Here at Music Arsenal HQ in sunny Omaha, NE we've been hard at work on an all new version of RockDex. We began RockDex simply as a cool site to track your online buzz but the response has been so overwhelming we decided to take it a step further. We heard your requests and have developed deeper tracking, better results, detailed data and more. We call it RockDex Pro!

So what does this mean for you? You'll be able to better understand where and who your fans are and what they're saying about you. Maybe that deep cut on your new album is the most buzzed about track and you should consider giving it a little more attention. Plan your next tour around hot cities and interact with your fans buzzing about your the most. Find and cultivate that tribe and 1000 true fans.

We plan on releasing this into the wild soon and if you signup for early warning we'll let you know before anyone else and give you first chance to use RockDex Pro. We promise no long waits. (We'll also start deep tracking for any artist that signs up)

We'll also be giving one on one phone demos several times a week so if you're interested, indicate in the form. If you don't want a demo and just want to say whats up we want to hear from you.

Now for the goods! Feast your eyes on the first shots of RockDex Pro! Make sure to click the images for full size.

We have several artists and companies using this pro version now and have had great feedback! Needless to say we're very very VERY excited for this! Remember to signup for early notice, keep an eye here and follow us on twitter for updates!

Twitter has undoubtedly become what many are calling the next big thing in music promotion. There have been several success stories and on the same hand some have been disappointed by the results. If you look beyond individual case studies its interesting to see how artists and fans are using twitter to expose music and what methods are most popular.

RockDex has been tracking millions of Twitter posts as part of our upcoming RockDex Pro edition and garnered some pretty interesting data. We've poured over your tweets and categorized the biggest sources of twitter music discussion and discovery.

First off, a breakdown of all tweet sources. These are tweets containing an artist's name. If the tweet states something along the lines of, "I love Rocket From The Crypt" it is categorized as a general tweet. If the tweet content is "Rocket From The Crypt - Born in '69 http://blip.fm/~8p7l4" it is categorized as a blip.fm tweet and so on. Artists like Cursive, The Streets and Rush were excluded from this study for being overly used in non-music contexts. Click on a chart for a larger view.

You can see that the vast majority of these tweets are general posts about an artist. However 3.6% of all music tweets come from blip.fm and another 5% were from radio stations tweeting what they're playing right now.

If we break this down further we can see what percentage of specialized tweets come from individual sources excluding general tweets. These are tweets posted from social music sites such as blip.fm, The Hype Machine and radio based sites Yes.com and RadioTAGr.com.

Finally here is a chart of specialized tweet sources without radio station tweets. I've excluded radio from this chart because radio tweets don't require any human interaction (both yes.com and RadioTagr.com are generally automated) as tweets from these social music sites do. 

You can see currently Blip.fm is leading the pack far and wide. Although twt.fm is only holding 6.01% of the market share right now, keep in mind they only launched five months ago and are a site to keep your eye on.

We'll update these charts as we collect more data and new social music sites are created. If you'd like more information or want to check out a demo of RockDex Pro e-mail me at jimmy@musicarsenal.com.

We've been doing a lot of work under the hood in Music Arsenal but we also wanted to let you know about some of the visual and functional updates we've made recently to make MA easier to use. Click on the image to view a bigger version

Tagging is here!

Lots of Music Arsenal users requested we add tagging to our contact system to make searching and navigation easier... so we did just that! On any contact page you can click the 'Add Tags' link to add a tag to a contact right then and there. After you add a tag it is searchable from the 'Tag Search' box located on the left of almost every page of the application.

Paging

We admit, it used to be hard find all of the contacts in our music industry contact directories.... but no more! We've added paging to the contact lists so you can see every contact we have. This will make cruising through the directories faster and easier for everyone.

Navigation

Another update we're very proud of is the retooled site navigation. We've ditched the dropdown menus in favor of a faster tabbed based navigation. The feedback for this feature in particular is resounding as the overall experience with Music Arsenal is much improved.

Redesigned Contact Page

We released a new design for a contact page awhile back and now we're getting around to writing about it. Its MUCH easier to read and find information on a contact page and if a contact has an address a map of that location is also displayed. You can also add notes and communications for a contact without refreshing the page. What a relief!!

We are hard at work making more updates available in the near future and as always we'd love to hear what you think or if you have any ideas. Just e-mail us at info@musicarsenal.com or fill out the suggesting form in the application.

RockDex was launched just over a week ago and what a first week its been! We haven't done much more promotion than a post on this blog, some tweets (@musicarsenal), and e-mails to Music Arsenal users and the response has been great!

First, some quick stats! We've had over 800 artists check their score since we launched. The average score of the international artists is 68.6, national artists is 41.6 and regional artists is 34.5. We will be using this new data to tweak our algorithm over the next couple of weeks and will announce any adjustments.

Blog Posts

We've also had a handful of blogs make some great posts about us! Big thanks to Greg Rollett of Gen-Y Rock Stars for their RockDex Review and Contest! You can read the posts here:

RockDex Review and Contest - Gen-Y Rock Stars
Rockdex: See How Much You Rock - LockerPartner
Music Arsenal Launches RockDex @ SXSW - Silicon Prairie News

New Music!

Not only have our computers been working overtime to pump out the scores but our ears have been working overtime to check out new music. Being the snoops we are we're listening to a lot of the artists that get checked out on RockDex. We've heard some great stuff! We've also had two artists send us music via our SoundCloud Dropbox and we loved them both! If you wanna rock and or roll how about you take a listen to The Bron-Yr-Aurs. If you want to get mellow and hear some sweet soothing sounds check out The Sweater Friends.

Make sure to meet up with us at SXSW! E-Mail Us or say hey at the RedGorilla Showcase we're doing with our friends at Indie Extreme on Thursday, March 19th at the Blind Pig Pub between 4pm and 8pm.

After lots of work and lots of data we're proud to launch RockDex! RockDex is a site we've developed where artists can see the amount of "internet chatter" about them and learn new ways to increase the buzz. RockDex scours the internet to find current trends about an artist and scores a band based on data from other bands on their level. We generated our algorithm by looking at over 20,000 datasets for artists large and small. Everything from Green Day and Coldplay, to my roommates bands Son Ambulance and Nick Carl to the newest band on the street.

Think of it as the Nielsen Ratings for an artist's internet activity.

It was an idea I first had a few years ago but we never have had the chance to develop. With the wide range of APIs available now it made development rapid and the data much more accurate than it ever could have been.

The charts are based on the most recent data we have on artists for the past week. It will be a changing barometer of who's hot, who's not and who's rising quickly. Data is gathered and artists are reranked every couple of days so the information is fresh.

Building the site was no small feat and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the amazing talent at DownsDesign. Wait till you hear this. They took scribbled ideas we had for a design and turned it into the beautiful masterpiece we have now in A WEEKS TIME. THATS INCREDIBLE! If you're looking for a hot and crisp design, look no further!

We have big plans for where the site is going, yadda yadda yadda, we'll reveal more soon.

On another note, we're going to be at SXSW Music if you wanna talk about RockDex, share your ideas or even have a beer. (Here's my personal tentative, incomplete music schedule) Also, at SXSW we're hosting a party with Music Arsenal partners Indie Extreme on March 19th from 4 to 8pm at the Blind Pig Rooftop. Stop by and say whats up!

Follow us on Twitter and keep an eye on this blog to hear about updates and improvements to RockDex and Music Arsenal!