BuzzAngle Music and A2IM launch U.S. idependent music chart

BuzzAngle Music has teamed up with A2IM to create a new U.S. Indie Chart, which will portrait the independent, fast-growing, musically creative segment of the market in a more robust, focused way. The independent sector represents almost 40% of the world’s music market, but there has not been an accurate chart that captures what’s going on in this area of the music industry, until now. With Indie Chart, independent labels, artists, and their supporters will have access to data and reports that are daily, more granular, and affordable, as opposed to what’s prevailed for years.

These charts will rely on BuzzAngle’s fast data processing, which happens daily (not weekly, the old pre-digital industry standard still used by Nielsen-SoundScan), and they will be publicly available and filterable by six different criteria (and many more, for professional users), including geography (down to the city level), consumption type, and dozens of genres, allowing for more than 250,000 unique report combinations.

BuzzAngle Music CEO Jim Lidestri explained:

This independent chart for the U.S. will show what’s going on in a very intriguing segment of the business. It will reflect the hot spots, scenes, and movements powering the music business. [...] Independent labels and artist supporters need data as much as, or more than the major distributors, and they need that data to be fast, granular, and affordable.

Richard Burgess, A2IM President, added:

We have never had an accurate independent music chart and we are excited to partner with BuzzAngle for these Indie Charts and to begin to identify true independent music market share. Independent music deserves to be highlighted in a focused and data-driven format.

BuzzAngle Music is a big-data solution to music consumption tracking and the first in a series of Border City Media services (that will also include BuzzAngle Movies and BuzzAngle Books). A2IM is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit trade organization headquartered in New York City representing a broad coalition of 391 Independently-owned American music labels.