Testimonials

“MusicID is an indispensable tool in examining chart data for the sales of sound recordings in countries around the world. I believe Music Industry Data will be valuable to everyone from scholars to casual music fans, and it should be considered an essential resource for any library that deals with the study of popular music.”

“MusicID’s analytic services and chart data from Billboard has helped provide context for a central question in my research: when did alternative music in the 1990s merge with the mainstream in the United States? As the mainstream co-opted alternative music and culture during the early 1990s, cynical observers repeatedly posed the question: “alternative to what?” Comparing two of Billboard’s radio airplay charts–Modern Rock (which would later be renamed “Alternative”) and Album Rock (which would later be renamed “Mainstream”)–one can see how over the course of the early 1990s the two charts, which initially had almost no overlap, began to share an increasingly large number of tracks. By the mid-1990s, the two charts shared 60 – 70% of the same content. Alternative and Mainstream thus had become virtually synonymous. MusicID’s chart data and corresponding graphic representations help to visualise this gradual change over the first half of the decade as the mainstream adopted alternative’s highly marketable rebellious qualities.”

“MusicID is an excellent tool for teaching the history of popular music.Through the built-in visualisation tools, you can demonstrate consumption patterns and communicate them quickly using colorful graphs. You can see patterns of how songs actually behave, the trajectory of how quickly they rise and when they fall. You get a clearer picture of what was actually important. Students can see precisely when songs crossed over between charts or track how many times a current hit has been streamed on Spotify. MusicID also gives students an incredibly powerful tool for research papers. They can formulate and check hypotheses, all while avoiding the pitfalls of bad or partial data (sometimes popular music history is told with a focus on critically valued music, not what people were actually listening to, and this can have the effect of centering white male critics and marginalizing women and people of color, who listen to music, too!). These tools can help prepare students for future jobs in the music industry, that we know are there (data analytics is one of the most booming specialties) easily evaluating the relative success of various marketing programs.”

“[MusicID] gave me quick access to all the chart data I needed…. But what made it especially useful was its ability to show connections between different songs and different artists, allowing me to reach unforeseen conclusions.”

Christine Hayes, Religious Studies Chair, Yale University

Ethan DellaRocca, Researcher at Choate Hall

“While Billboard, GfK Entertainment, and others have been around for many years, it has certainly been tedious for the researcher to compile their information; [Music ID] allows one easy access to the sales data with additional tools, such as their world events summaries, to help place things in perspective. With the addition of the export function users can compile a variety of reports to expedite their research. I recommend that libraries invest in this database to facilitate not only music industry/popular music research, but also the interdisciplinary research that can benefit from this product.”

“MusicID helps to quantify the cultural impact of music. For example, I could say that Stevie Wonder was on a hot streak in the early 1970s, but it carries more weight to show the overlapping sales chart curves of his three Top 5 albums released in 1972, 1973 and 1974. As his lyrics took on an explicit social consciousness, people were figuratively and literally buying what he had to say.”

“For music research, [MusicID] is already providing a crucial tool in both finding and analyzing data that have, heretofore, been disperse and cumbersome to gather… While music librarians will immediately see the use of this product for common questions, general reference librarians should also welcome the ability to discover these data—data that could be useful for questions in culture studies, business, international studies, and more—without needing expertise in specialized sources. [MusicID] is a source that deserves to be part of the core resources for academic libraries whose patrons have any interest in music and one that will make many music librarians wonder how we got by without it until now.”

“MusicID is a groundbreaking research source, one that brings together for the first time, sound recording sales charts for a wide variety of music genres from around the world. Its search interface is intuitive and returns quickly-comprehensible results, which can in turn be manipulated in useful ways… overall MusicID provides a very solid value for the price. MusicID content is tremendously valuable; the charts from which it derives its data go back, in some cases, more than 60 years… the product already fills such a significant need for music researchers.” Read the full testimonial

“[MusicID] provides us with a statistical meta-narrative of popular culture…”

“I am delighted that I can see the information transformed into an easy to read color-coded graph. I can envision frequently using MusicID for classrooms and lectures as well as for publications. Impressive! Because my research primarily focuses on contemporary gospel music, I have tried with difficulties to peruse Billboard for chart information, or I relied on quality publications—Rolling Stone or The New York Times—in making statements about how successful a song or artist has been. But MusicID allows me to easily access the actual numbers. On what date did the song actually hit the charts here? What about its success in England? What was the shape of its sales pattern compared to others?”

“Using more than 60 years of music-chart data, and updated on a weekly basis, [MusicID] allows users to compare and contrast, critically examine, and interpret reams of music-chart data with a simple click of the mouse.… The interface is pleasing to the eye and very user-friendly for both the novice and experienced music scholar…. [MusicID] is attractive and unique enough to be of interest to most academic libraries. Any curious researcher exploring music and culture will find a fascinating trove of information here.”