Faculty associated with musical performances can consider collecting metrics surrounding the live performance, as well as the use of artifacts generated by that performance. 

Live Performance measures

• Conductor/director/soloist in state, regional, national, or international ensemble performances.
• Scope (local, regional, national, international), and professional stature of the entity or venue associated with the performance
• Was the performance invited?
• Effort involved in preparing compositions or arrangements
• Prestige of ensemble
• For reviews of a performance, the prestige of reviewers or the reviewing publication
• Associated press coverage

Artifact measures

For commercial recordings, it’s important to note both the prestige and distribution of label.  For reviews of the record, you can note the prestige of the reviewers or the reviewing publications. With artifacts such as recordings, additional metrics can be found such as:

• Sales of a recording
• Downloads/views of a performance
• Awards
• Was the composition comissioned?
• Was the recording included in a film or other creative work?

Some publications will allow performers to request a review of their recording.  While each specialty will have their preferred publication venue for reviews, libraries often rely on reviews to select recording for their holdings.  The publications below are utilized by librarians, and have methods for requesting your recording be reviewed.

CD Hotlist. This is an online publication of reviews followed by many music librarians for the purpose of ordering CDs for libraries. Getting a review in CD Hotlist could boost the number of your CDs sold to libraries. You can send your CD releases to reviewer via email as listed on their webpage.

American Record Guide accepts CD submissions for review if the CD meets their guidelines.

Library Journal accepts pre-release CDs for review, per their guidelines.

You may also consider sending review copies of your CDs to journals and blogs that cover your genre of music. See the publications’ websites because each one will have different submission guidelines.

To increase the visibility of your recording, you can distribute copies to online music resources utilized by most US music libraries.  You may also want to take advantage of online sharing platforms that will increase discoverability of your music among casual listeners. 

Online Music Resources

UNT Libraries relies on two large online music resources to gain access to most music recordings requested by faculty, staff, and students: Naxos Music Library and ArkivMusic.

Naxos acquires licenses directly from recording labels and distributors. You can contact Naxos directly with your question at NMLHelp@Naxosusa.com.

You can submit your cds to ArkivMusic if you're interested. Per their FAQ: "If your music is available on CD and professionally packaged for retail (with bar codes) you can inform us of your distribution company for North America and we can contact them about the availability of your title. If your album is self-distributed or available from a North American distributor (and packaged for retail), please send information about it to us via email.”

Sharing

Numerous musicians share the audio or video of musical performances through a number of online sharing platforms including Youtube, Soundcloud, Spotify, and others.  For these, it is recommended to view the individual platform’s available metrics such as downloads and views.

• Youtube Analytics: The overview report summarizes watch time, views, and any earnings for that content.  Interaction metrics include data on likes, dislikes, comments, and favorites.
• Spotify Analytics:  You can log-in to Spotify Analytics to view and export metrics such as the number of streams (when a user plays a song) and listeners for each song.