We’ve spoken to a number of artists about the benefits of Rank ‘em. Even when we’re not trying to sell them anything, many of them remain skeptical of working with us because of the large amount of inquiries they get.

In general, we think the Rank ‘em resource can function as their best friend. While they’re not doing any work, we’re allowing the prospective fans to lean on the knowledge of the existing fanbase.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we already get a good bit of traffic from fans who seemingly rely on Google to help embrace a new artist.

In terms of our actual collaboration with artists, we think there’s four easy steps necessary, and only one minor step falls on the artists:

1. Artist mailing list [and Facebook & Twitter followings] encouraged to check out the existing fan favorites on Rank ‘em.
2. Fans disagree with the existing list so they want to rank their own.
3. Fans share their rankings across the social networks.
4. Potential fans see these lists and check ‘em out (everybody loves lists!).
5. Potential fans become new fans and repeat steps #2 & #3.

More than anything, this cycle is especially effective when artists have nothing new to share. How can they keep the fanbase engaged when they’re not (e.g.) releasing a new album or announcing a new tour?

For the artists, we’re trying to keep their name in the public consciousness, and minimize the troughs that come with the downtime. Rank ‘em gives fans an outlet to interact with the content in a unique way.

If you’re an artist and you dig what I’m describing, I’d love to talk and help make you leverage your fanbase to your advantage.

According to IFPI’s Digital Music Report 2010, digital sales grew 9.2% and downloads accounted for $4.3 billion in revenue this past year. Sounds like a lot of money…but in reality, it could be a lot more.

These days, iTunes and Amazon seem to place the majority of their emphasis on the songs that are selling, and put the ones that aren’t so “radio-friendly” on the backburner.

Yet, as Chris Anderson described in The Long Tail, there’s probably as much money to be made in the tail as there is in the head.

In my opinion, iTunes & Amazon are taking the lazy approach. They’re basing their listings off of sales data, but for all of the songs that never receive mainstream exposure, they repeatedly get lost in shuffle.

Think about the big picture: Who knows each artist’s catalog better than their own fans? Nobody!

The easiest artist example for conveying this ongoing epidemic is Radiohead, a band that had a huge hit in the mid-90s with ‘Creep,’ but as 99% of Radiohead fans would probably tell you, it’s far from their best song. Hell, even the band refused to play the song for five years.

If you go to iTunes or Amazon, you’ll find the same story: Creep is at the very top of the list. If you go to the Radiohead page on Rank ‘em, it’s an entirely different story: ‘Creep’ barely cracks the Top 15!

Despite the problem with ‘Creep’ at the top of the list, it’s not even the biggest discrepancy in their catalog listing! That distinction would go to songs like ‘Airbag.’

If you were to visit Amazon’s Radiohead listings (as of 6.25.10), you would have go four pages in and locate listing #151 to find the song. Let’s get real: Who would ever dig that deep?

On the other hand, if you go to Rank ‘em’s Radiohead listings, the song is sitting pretty at #5 ahead of often more recognizable titles like ‘High and Dry’ and ‘Nude.’

Why so high? Because Rank ‘em gives the Radiohead fans a voice, and all of the Radiohead fanatics probably know the album ‘OK Computer’ like the back of their hand, and know about the greatness of that song (unlike some other services…). Wouldn’t you rather hear from them than a computerized system?

Needless to say, a song like ‘Airbag’ is probably not selling on Amazon, but if they adopted the Rank ‘em model of polling those that know each artist the best, they’d raise their bottom line and make sales on songs that are currently overlooked.

I could go on for days, but I don’t want to write a thesis. There will surely be plenty more to come on this subject, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear any questions or comments anybody may have!

Here’s my quick breakdown for the initial music discovery process.

Step 1: You just discovered a new artist from:

A)   A friend (trusted source)

B)   A placement (movie, TV show, advertisement, etc.)

C)   A recommendation engine

D)   An identification program like Shazam

E)   Bloggers

F)  What else?

