Using Free – Part One – Analytics and Data

As much as music consumption is moving towards free, the rest of the web is also moving this way too and there are a number of great opportunities for artists to harness this for their own growth.

This is part 1 of an ongoing guide to what’s out there for free use for artists.

Analytics

Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics – A free service from Google that allows you to analyse the traffic that you receive to an artist website or microsite. This is an easy to use tool, that beyond the obvious stats provides for a really detailed breakdown of how your website is performing, where traffic is coming from and comparisons to past data etc.

Youtube Insight – This tool allows you to see the amount of views, demographic, geographic and community data for each video that you have uploaded to your channel. Being able to access this data gives you a clearer idea of what type of video content is working for you and what people you are reaching through it. Access this by logging into youtube and click ‘insights’ next to any of your videos.

Bandmetrics – http://www.bandmetrics.com/ – This site is currently in private beta. It allows an artist to see data about them from sites like last.fm, myspace, twitter and many more. Useful for spotting trends and understanding how people are finding out about you.

Google Insights – http://www.google.com/insights/search/ – Google Insights for search allows you to see details and graphs of search traffic for keywords. This is another useful source of data which lets you see data for how people are searching for your artist and from which countries and towns etc. You can compare different search terms and see related search terms.