Comments on: Web Stats for musicians: Lies, Damned Lies and Google Analytics.

By: Brenda K of The Panache Orchestra

Brenda K of The Panache Orchestra — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:07:46 +0000

Thanks again Steve for another very helpful post, and more to the point, for reassuring me (as have quite a few “industry types”) that “I’m doing everything right – just keep doing what I’m doing” (and try not to get bogged down in all the swirling chaos and bullshit). However I believe it more coming from you.

I just got started with all this online promo stuff you describe a few months ago, driving myself completely insane in the process, of which part of the insanity can be attributed to the addiction one soon acquires to all those nifty stats. So happy and relieved to hear that I can pretty much ignore them and continue my tack that somehow ended up being in the direction you indicate even before I found this post!

Oh, and for what it’s worth, after a two-year learning curve in L.A. with its incessantly erupting volcano of steaming bullshit, the lesson about those “speculation gigs” is well and truly learnt! These days I’m all about private concerts hosted by enthusiastic fans who invite all their friends and buy our CDs, subscribe to our newsletter, engage in ongoing dialog, etc.!

Rock on,

Brenda K, Fiddlerchick of The Panache Orchestra
@PanacheBrendaK
http://fiddlerchick.wordpress.com/

By: jonathan

jonathan — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:33:12 +0000

Hi, i just found your site searching google for ‘feedburner analytics’ – I, too am a stats junkie =)

ill be subscribing to your feed so look for the extra stat!!

By: Brennig

Brennig — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:22:03 +0000

You’re right Steve, that’s how it is – or should be – for websites. I was bringing my own angle which is slightly different. Our music podcast – but any podcast, no matter what the content – lives and breathes on its subscriptions; website transactions for a podcast are always going to be very small beer.

Our stats tell us how many subscribers are using iTunes on Windows, how many are using iTunes on Apple OS and how many other podcatchers are used on a variety of operating systems.

Your point on interaction as a performance indicator is valid though – and one which we’re constantly seeking to enhance.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:05:44 +0000

Thanks for summing this up Steve.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:17:21 +0000

Hi Brennig. Subscriptions are an interesting stat, though the back-end feedburner stats of how many people did anything with the sub is the *real* one, cos there are so many people with dormant Google Reader accounts… Interactions, responses and active sharing are still more useful measures of the kind of activity that matters

By: Brennig

Brennig — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:55:45 +0000

As you have explored, stats are a minefield. In my professional life I advise organisations on the true interpretation of their web traffic. It doesn’t help that Google’s own statistic services do present inaccurate data. My interest is in RSS feed subscriptions rather than website traffic – the former having greater value, the latter is more prone to false google-induced visits because, let’s face it, people can’t use search engines accurately.

Google Reader tells me that website ‘A’ currently has 125,000 feed subscribers, but Feedburner (which has now been assimilated in to Google Corp) tells me that the same website has 182,000 feed subscribers. This is a massive variance.

I trust Feedburner because they take the root RSS feed that is generated by the website and aggregate all aliased feed subscriptions in to the total. Google reader seems not to do this – and that’s a significant failing.

By: Paddy

Paddy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:27:52 +0000

on a slightly more serious note, cheers for the analytics explination! i’m sure that’ll come in handy some day

By: Paddy

Paddy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:27:11 +0000

i’m a total wh0re for my blog stats, but i only track page views, and i’m aware that its mostly my dad and whoever’s on twitter when i publish. I think i got 40 views in one day, it was proud day lol…

By: ponor

ponor — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:39:42 +0000

Fantastic. Just want to say thanks Steve – really useful and well-written post.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:19:24 +0000

Inky,

I don’t think you’re going soft – the desire for ‘an edge’ over the competition makes people look for whatever scraps of arcane knowledge they can gather to put them ahead. So it’s easy to sell musicians on the value of looking at which countries their visitors come from in order to plan gig dates or whatever…

The value in that is FAR lower than targeting those places where someone has actually offered to organise a show – web visitors that visit your site and never ever get involved (assuming your site has some kind of interactive element) are a pretty risky bet as a target audience. They may well be the kind of passive web consumers who just wouldn’t turn up to a show.

Seth Horan wrote on his email news thing the other day about people who email him saying ‘come and play near me!!’ then don’t even show up to the gig… it’s a two edged sword. You encourage people to be encouraging, but they don’t think about the follow up required to make that interaction meaningful. Which is why I ignore most of those kinds of messages (flattering though they are to get) unless the person is willing to get active in helping me sort out a gig that’s logistically water-tight. I’m too old for speculation – my days of turning up hoping the gig’s not going to be terrible are long gone, and with the web, you can do that speculative stuff in a way that costs nothing – use your digital recordings as the risk-taking part, not your shows! Build the relationship about your web interactions and media, and then go where the support is, not where your stats say your readers are from