Music Intelligence Comes of Age: Nielsen Entertainment and BigChampagne Partner to Integrate Airplay Monitoring & Peer to Peer Download Data

Music Intelligence Comes of Age: Nielsen Entertainment and BigChampagne Partner to Integrate Airplay Monitoring & Peer to Peer Download Data

Nielsen Entertainment's Broadcast Data Systems and BigChampagne's P2P Charts to Link Data, Providing Actionable Entertainment Intelligence on the Relationship Between Radio Airplay and Download Activity

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. and HOLLYWOOD, Calif., May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Nielsen Entertainment, the leading provider of Actionable Entertainment Intelligence (AEI) and BigChampagne Online Media Measurement, have entered a strategic relationship to link airplay monitoring and Peer to Peer download data, it was announced today. This relationship will link Nielsen Entertainment's BDSRadio.com, to BigChampagne's Peer to Peer (P2P) charts, combining radio airplay "spin" data with "Top Swaps." This combined analysis of Nielsen Entertainment's BDSradio.com resources; digital, terrestrial, and satellite airplay data and BigChampagne's P2P measurement, will provide both the radio and record industries with a unique matrix of music consumption measurement.

"The linkage of Nielsen Entertainment's Actionable Entertainment Intelligence in music with Big Champagne's P2P charts is the beginning of a broader new landscape we plan to map, detailing the interrelationship between technology and consumption. I anticipate Nielsen Entertainment's relationship with BigChampagne will grow beyond music," said Andrew Wing, President and CEO, Nielsen Entertainment. Rob Sisco, President Nielsen Entertainment's Music Group, and COO Nielsen Entertainment East Coast Operations added, "Given everything Nielsen Entertainment knows about entertainment consumption and specifically, music retail and radio airplay, this relationship provides both our companies' subscribers with greater insight into marketing and monitoring their product."

Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, said, "Partnering with Nielsen Entertainment has been an ambition of ours from the start. We're thrilled to be working with Nielsen Entertainment's BDS, one great step towards validating that online interest is the leading and most immediate measure of market response to radio and music television programming."

Nielsen Entertainment's BDS captures in excess of 100 million song detections annually on more than 1,200 radio stations in over 130 markets in the U.S. and 22 Canadian markets. Record labels and music programmers rely on Nielsen Entertainment's BDS for information about radio and video airplay. Nielsen Entertainment's products such as BDS and SoundScan provide data that Billboard magazine uses to determine its airplay and sales charts. Affiliated Nielsen Entertainment companies SoundScan, VideoScan and BookScan carry point- of-sale information in the music, video and book publishing arenas respectively. Nielsen Entertainment's BDS subscribers include record labels, radio stations, concert promoters, music publishers, and advertising agencies. Nielsen Entertainment's SoundScan accrues sales information from more than 20,000 retailer locations in the U.S., including digitally downloaded tracks, singles, and albums, accounting for more than ten million sales transactions per week, representing more than 90% of over-the-counter music product sales in the nation.

About Nielsen Entertainment

Through custom research, consulting and the world's most comprehensive network of entertainment measurement systems and analysis, Nielsen Entertainment delivers Actionable Entertainment Intelligence to clients engaged in the business of selling entertainment and trading in the marketplace of our popular culture.

Nielsen Entertainment's AEI products give clients unrivaled perspective from which to steer business decisions, providing the measure and the motivation in one package; comparing what the consumer says they do and what they actually do, in any given environment including film, television, music, books, and interactive media.

Nielsen Entertainment is comprised of the following businesses: National Research Group (NRG), EDI and EDI International, Television Services, SoundScan, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), Music Control, VideoScan, Market Navigator, BookScan, BookData, and Interactive Entertainment, and utilizes the full portfolio of sister companies including Nielsen Media Research (television ratings) and Nielsen Net Ratings (internet usage) to deliver a whole media point of view. Nielsen Entertainment is part of VNU (http://www.vnu.com/), a global leader in information services for the media and entertainment industries.

About BigChampagne

BigChampagne P2P Media Measurement is a leading provider of information about online media consumption and the analytic tools for measuring the impact of marketing impressions online and off. Since the company's launch in 2000, BigChampagne has become a nexus for intelligence about media consumption. The company aggregates and analyzes information about media of all types, and from a variety of sources; analyzes information about a wide variety of sources for download and "streaming" music online, as well as terrestrial radio. In short, the company collects information about how and where people enjoy popular music, movies and other media, and then analyzes the information to tell customers what titles are most popular, who's interested, and why.

BigChampagne is a privately-held technology and market research company, specializing in online music. BigChampagne pioneered the concept of peer-to- peer (P2P) measurement starting with the popular Napster community, and is today an industry standard online media research tool. BigChampagne's customers and subscribers include MTV, major record labels, commercial radio stations, artists, managers and other music industry professionals. BigChampagne's syndication partners include Entertainment Weekly and E! Entertainment Television. BigChampagne has offices in Beverly Hills, CA and Atlanta, GA.

Source: Nielsen Entertainment

CONTACT: Kathy King, +1-202-466-1396, Kathy@westinrinehart.com, for Nielsen Entertainment; or Joe Fleisher of BigChampagne, +1-310-779-8388, press@bigchampagne.com; or Larry Solters or Anna Loynes, aloynes@solters.com, +1-213-639-6167, for Nielsen Entertainment's BDS-SoundScan

Web site: http://www.bdsradio.com/ http://www.vnu.com/

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