Live Nation Uncorks BigChampagne Data

BigChampagne, the data farm that has been a pioneer in developing metrics to gauge online music use involving peer-to-peer traffic, has been acquired by Live Nation Entertaiment, the company which owns Ticketmaster. Founded in 2001, BigChampagne has also become well known for its influential Ultimate Chart that ranks artists and songs according to a wide variety of online media exposure.

Michael Rapino, Live Nation Chief Executive told the New York Times, “We love the basics of what they’ve created, and love the idea of taking an incredible amount of fan data off-and-online and merging that into a relevant database of what artists are most popular and relevant to today’s consumer.”

Eric Garland, founder of BigChampagne, said: “BigChampagne now collects and analyzes more information about entertainment and online audiences than anyone in our sector’s history. From my first conversation with Live Nation, it was clear to me that this is the right place to dramatically evolve and extend what we’ve built. We’re connecting fans with things they’ll love that are happening nearby or soon, or both. Most importantly, Live Nation has assembled an extraordinary team and we are honored to be invited to join them.”

Included in the deal, BigChampagne founder Eric Garland will be named General Manager of livenation.com and co-founder Joe Fleischer will be Sr. VP of content and product strategy. All of BigChampagne’s 26 employees will now work for Live Nation. Terms of the deal have not been released.

MusicRow has enjoyed an informal alliance with BigChampagne for many years. The publication interviewed Eric Garland last year and has been running Internet charts/country format powered by BigChampagne for many years.

Rapino, in a prepared statement, said, “BigChampagne brings us a great technology platform and an innovative team to help us better understand our fans and deliver insights across all areas of our business. Its expertise will accelerate our mission to drive deeper fan engagement throughout Live Nation…”