Question: What does your 200 Facebook fans, 3000 myspace friends, and 20 last.fm plays mean?

How can you quantify how your efforts on things like Facebook and YouTube? Are people listening to your music? Where are you getting the most plays? Are bloggers bloggin about your tracks?  What does it all mean???

Well luckily for you with the assistance of the resources below you can gain a better picture of your internet audience and where you stand.

Hype Machine:
A music blog aggregator like no other. It trolls music blogs (new indie music typically) and provides a list of what people are talking about. Hype Machine has a search function allowing you to search your band so if you search your name and things start a-poppin, great!… and if you don’t, perhaps it just means that your audience lays elsewhere.

Next Big Sound:
A tracker of your Fans, Plays, and Comments over your many different websites. Next Big Sound goes for it big time. They have a great looking website and are looking to put even more analytic power in artists hands. Facebook Fan pages, Last.fm plays, YouTube views, it’s all there plus many more. Check out how, and when, people are finding your music. This information can be then used in different ways. Check out which online music portal is working and concentrate your efforts there, or perhaps create more content for other sited to get more views. In any case, I have a feeling that Next Big Sound will be a very important and popular tool for musicians soon if it isn’t already. We’ll try and talk to these people soon to take a closer look.

We Are Hunted:
We’ve written about these folks before. The website ranks and finds the most blogged, downloaded, and buzzed about music from all over the internet world. It’s a new kind of chart versus the archaic Billboard Nielsen Soundscan ones. While many smaller bands may not make the monthly or weekly top 10, they can realistically crack the daily charts and genre specific charts. I’ve seen it happen, and it can only be a momentum boost. You can subscribe to their email but we are hunted still caters to music seekers versus music makers. I hope that starts to change.

Google Alerts:
Basic stuff here folks. Google Alerts, alerts you when a search term of your choosing, like your band name, is found by their spiders. It then compiles all of these finds into a report emailed daily or whenever you want to you. Very good info to have. Ya HRD?!

Take Control of Your Music
Voyno