Grooveshark Launches Beluga; New Tool Will Provide The Next-Tier Of Music Insights

GAINESVILLE, Fla., May 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 29, 2012, Grooveshark will launch its most revolutionary product to date, a free music information tool called Beluga. Beluga combines in-house market research with Grooveshark data to provide the next-tier of music insights. The free tool allows anyone to conduct in-depth research about a particular artist and their fanbase. This previously unseen, unique data is not accessible anywhere but Beluga. Unlike other services, there are zero barriers to entry—Beluga is free and requires no registration.

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"Any artist with music on Grooveshark can leverage Beluga's revolutionary data to learn about their fans, route their tours, sell merchandise, work on building a following, and take their careers to the next level," said Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark Co-Founder and CTO. "Beluga opens doors for advertisers and brands to partner with artists who connect with their target audience, presenting endless opportunities. Best of all, we provide all of this market research information entirely for free."

Tapping into Grooveshark's 20 million unique monthly users, Beluga conducts powerful analysis to find correlations between artist affinity and their listeners' demographics, location, and survey responses. For example, Beluga can show that on average, Quiet Company fans tend to have iPhones, have no pets, prefer Flickr over other social networks, and tend to be students or otherwise work in the tech industry as developers/programmers. The data collected by Beluga gives artists and their representatives powerful tools to route tours, develop tour lineups based on where artists are relevant, design and sell merchandise, find ideal promotion areas, discover potential licensing opportunities, and more.

"Grooveshark and Beluga's promotional tools and analytics have been a tremendous asset to the marketing efforts of several of our artists, we are excited to be a part of such an amazing platform and service," said Ben Stidham, Director of New Media at SMC Entertainment.

Drawing from Grooveshark's revolutionary survey platform, Beluga collects data with complete transparency while still anonymizing user identities, delivering a lot of value to data-seekers. Combining this market research with data from Grooveshark creates pure listening-demand data, deep geographic and international music fan insight, pinpointed demographics, and first-party data unique to Beluga. The free tool can also find statistically significant correlations between listening habits and brands, providing insight into what's trending in digital music consumption, while identifying typical demographic and psychographic characteristics of an artist's or brand's target audience.

Beluga is only the first step in Grooveshark's broader initiative for empowering artists. All artists can sign up for Beluga at http://beluga.grooveshark.com/. Custom case studies and research are available for artists, brands, and any other interested parties.

Artists can also get early access and more information about the new, artist-focused Grooveshark at http://greenroom.grooveshark.com.

About Beluga
A free tool built by Grooveshark, Beluga combines in-house market research with Grooveshark data to provide the next-tier of music insights. Tapping into an audience of 20 million unique monthly users, Beluga allows artists and researchers to glimpse directly into market insights, gauge actual demand, and learn about their fanbase.

About Grooveshark
Founded in 2006, Grooveshark is the largest internationally available music streaming and discovery service, with more than 20 million monthly unique visitors. Our service allows music fans to search, discover, and share music while pioneering new artist promotion, distribution, and monetization techniques. As the foremost supporters of open music across the globe, we strive to remove barriers from the creation, distribution, and consumption of new music, for the benefit of both artists and fans.

For more information about Beluga and/or Grooveshark, please contact [email protected].

SOURCE Grooveshark