This article was taken from the August 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This time next year, the fastest-growing music acts will be Rudimental and Bastille, each artist increasing its fanbase by 210.5 percent and 394.2 percent respectively -- at least, according to FanFactory. The east London startup scoops information from multiple sources to predict which bands will be flavour of 12 months' time. "The approach reflects what hedge funds and the finance world have always done. It's common in many industries, but not in arts, sport or music," says Dana Al-Salem (pictured), founder and CEO.
FanFactory uses sources from platforms such as Facebook and SoundCloud, plus smaller sites such as BandPage, to track how many fans an act has -- and how quickly this number is growing. Its algorithms extrapolate the data to predict the fanbase in a year's time. The results can be a useful tool for festival organisers, who book well in advance. "You can see that this artist is growing fast and, by bidding on her now, before she's big, get her cheaper,"
Al-Salem says. Rob Silver, director of the Lovebox festival, says that thanks to the technology, he approached artists he might not have risked: "It helped us spot how fast [dance act] Disclosure were growing -- we knew about them, but this was hard data."
Al-Salem founded FanFactory in 2010, after a career in "old tech" -- setting up Yahoo!'s European operation. Now she's refining the tool further to include future events such as tours and album releases. Then she wants to combine it with a promoter's own financial information in order to create a historical record so that users "can go deeper into the revenue aspect and make financial predictions about booking bands. We can start making recommendations, like 'Bid between £1m and £2m for this contract.'"
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
