The Bull Market for Bands: Interview with TastemakerX CEO, Marc Ruxin
TastemakerX is social gamification-element platform that allows users to build "stock" portfolios of personal musical tastes and trade, share, and comment on them. Okay, so that's a lot of words, so allow me to lend along with them a more current reference. 
The application was highly active at this year's Coachella music festival, where each and every artist performing at the event was featured and assigned a ticket symbol. TastemakerX's mobile app enabled concertgoers to discover Coachella artists, trends and inspiration, and compete against one another as industry "tastemakers."
The way the system works, users can find and introduce new bands and “invest” points in them. Technorati had the opportunity to interview CEO and co-founder, Marc Ruxin. As Marc explains, "Price is set initially through an algorithm built upon several social factors." As a band's stock rises, your "investment" portfolio does, as well. If you're someone who's identified, followed, and invested in a band from the beginning, your credibility grows within the program.
And that's precisely whom this type of application is targeted. Ever wanted to be Dr. Dre and have "discovered" Eminem? "What music fan doesn't want to be the first to discover the next big band?" Marc quips. Players of TastemakerX can build that kind of track record.
In true social media form, the platform enables users to participate via geo-tagging, commentary and photo sharing. Each is assessed a "T score" within a range of 1-100 as a de facto measure of influence. I'm new to the platform and my musical tastes are an old-school mix of The Pet Shop Boys and Simon and Garfunkel, so my T score is an unimpressive "10." However, some really active users are up in the high 80's or 90's.
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