracked with Musicmetric providing daily statistics on which artists have risen the most in terms of their buzz; an aggregate of votes, plays, new fans and comments over the last 24 hours. For the first time these stats are able to be seen at a level of accuracy and comprehensiveness that has given MTV the confidence to put their weight behind such an innovative approach.
Matt Cook, Director of Talent and Music Programming, MTV UK says: “We’ve broken new ground this year with the inclusion unsigned acts in our Brand New for 2012 campaign – and the ability to measure and analyse online buzz was critical to our selection process. Musicmetric proved the perfect partners, delivering detailed and clearly presented data which proved invaluable.”
The search for an unsigned artist ends today with Context (formerly Context MC) crowned the winner of the unsigned slot on the MTV Brand New for 2012 list.
