Last.fm partners with Musicmetric to bring artist analytics into the mix

Last.fm has announced a partnership with data and analytics platform Musicmetric, an integration that will sit within Last.fm Music Manager, its interface for artists and labels.

Musicmetric is a London-based startup that offers tools to help those that work within the music industry understand consumer behaviour and opinion. Its proprietary technology draws on information from P2P networks, review websites, comments and social networks, pulling in data from millions of sources. And when we first wrote about Musicmetric last May, the company was just in the process of opening its API to developers.

Announced today at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the integration will let artists track fans, plays and views across a number of online music and social platforms, including Last.fm, SoundCloud, Twitter and more, and integrate third party analytics from Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. New data sources will be added shortly, including YouTube Insight, and artists will soon have the option to upgrade to Musicmetric’s Premium version of the artist dashboard for $5.99 a month.

Founded in the UK in 2002, Last.fm recommends new music and personalised radio and concerts to users, and its ‘scrobbling’ technology lets users keep a record of what they listen to from over 600 music players. It was acquired by CBS in 2007, and today it has around 40 million users in more than 200 countries.

“By integrating Musicmetric’s analytics dashboard into Last.fm’s Music Manager, we’re now able to offer artists and labels access to improved data and information surrounding their fans social media presence and listening habits across the Web,” said Tom Lisack, Vice President, Content & Artist Relations, CBS Interactive Music Group. “Last.fm’s purpose is to help emerging artists and this integration gives them unprecedented access to the tools they need to succeed online.”

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Last.fm’s Music Manager serves as a hub for artists to upload tracks to Last.fm, access data on who is listening to their music, manage their profile and offer free track downloads. Since it launched in 2006, more than 500,000 artists have created Music Manager accounts to reach their fans on Last.fm.

Musicmetric is an interesting company for sure and, although it has been around for more than three years, it recently relaunched with a new Musicmetric Pro version, with features such as sentiment analysis and TV-appearance tracking.

Back in January, we reported that Musicmetric’s platform was being used by MTV UK & Ireland, when it launched its annual viewer-led search for the best new music. MTV’s Brand New for 2012 is based on its resident music experts scouring the globe to find the best in upcoming talent. Context was the first ever unsigned act to enter the final 10, and Musicmetric‘s technology was tapped to take fans’ online response to an artist into account through analyzing data from the social sphere.

“This integration is our first step into opening access for emerging artists to the kind of analytics previously only available to major companies,” said Gregory Mead, CEO of Musicmetric. “Having an idea of where fans are engaging with music by an artist, and where they can grow their level of visibility both online and offline is so essential to new or unsigned bands trying to cut through the noise today.”