Sound Index Charts Most Discussed Bands on the 'Net
by Tim Stevens, posted May 21st 2008 at 10:42AM
The days of the Weekly Top 40 list dictating the hottest properties in music are long gone. Now hot bands come and go almost daily, and the BBC has come up with its own replacement for those venerable pop lists of yore. Called the Sound Index, it's basically a system that trawls over popular online social networks, like MySpace and Bebo, and compiles lists of who's being talked about the most. Generate the most buzz and you'll be top of the digital charts.With the weekly radio lists, an artist used to be considered dominant if they could stay at the top of the charts for two weeks in a row. With Sound Index the charts are re-generated every six hours, meaning an artist would be lucky to keep their number one spot for a few days before getting disrupted. Case-in-point, when the list launched yesterday Coldplay was #1 on the list. As of today, it's been bumped to #3 and the Ting Tings have displaced them. Such is the way of the fickle Internet music listener. [Source: BBC Sound Index, via TechCrunch]
