CNN reports on a Slovenian startup company Viberate, initiated by DJ Umek from the local music scene and his two partners in 2015, who have a goal to spot and analyze key trends in the music industry. The platform gathers data from major streaming sites, global ticket vendors and 24,000 radio stations across 150 countries and translates this into an online profile for musicians.
According to Umek, the lack of data and analytic intelligence made it harder to spot trends and more difficult for artists, record labels, and venues to navigate the industry. “We were wandering in the dark.”
Vasja Veber, one of the other two partners, says that the start-up aims to revolutionize the use of data in the music business. “The music industry is one of the coolest industries out there, but statistics not so much, and we’re joining those two worlds together.”
Viberate’s online dashboard offers a range of insights, including chart rankings, social media engagement, and fan base demographics. 500,000 artists around the world currently use the platform for a fee of €59 ($66) per month, the dashboard can help them understand where to focus their promotional efforts.
As well as artists, Viberate has 150,000 venues and 6,000 festivals using the site, most notably Insomniac, America’s biggest promoter of electronic music festivals, and the UK’s Glastonbury Festival.
CNN concludes that looking to the future, Viberate’s goal is for every musician to be using data. As Veber puts it: “In 5 to 10 years, being a musician and not having a profile on Viberate would be the same as being a guitar player without the guitar.”