Step 2: Where do I go from here?

As much as I love recommendation engines like Pandora & Slacker, when I find a new artist that I really like, I’m not that inclined to embrace an additional artist. It’s hard enough to find one artist that you can thoroughly enjoy. So when I do, I want to know what their next best song is! Am I alone in that sentiment?

Like I said, once you receive a recommendation from a trusted source or stumble across a new artist you enjoy (step 1), we think Rank ‘em is the ideal next step. Who would know each artist better than their own fans? It’s our goal to sort through the catalogs of every artist of all-time, according to those that know them the best: their own fans. And, that’s only going to be possible with your continued support…through sharing & ranking your favorites for the rest of the world to see!

To further the sentiment, we share an internal theory that there is a significantly greater likelihood of that consumers will find an additional song to purchase by going to the next best song than another artist with a similar track. It’s tough to find a new artist that you LOVE, and especially fully embrace one. But, when you do find one, why would you want to stop there?

That’s what we hope Rank ‘em can do for you. When we say we’re accelerating music discovery, you now know what we mean!

The initiation of this blog is long overdue, but there’s not a much better time to get it started than by highlighting our Public Launch of Rank ‘em at Digital Music Forum East and my overall experience in NYC.

After more than a year in exclusive testing and two-and-a-half years in development, Rank ‘em was ready to come out of it’s shell. We have a great base of supporters (many out of our wonderful music town of Athens, GA) and through the contributions of all of our VIP members, we built a solid foundation of rankings.

When I was offered the opportunity to lead the only conference discussion dedicated to music discovery at DMFE, I was excited about the opportunity. I came up with a title that I thought was appropriate for the overwhelming topic of music consumption in 2010: “Music Discovery – How do we sift through all the noise?”

With Slacker's Jim Rodinelli (Credit: mynameisrico)

When the time finally arrived, an excellent & animated 35-minute discussion ensued with a lot of knowledgeable folks in the music business. Alan Goodstadt from Redwood Capital, who just recently put out an extensive report on the state of the digital music industry, was among those with some great feedback. Additionally, Adam Powers from Rovi Corporation, Michael Stefanakos from Emergent Discovery & Simon Kellman from Sony Music, and Ray Lowe from Sirius XM were some of the more vocal participators.

I started things off by explaining the origins of Rank ‘em (which I’ll leave for it’s own post). It set the stage for my explanation of where we see Rank ‘em in the digital music landscape: essentially filling the second step in the music discovery process. Once that was conveyed, I tried to sit back and listen to what everybody else had to say about the music discovery experience in 2010. It was a very enlightening 35-minutes, and it’s always interesting to hear the different approaches considering all the options out there!

In conjunction with the conference, we felt like it was the perfect place to open our platform to the general public. With that said, we removed the invite-only requirement, and now anyone can sign up…although we still encourage you all to continue spreading the word through our “Recruits” system.

DMFE Panel (Credit: mynameisrico)

Compared with my original trip to DMFE in 2008 with a mere promising idea, it was a completely different experience in 2010 with a real service to boot. If you have something in mind that has “legs,” I highly encourage any future music business stars make the trip to a conference like DMFE to dramatically accelerate your growth and put you in the proper mindset (and they have another one on the West Coast in October). It’s an uplifting and rewarding experience.

Lastly, I met a 22yo, Aidan Nulman, at the conference, who ironically reminded me of 23yo Adam Wexler two years earlier. Like me, he didn’t mind standing out like a sore thumb as the youngest attendee and came to the conference with a focus on maximizing his networking opportunities. I admire his fearlessness, and maybe we’ll all be familiar with his online music collaboration platform, Youphonics, soon enough.

I’m hopeful that others young-guns out there will follow suit. As one of my favorite sayings goes, “an industry in chaos is prime for new opportunities,” and the digital music space is ripe for innovation & new entrants. Here’s to all the unknown commodities out there!