Data-analytics firm lands financing

BOULDER – Next Big Sound Inc., a Boulder-based data-analytics company that tracks mentions of musical acts across online platforms, announced Tuesday it has closed a $6.5 million Series A round of financing.

Next Big Sound also announced it will open an office in New York City, and that it has reached deals to provide its data to two of the three largest record labels.

Next Big Sound co-founder and chief executive Alex White said the company will use the money to add staff. It is looking for infrastructure engineers, system administrators, front-end developers and data visualization experts, among others.

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The company has 10 full-time employees, White said.

Next Big Sound helps record companies, bands and promoters determine how to market acts, albums and tours by measuring buzz on sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Users receive information from “billions of public and private data points” that will supplement data on CD sales and radio airplay.

The data will not replace the “golden ears” needed to detect a hit, but it will provide critical insight into what listeners are thinking, White said.

“We’ll never make the decisions, but we think all of their decisions could be improved through the use of billions of data points that are available,” White said.

Similar data analytics knowledge is used to measure performance in the finance and tech industries, White said.

The music media also uses Next Big Sound data. Billboard magazine relies on the company to compile its Social 50 chart and a chart of up-and-coming artists.

The financing is the first sought by Next Big Sound since it raised about $1 million in seed funding in 2009, the year it was part of TechStars Boulder, a startup incubator.

Foundry Group, a Boulder-based venture capital investment firm, and IA Ventures, which is based in New York City, led the round. Foundry Group was a prior investor, while IA Ventures is a new investor.