Does MTV Care About Music Again? The MTV Music Meter Is A Good Start
Posted by Reid McCarter on December 16th, 2010 1:40 PM
We can be forgiven for thinking that, at times, MTV has lost touch with its roots. Between the constant parade of banal reality shows and Bigfoot-sighting frequency of music videos featured on the network it can seem as if the company has given up on actually trendsetting in the world of music. Luckily the release of the MTV Music Meter, an innovative and relevant new charting system, proves this theory wrong by displaying the company’s renewed commitment to current music.
The MTV Music Meter, only just launched in beta, puts the modern music charts where they belong — into the hands of a digital democracy. By accessing the Music Meter fans are able to view a daily list of the top 100 artists currently getting buzz around the internet and then carry on to check out any of the subject’s photos, videos, bios, tweets, music, similar artists and more.
The MTV Music Meter is, in this sense, just a charting system (albeit a more interactive one). What makes it noteworthy, however, is that it is a charting system that is determined by an algorithm (developed by MTV and EchoNest) that crawls the web for the most popular blog postings, video streams and other social media hype-machines. The daily top 100 is then composed from these findings, representing a traffic-driven approach to pop chart listings influenced by the real majority — that is, anyone with a computer and an opinion.