A few weeks back we shared our annual Zeitgeist. One of its features is Top 50 Artists, which counts down the most-blogged acts of the year. The list is always telling of our times, both as a music blog community and an industry at large. What becomes popular on blogs no doubt informs and reflects what is, or will be, popular elsewhere. Each year when approaching this project, we see the distance between what is and will be, getting a little smaller, or perhaps that area a little grayer. Credit this to things moving faster, and that blogs, while still ever-ahead of the curve, are now also an established piece of the overall infrastructure in which new music is discussed. So it makes sense that when an established act like Daft Punk or Phoenix release an album, they are going to make the list. It’s awesome that our data shows this. But, as nerds here ourselves, and in the founding spirit of HM, we got curious. Bloggers still dig daily for the next will be’s. And we thought: how can those findings be better highlighted?
Enter: Ones To Watch 2014
We revisited the list of most-blogged artists and removed any name that has appeared on a previous Zeitgeist or has already released a full-length LP. What remained were the extra-emerging acts—the ones who made a name for themselves last year (and likely no year prior), on the strength of a few tracks, maybe an EP, etc. The ones to keep an eye on. Hope you find this as fun as we did.
Update: Here are a few more from this series:
August 2014: Ones To Watch 2014 ½ with BBC Radio 6 Music
January 2015: Ones To Watch 2015
August 2015: Ones To Watch 2015 ½
Awesome, would love to see this more frequently…maybe monthly? Thanks for sharing.
January 16, 2014 4:31 pm
This is really awesome, I would love more of this! Oh and bring back Hype Machine Radio!
Thanks for being awesome Hype Machine!
January 22, 2014 3:54 pm
Second on the Hype Machine Radio bringing backness.
February 18, 2014 1:23 am
This is so good. As the blogs i follow represent closely my taste (i knew sohn, banks and bondax) and the most popular is quite static, this really opened my eyes and showed me why i like hypem so much. Keep it up!
February 25, 2014 3:50 am
Yes….PLEEEEEEASE BRING BACK HYPE MACHINE RADIO!!!
We need someone curating and commenting on all of the good stuff currently out….otherwise, popular chart just seems lost. Dev had it DOWN.
March 13, 2014 9:34 pm
I miss HM radio
July 11, 2014 2:14 pm
[…] addition to the overall list, we refreshed our Ones To Watch feature for the second half of the year. As before, this uses Zeitgeist data to pinpoint […]
August 7, 2014 1:04 pm
The Ones To Watch 2014 link in the above is broken.
August 27, 2014 1:13 pm
Thanks, fixed
August 28, 2014 12:27 am
[…] With more than half of 2015 behind us, it’s time for the latest Ones To Watch. This feature takes a look at the most blogged artists of the year so far and identifies the names newest to the set—the ones who made their biggest splash in recent months…the ones to keep an eye on. We apply two simple qualifiers: it’s the artist’s first appearance in the data, and they’ve yet to release a full-length LP. More on the science behind the series here. […]
August 18, 2015 11:51 am