(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, July 29, 2013 ) San Francisco, CA -- Due in large part to a new partnership with ESPN, late reggae star Bob Marley has climbed into the top 10 on Billboard's Social 50 chart. This is the second week in a row that Marley has moved up in the charts. In July, ESPN began highlighting Marley's music and will make it a regular part of the network's upcoming X-Games programming.
The reggae legend moved into the number 9 position this week from number 34 last week. Billboard's Social 50 uses metrics derived from music analytics company Next Big Sound in determining placement on the charts. The methodology itself is a mixture of fans, followers, friends, artist pageviews, song plays and comments left on social networks. The networks included in the formula are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Wikipedia, SoundCloud, Vevo and Instagram. Marley’s best ranking prior to this move was number 12 in June of 2011.
Among deceased artists, only Michael Jackson has a larger audience with 61 million Facebook fans. The Facebook fans for Bob Marley currently stand at 44 million. The week that ended July 14, Marley experienced a 75% increase in Facebook fans, accumulating 534,000 enthusiasts, as well as 11,000 new followers on Twitter -- up 14% from the preceding week. Data provided by Next Big Sound has been showing steady above-average audience growth across both Twitter and Facebook.
Jay Z also re-entered the Social 50 at number 40 and gained over 143,000 followers on Twitter. Another notable on the charts was Britney Spears, who re-enter the top 10-leaderboard at number 8 with a 68% increase in views to her VEVO channel. This increase was due to her new video "Ooh La Lah," which accumulated 17 million overall viewers for the week.
About CuriosityAroused.com
Curiosity Aroused (http://www.curiosityaroused.com/culture/how-did-bob-marley-die/) is an online magazine with one simple goal: to find tantalizing stories and interesting facts from around the world and present them to you in a scientifically responsible, yet easily digestible manner.
