Why BitCritic Is Valuable

• People LOVE to ‘play critic’. Other apps/services like Twitter or Instagram allow us to tap into our inner photographer or minutia broadcaster microblogger. Everyone likes to be a critic, just look at this screenshot from my favorite music forum:

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The above image shows users creating their own top list as inspired by Pitchfork’s Top albums of the 2000s. Interestingly, Pitchfork has dabbled very lightly with similar data collection taking a survey of their readership called the People’s List, where you can see album rankings broken down by age group and geographic location. For whatever reason, this list was a one-time thing, and is exactly what music fans are demanding to  contribute towards and a resource for every album will disrupt the industry.

• Consequently, what we’ve got for music review is lacking width and depth. A few big names can’t come close to reviewing the 75,000 albums released annually.

 

•  The biggest music junkies LOVE having detailed and quantified data. On independent music forums, I’ve seen users keeping their lists and ratings in Excel spreadsheets. An intuitive web platform like BitCritic will harvest all this valuable data while keeping a location for easy user access.

Here’s a thread where users argued over the bests songs on Radiohead’s OK Computer:

• The data itself is valuable. Highly specific (0.0-10.0) scale means more targeted  advertising. A Wu-Tang Clan fan vs. a Kenny Chesney fan might draw different sponsors.

• Licensing like the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer as additional revenue streamRotten Tomatoes was trusted by Steve Jobs for use on the Apple TV. BitCritic could similarly be licensed to iTunes, Sonos, Spotify, Grooveshark, Pandora, Last.fm, and HypeMachine.

• The BitCritic formula could be applied to other types of media like creative writing, art, and film. Pitchfork Media is already expanding into film critique withThe Dissolve.