BigChampagne Media Measurement Blog

Jan

11

Kyle Bylin Exits Billboard, Joins BigChampagne + Live Nation Team

Just weeks after Live Nation acquired influential media measurement firm BigChampagne, the live concert promoter has announced another major talent grab: Kyle Bylin. …

“The feedback loop in popular culture is broken,” Bylin told Hypebot in an email interview. “A fan holds little connection to their actions and the chart movements of their favorite artists. With the next evolution of Ultimate Chart, we’re going to mobilize fans to participate in the successes of their favorite artists and empower them to share their part of the larger story.”

Bylin joins high-profile hires including Ethan Kaplan, the former SVP of Emerging Technology at Warner Music Group and now VP of Product for LiveNation.com, as well as BigChampagne founders Eric Garland and Joe Fleischer.

Read more…

Dec

20

Pop The Cork: Former WMG Tech Chief Joins BigChampagne, Ticketmaster

Fast Company -

On the heels of Live Nation’s acquisition of BigChampagne, the consumer data analytics firm, the ticket seller is set to make yet another high-profile pickup: Ethan Kaplan, Warner Music Group’s former SVP of emerging technology, will soon join the company. Together with BigChampagne founder Eric Garland, the two will help redefine Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s business through big data.

Read the rest…

Dec

15

….Billboard is no longer the sole, dominant force when it comes to calculating the actual popularity of pop music. As our own Chris Richards reported over the summer, Big Champagne is one of the newest and most successful companies that deals with tracking popularity in the digital age. And now Big Champagne is owned by Live Nation.

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-David Malitz, Washington Post.

Here’s Chris Richards’ piece that David refers to…

BigChampagne CEO on Live Nation Deal: ‘We’re Going From Playing a Little Club to the Biggest Stage in the World’

Hollywood Reporter:

Eric Garland, founder of the media measurement company, tells THR, “I haven’t even begun to wrap my head around how big these properties are together.”

News that entertainment conglomerate Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, operates more than 100 venues across the U.S. and is partnered with some of music’s biggest artists, is buying fledgling data analytics company BigChampagne came as somewhat of a surprise on Wednesday. Naturally, the David and Goliath trope applies, but dig a little deeper, and this marriage of trade information and consumer audience makes sense.

BigChampagne founder and CEO Eric Garland, who along with 26 employees will work under the Live Nation umbrella (Garland will become general manager of livenation.com, and co-founder Joe Fleischer will hold the title of svp of content and product strategy), explains: “For Live Nation, it means they’re becoming a technology-driven company; For us, we’re going from playing a little club to the biggest stage in the world — it’s an eco-system to come into and an opportunity to take. I haven’t even begun to wrap my head around how big these properties are together.”

After 10 months of talks, one would think Garland, who launched BigChampagne in 2001, has become accustomed to the idea. But judging by his Twitter feed in the hours after the announcement was made on New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, he’s clearly still in the bleary-eyed throes of a honeymoon phase.

And deservedly so, when BigChampagne launched its Ultimate Chart, Garland says it was “aspirational.” This merger with Live Nation makes measuring an artist’s buzz across multiple platforms a feasible reality. “My goal was to really make it 360 degrees,” Garland tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Merch, touring, endorsement money, sponsorships, licensing, recorded music… I went begging to all the usual suspects in all those areas that traditionally get ignored as chart eligible and started licensing data. That’s where this all started — with Ticketmaster, who gave me the ticketing data. It didn’t start as a M&A discussion at all.”

But it quickly turned into one, as Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and executive chairman Irving Azoff saw in the BigChampagne team a window into their digital future, where mining data can, in theory, translate to a better customer experience. Says Garland: “The mandate is to take all the underlying capacity behind our B-to-B product and extend it to the consumer – so we’re trying to improve fan experiences using data analytics. We’re getting to know [the consumers] better and we’re connecting people with things they love which are nearby, either in physical space or time space.”

