So, what is MTV’s Music Meter?

MTV Music Meter provides music lovers with news and information about up-and-coming acts.

For this project, MTV worked with music intelligence company EchoNest to develop an algorithm that combs through blogs, social media, video and more traditional metrics (like radio plays and sales) to determine which bands are receiving the most attention on any given day. Fans can click on any band to listen to 30-second sections of songs (via Rhapsody), watch music videos, see photos, read tweets about that artist as well as news and bios, and find bands that are similar to the artist in question.

(You can only listen to 30-second clips right now, but in the future Rhapsody users — and other music subscription service users — will be able to listen to full songs as MTV adds more sources for tracks.)

Users can also search for any artist — even those who aren’t all that buzzy — and delve into news, music and check out artists of the same ilk.

“One of the ways MTV has helped people find great music is through curation,” says Shannon Connolly, VP of digital music strategy. Now, she says, the network can help people get access to more bands, more easily — especially bands who might not be able to get on-air play in traditional settings.

According to MTV, this tool is currently only available as a website and as part of the forthcoming MTV Music ID pack from Sprint, but should be coming to iPhone and Android devices by the year’s end.

“The traditional methods of measuring artists’ popularity are somewhat antiquated,” Connolly says, mentioning how MTV could, in the future, track such things as Foursquare checkins to measure concert attendance. It’s no longer about album sales alone, anymore — it’s about engagement.

The fact that such established music information sources as MTV and Billboard are now gauging artists’ popularity by their social media cache really highlights how important a strong online presence has become for an artist’s success.

Source: http://www.mtvmusicmeter.com/#20 and http://mashable.com/2010/12/14/mtv-music-meter/