The Sound Index

The Sound Index from the BBC is a ‘buzz’ index of bands and tracks that are being talked about on the web. Every six hours the Sound Index uses IBM’s Semantic Super Computing to crawl sites like Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google and YouTube to find out what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. From this, the site works out the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web. The site explains:

The more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are. So, the Sound Index is a music buzz index controlled entirely by the public.

As we know which artists are being enjoyed by which people, not only can you can filter the Sound Index to reflect the sites you use the most, or your favourite music styles, you can also tailor it to represent the views of people of different ages and locations.

The ability to look at the musical tastes of different audiences is probably the most fascinating. The chart above maps the supposed music taste for US boomers - which indcludes Miely Cyrus and Kid Rock. It all looks rather smart - but where’s the link to subscribe to Twitter or RSS?

The Sound Index

[Tip off: KoolhandK]