If things go according to plan, soon the Youtube hit will be quantifiable alongside a platinum-selling record, social media and traditional broadcast will factor in along with streaming services and sales, or, says Garland, “what’s really most popular.”

Twitter: @shirleyhalperin

BigChampagne has a reputation for offering blunt assessments of consumers’ online behavior. For instance, it persuaded at least some music companies there’s value in knowing how popular their songs are on file-sharing networks and piracy websites, even if those channels are unsanctioned and don’t generate revenue for record labels.

—

-Ethan Smith, Wall Street Journal:

Live Nation Acquires BigChampagne

LIVE NATION TO ACQUIRE BIGCHAMPAGNE MEDIA MEASUREMENT

(Here’s the .PDF)

Leading technology developer integrates live event data, expands capabilities

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 14, 2011

Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV) announced today it has acquired BigChampagne Media Measurement. BigChampagne is a leading developer of technologies for collecting, analyzing and distributing media metrics. BigChampagne’s Ultimate Chart platform will power social discovery, content relevancy and product personalization across Live Nation’s businesses.

BigChampagne’s own products and services will be expanded to incorporate unprecedented access to live event data, ticketing and merchandising, direct-to-fan and other exclusive data sets. As a part of Live Nation’s Live Analytics group, BigChampagne will introduce comprehensive business intelligence solutions for entertainment businesses, brands and lifestyle marketers.

Live Nation Entertainment will retain the BigChampagne team and operations. Founder Eric Garland has been appointed General Manager of LiveNation.com, and co-founder Joe Fleischer has been named SVP of Content & Product Strategy for LiveNation.com. Live Nation will continue to invest in the development of BigChampagne’s core analytics engine and products including Ultimate Chart, Ultimate Awards and Ultimate Chart Pro.

Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, said: “This acquisition strengthens our commitment to be the leader in Artist to Fan data. BigChampagne’s expertise will accelerate our mission to drive deeper fan engagement throughout Live Nation driven by world class data technology.”

Eric Garland, founder of BigChampagne, said: “BigChampagne now collects and analyzes more information about entertainment and online audiences than anyone in our sector’s history. From my first conversation with Live Nation, it was clear to me that this is the right place to dramatically evolve and extend what we’ve built. We’re connecting fans with things they’ll love that are happening nearby or soon, or both. Most importantly, Live Nation has assembled an extraordinary team and we are honored to be invited to join them.”

About BigChampagne:

BigChampagne is a leading developer of technologies for collecting, analyzing and distributing media metrics. The company acquires and analyzes billions of online and offline data points about popular entertainment. Described by WIRED magazine as the new “Nielsen ratings” of online music, BigChampagne examines information about airplay, sales, streams, downloads, other revenues, listens, views, mindshare, fan interactions and social connections and provides comprehensive insights into the 360 degree relationship between artists and their fans. BigChampagne’s core products, Ultimate Chart and UC Pro, are widely recognized as providing the most comprehensive real-time analytics products in the music vertical. Fast Company named BigChampagne to their 2011 list of World’s Most Innovative Companies. Founder Eric Garland was profiled in the Forbes “40 Under 40” issue.

About Live Nation Entertainment:

Live Nation Entertainment is the world’s leading live entertainment and eCommerce company, comprised of four market leaders: Ticketmaster.com, Live Nation Concerts, Front Line Management Group and Live Nation Network. Ticketmaster.com is the global event ticketing leader and one of the world’s top five eCommerce sites, with over 26 million monthly unique visitors. Live Nation Concerts produces over 20,000 shows annually for more than 2,000 artists globally. Front Line is the world’s top artist management company, representing over 250 artists. These businesses power Live Nation Network, the leading provider of entertainment marketing solutions, enabling over 800 advertisers to tap into the 200 million consumers Live Nation delivers annually through its live event and digital platforms. For additional information, visit www.livenation.com/investors.

Dec

9

Rolling Stone - On The Charts:

On the Charts: She and Him, the Killers Score With Christmas Pop

#ultimatechart

Oct

6

It was the strength of Steve’s passion, persuasive gifts, persistence and personality that managed to change hearts and minds.

