MusicMetric launches real-time band promo tools – 250 free trials for readers

[UK] MusicMetric has launched the beta release of their music industry trend-analysis software which is targeted at bands, promoters, record labels and agencies.

The real-time trend-tracking package trawls the web using semantic analysis to make sure that all hits for a band’s name are contextually correct. This greatly reduces the number of false positives which you’d be likely to get if you’d just typed your band’s name into Google Trends, for example.

Potential competitors would be Big Champagne or Next Big Sound though MusicMetric hope to differentiate themselves by using text-derived data to measure the public opinion of your band rather than relying on counting plays and hits alone.

Once gathered, this data is then compiled and archived, letting customers plot trends, locate negative and positive opinions and establish demographic and geographic popularity, too.

The startup says it received £400,000 of Angel funding in February 2009. MusicMetric was formed in June 2008 by Greg Mead, Matt Jeffrey and Marie-Alicia Chang.

To help celebrate this release MusicMetric are giving a free 30-day subscription to their Essentials package (worth £49.99) for the first 250 TechCrunch Europe readers to sign up. More details after the jump.

Essentials is the base release of what will eventually become three products, though only the first two versions, Essentials and Professional, will be available from Monday. The ‘Enterprise’ version targeted at large record labels will be available next month, though there is a beta programme you can register your interest in joining now.

All three packages are sold on a subscription basis with Essentials costing £49.99 a month. Prices for the Professional and Enterprise-level packages are yet to be announced, though it is understood that there will be an ability to tailor your subscription with the addition and removal of features.

This latter point calls into question MusicMetric’s credentials as a real tech startup, of course. Once you get into ‘tailoring packages to suit clients’ you’re basically in the consultancy business.

However, software like this is going to be important in the modern music business. This is a market environment where a vast amount of promotion happens on a social basis over the internet. Being able to pinpoint who’s talking about you and where will assist marketing and touring decisions massively. Sadly, it’s no help if you’re still sitting in your Dad’s garage playing emo folk-rock to your cats.

To claim your free 30-day trial of the Essentials package (with some bonus functionality from the Professional package) head over to http://www.musicmetric.com/techcrunch to sign up. It’s first-come-first-served, so what are you waiting for?