Why does this matter? The Billboard 200 is a weekly-updated chart that

tracks the top-selling-and-streaming albums and EPs in the United States

— an appearance on the chart is a strong indicator of an artist’s success, and

in our research, often signals a move into the mainstream. Anyone interested

in finding and partnering with tomorrow’s big names, from record labels to

brands, could find enormous value in knowing which bands are more likely

to appear on the Billboard 200.

Our aptly-named Billboard 200 Score identifies, at any given moment,

the likelihood that an artist will appear on the Billboard 200, on a scale of

0 to 100, within the next year. Within this range, we have to define what

constitutes a “prediction.” Given that the average Billboard 200 Score for all

musicians is 0.2, a score of 5 — again, which indicates a 5% likelihood that

this artist will chart on the Billboard 200 within the next 52 weeks — seems

like a generous place to start. In fact, on any given day, only about 1,000

artists who have never charted before score at or above 5.

Over the last 18 months, we generated a Billboard 200 Score for 386 of

the 426 artists that charted on the Billboard 200. Of these 386 artists, 303

achieved a score above 5, on any given week. That’s nearly 80%, or 4 in 5, of

all the artists for which we generated a score.

OUR BILLBOARD 200 SCORE PREDICTED

FOUR OF EVERY FIVE ARTISTS TO REACH THE

BILLBOARD 200, SOME MORE THAN A YEAR

IN ADVANCE.

BILLBOARD 200 SCORES FOR ALL ARTISTSNBS Billboard 200 Scores for 386 artists that appeared on the Billboard 200 in 2014 SCORES 100 50 0 NO SCORE AVAILABLE

WEEK OF CHART APPEARANCE

80 WEEKS BEFORE CHARTING

K E E P I N ’ I T T W O H U N D R E DP R E D I C T I N G T H E B I L L B OA R D 2 0 0

Forecasting the future is a core capability for Next Big Sound — after all, we’re Next Big Sound, not Last Big Sound. For more than a year, our data scientists have trained their algorithms on predicting the future likelihood of an artist charting on the iconic Billboard 200 chart. Currently, our Billboard 200 Score is better than any single metric at predicting tomorrow’s top artists.

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WEEKS WITH INCREASE ABOVE 8%NBS Billboard 200 Scores for 386 artists that appeared on the Billboard 200 in 2014

WEEK OF CHART APPEARANCE

80 WEEKS BEFORE CHARTING

SCORES WEEK-TO-WEEK INCREASE ABOVE 8% INCREASE BELOW 8%

What if we raise the threshold higher, to a score of 15 out of 100? We call

this “The Sweet Spot” — on any given day, the top 300 uncharted artists

have a Billboard 200 Score at or above 15. 300 is a significant number as

each year roughly 300 artists chart on the Billboard 200 for the first time.

At this level of prediction — a 15% likelihood that an artist will reach the

Billboard 200 — our Billboard 200 Score correctly identified 236 of the 386

Billboard 200 artists, over three of every five!

Finally, we discovered a significant increase in scores for all artists from 8 to

10 weeks before their appearance of the Billboard 200 chart. For these three

weeks, scores increased an average of 8% each week.

ACCELERATING BILLBOARD 200 SCORES ARE A

STRONG INDICATION THAT AN ARTIST WILL HIT

THE BILLBOARD 200 WITHIN THE

NEXT TWO MONTHS.

Note the consistent increase for many artists7-9 weeks before charting

ALL BB 200 SCORES, FILTERED BELOW 15NBS Billboard 200 Scores for 386 artists that appeared on the Billboard 200 in 2014 100 50 >15SCORES < 5 15 — 5

WEEK OF CHART APPEARANCE

80 WEEKS BEFORE CHARTING

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What Makes Our Billboard 200 Score Better?

The combination of signals from multiple social and streaming channels

makes our likelihood predictions for the Billboard 200 far stronger than

other methods. No one source that we’ve analyzed has a stronger predictive

power than this blend of several metrics. Let’s take a look at how the

Billboard 200 score compares to a handful of other metrics, based on the top

1,000 artists predicted by each metric on January 1st, 2014.

Some believe that increasing radio airplay is the best indication of a

musician’s future success. Even in 2014, radio remained a powerful force and

a primary listening medium for many fans. However, if we looked at the top

1,000 uncharted artists on January 1st, we would have predicted 78 artists

that hit the Billboard 200 with airplay data, versus the 108 artists forecasted

by our Billboard 200 Score.

How about social signals? Here we find the same story. Among Twitter,

Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia, Instagram had the best prediction

success rate in 2014 — 55 artists, in total.

Meanwhile, among streaming networks, Vevo outperforms SoundCloud,

YouTube and Rdio at forecasting Billboard 200 artists. Of the top 1,000

breakout artists on Vevo, 66 appeared on the Billboard 200.

Finally, for a baseline comparison, there’s always random chance. A random

selection from the over 500,000 artists we track at Next Big Sound would

yield a success rate of only 0.008%, or about one success in 12,500 attempts.

Better to stick with the Billboard 200 Score!

NEXT BIG SOUND’S BILLBOARD 200 SCORE IS

NEARLY 40% STRONGER THAN RADIO PLAY AT

PREDICTING WHICH ARTISTS WILL MAKE THEIR

FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE BILLBOARD 200.

OUR BILLBOARD 200 SCORE HAS NEARLY TWICE

THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF THE STRONGEST

SOCIAL METRIC, INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS.

OUR BILLBOARD 200 SCORE BEATS ALL OTHER METRICSNumber of 2014 charting artists within top 1,000 uncharted artists as of Jan 1, 2014

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See For Yourself!

Sharing the success of our Billboard 200 Score doesn’t end with this paper.

This score drives our Next Big Sound Chart — every week, we deliver a

ranked-ordered list of the fifteen artists with the highest Billboard 200 Score

that haven’t yet appeared on the Billboard 200 Chart. It’s an exciting, data-

driven window into the future’s likely stars.

If you’re interested going deeper and seeing Billboard 200 Scores for artists

that interest you, please reach out to sales@nextbigsound.com. We’d be more

than happy to apply our predictive powers to your music marketing needs.

Simply put, we look at social and streaming data for artists that have already

appeared on the Billboard 200 Chart, then use patterns we find in this data

to train algorithms to look for similar patterns in data for new, undiscovered

artists. We generalize from past data to predict future, unseen events.

The resources that enable this research are unparalleled — no other company

has over five years of historical data, across hundreds of metrics, for hundreds

of thousands of artists, that make this modeling possible. The Billboard 200

Score updates on a daily basis and evolves over time to account for the rising

and falling influence of different social networks.

For the figures presented in this paper, we examined data from eight different

networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and SoundCloud, from May 2013

through late November 2014. For a deeper dive into the methodology that

drives the Billboard 200 Score, please read Data Scientist Victor Hu’s post

from 2013 describing our success at predicting appearances on the Billboard

Hot 100 chart.

How Do We Make Our Predictions?

OUR TOP PICKS FOR 2015Top-scoring uncharted artists as of February 1st, 2015

GLASS ANIMALS78% Likelihood

VIEW PROFILE VIEW PROFILE VIEW PROFILE VIEW PROFILE VIEW PROFILE

THE WOMBATS73% Likelihood

ALESSO68% Likelihood

MICKEY GUYTON68% Likelihood

GEORGE EZRA65% Likelihood