—

- MTV: Steve Jobs Made Computing An ‘Emotional Experience’

MTV’s Gil Kaufman talks with BoingBoing’s David Pescovitz and our own Eric Garland about iconoclast Job’s impact on them personally - both nuanced and brazen.

It’s easy to forget now thanks to the ubiquity of iTunes and the more than 10 billion songs sold since the store opened in 2003, but Eric Garland, CEO of leading online media metrix company Big Champagne, said for a time, the Apple boss was spurned by the major record labels. “It’s funny now to think of the notion of 99 cent downloads or paid downloads as an utterly noncontroversial one, but it’s hard to remember just how contrarian this play was eight or nine years ago,” Garland said.

Read on…

New York Times: He Pushed a Reluctant Industry Toward Digital Music

“Steve Jobs came into the music industry at a time when the incumbents had given up on their own fans,” said Eric Garland, chief executive of the media tracking firm BigChampagne. “Virtually all the leaders in the industry retrenched and began to focus on a scheme of locks and braces on music. Steve Jobs recognized that people on the Internet were not thieves. They were fans – rabid fans.”

Read on….

Sep

29

It would have been very easy for Merge to get big, fat and stupid. They never did. They’ve always bet on the long run — the art, the artist and the relationship with the fan.

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Salon - Can an indie label with great taste save the music industry?

Sep

22

Overwhelmingly, the differentiation is in how these services are distributed,” said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, an online media measurement and research company. “When a potential customer reaches for that button, you want to be the service that’s right there.

— La Times - Digital music service Slacker uses DJs to pick songs

Aug

1

[Netflix CEO] Reed Hasting is deliberately creating dissatisfaction. He’s creating dissonance precisely because that title availability, those first-run titles, needs to be available more immediately and more widely as a (video on demand) or as a streamed offering.

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Greg Sandoval, Cnet -

Is Netflix Killing DVDs Like Apple Killed Floppies?

Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland has seen Netflix’s price hike in many different forms over many years. For over a decade, Garland’s Los Angeles-based company has tracked digital-media consumption over the Web and much of the data he collects he sells to the major film studios and record companies. He’s in the catbird seat to watch events unfolding at Netflix and he’s convinced that Hastings designed the price hike to rouse the studios and his audience out of their complacency regarding the DVD. Garland says the format was already dying but the price increase is meant to perform a mercy killing on the highest order; so consumers can begin to acquire movies in the more efficient way that benefits them—and Netflix—the most.

Read on…

“It’s Like Flipping A Switch”

Gigaom -

Fox could lose up to a third of web viewers to piracy

“I’ll just go back to pirating my content”: That was the response some of our readers had after hearing about Fox’s plans to restrict online access to full episodes of its shows to viewers that can either authenticate themselves as Dish Network subscribers or pay for Hulu Plus. The question is: How many users will authenticate, how many will wait eight days for content to become freely available and how many will go back to BitTorrent once the changes go into effect in mid-August? …

Few doubt that there will be a direct impact on piracy. “It’s like flipping a switch,” said Eric Garland from the Los Angeles–based media measurement company BigChampagne during a phone call on Wednesday, adding that he has seen “immediate and direct correlations” between the availability of online content on sites like Hulu and piracy.

Read on…

Jul

7

Ganging Up on Internet Pirates

Wall Street Journal -

Hollywood, Telecom Providers Unite to Target Those Who Share Copyrighted Films, Music

Internet users who share pirated movies and music online may soon be getting an unpleasant surprise: Warnings from their cable and phone providers that detail alleged copyright infringement and threaten to slow their Web connections if they don’t stop.

The new so-called Copyright Alert System was created by a coalition of major film studios, record labels and Internet-service providers, who agreed to guidelines for identifying and notifying Web users who violate copyrights.

Among the ISPs that have pledged to implement the new policy are Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc.