Music Arsenal Blog

RockDex was launched just over a week ago and what a first week its been! We haven't done much more promotion than a post on this blog, some tweets (@musicarsenal), and e-mails to Music Arsenal users and the response has been great!

First, some quick stats! We've had over 800 artists check their score since we launched. The average score of the international artists is 68.6, national artists is 41.6 and regional artists is 34.5. We will be using this new data to tweak our algorithm over the next couple of weeks and will announce any adjustments.

Blog Posts

We've also had a handful of blogs make some great posts about us! Big thanks to Greg Rollett of Gen-Y Rock Stars for their RockDex Review and Contest! You can read the posts here:

RockDex Review and Contest - Gen-Y Rock Stars
Rockdex: See How Much You Rock - LockerPartner
Music Arsenal Launches RockDex @ SXSW - Silicon Prairie News

New Music!

Not only have our computers been working overtime to pump out the scores but our ears have been working overtime to check out new music. Being the snoops we are we're listening to a lot of the artists that get checked out on RockDex. We've heard some great stuff! We've also had two artists send us music via our SoundCloud Dropbox and we loved them both! If you wanna rock and or roll how about you take a listen to The Bron-Yr-Aurs. If you want to get mellow and hear some sweet soothing sounds check out The Sweater Friends.

Make sure to meet up with us at SXSW! E-Mail Us or say hey at the RedGorilla Showcase we're doing with our friends at Indie Extreme on Thursday, March 19th at the Blind Pig Pub between 4pm and 8pm.

After lots of work and lots of data we're proud to launch RockDex! RockDex is a site we've developed where artists can see the amount of "internet chatter" about them and learn new ways to increase the buzz. RockDex scours the internet to find current trends about an artist and scores a band based on data from other bands on their level. We generated our algorithm by looking at over 20,000 datasets for artists large and small. Everything from Green Day and Coldplay, to my roommates bands Son Ambulance and Nick Carl to the newest band on the street.

Think of it as the Nielsen Ratings for an artist's internet activity.

It was an idea I first had a few years ago but we never have had the chance to develop. With the wide range of APIs available now it made development rapid and the data much more accurate than it ever could have been.

The charts are based on the most recent data we have on artists for the past week. It will be a changing barometer of who's hot, who's not and who's rising quickly. Data is gathered and artists are reranked every couple of days so the information is fresh.

Building the site was no small feat and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the amazing talent at DownsDesign. Wait till you hear this. They took scribbled ideas we had for a design and turned it into the beautiful masterpiece we have now in A WEEKS TIME. THATS INCREDIBLE! If you're looking for a hot and crisp design, look no further!

We have big plans for where the site is going, yadda yadda yadda, we'll reveal more soon.

On another note, we're going to be at SXSW Music if you wanna talk about RockDex, share your ideas or even have a beer. (Here's my personal tentative, incomplete music schedule) Also, at SXSW we're hosting a party with Music Arsenal partners Indie Extreme on March 19th from 4 to 8pm at the Blind Pig Rooftop. Stop by and say whats up!

Follow us on Twitter and keep an eye on this blog to hear about updates and improvements to RockDex and Music Arsenal!