With the Power of Howard, Jimmy Winter moves RockDex forward

You may remember that Jimmy Winter‘s side project a year and a half ago is his current startup, RockDex, which came about from his company, Music Arsenal.

Winter is back at it with a new side project, the Power of Howard, a website displaying the analytical power of RockDex by measuring the internet power of radio personality Howard Stern (left, photo from howardstern.com). Powerful, huh? Indeed. On July 29, Winter was interviewed about the website by Howard 100 News, a news show covering Stern’s show. And yesterday, the website was mentioned on The Howard Stern itself.

Here’s the clip from The Howard Stern show:

{% audio url=”http://spnproduction.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/power-of-howard.mp3″,title=”The Howard Stern Show discusses Power of Howard” %}

To hear Winter’s interview with Howard 100 News, visit musicarsenal.com/temp/SternClip.mp3.

Now for the ultimate measure of Howard’s power: Will it help make RockDex a mainstay in the music analytics arena? To learn more about Howard’s impact, the story behind the website and the latest news on RockDex, I conducted a brief email interview yesterday with Winter.

Silicon Prairie News: How long have you been and how big of a Howard Stern fan are you?

Jimmy Winter: I watched the E! show back in the 90s but it wasn’t until early 2007 that I began listening to the Stern Sirius show. If you figure he has new shows four days a week, 40 weeks a year and I listen to 70 percent of each five-hour show that’s 2,100 hours in three and a half years! That’s more than most people work in a single year. It’s passive listening and when you don’t work in an office with tons of people around to bother you what else are you gonna do? I used to listen to just music all day so its a nice way to break it up.

I’d say I’m in good company. Other big Howard fans are Jason Fried (37signals), Jason Calacanis (Weblogs, Inc./Mahalo), Adam Curry (PodShow, ‘the Father of Podcasting), and Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do?).

What is Power of Howard?

The Power of Howard is a site which displays basic trends and how topics mentioned on the Howard Stern Show are being discussed and searched online. Its surprising how a small mention on the show can end up on Google Trends tops searched terms for the day and it does all the time.

Screenshot of powerofhoward.com

What’s the back story of the idea?

I want to meet Howard Stern. My friends Paul and Phil decided the only way we could do this was by harnessing the megapower of RockDex and making it serve one thing… Howard Stern’s on-air ego.

When did it launch?

I launched it hours before I left for a New York City trip on July 19. I was hoping it would get coverage the week I was there so I could vie for some studio time but alas it didn’t take off quite fast enough.

How has traffic been? (Can you reveal numbers from today?)

Traffic has been up and down. It’s not something that’s going to bring a ton of visitors consistently but after the two stories they’ve done on it on Howard’s Sirius channels there have been spikes. Within 20 seconds of the story running during the show today (August 11 at 12:30 p.m. CDT) there were 127 unique visitors on the site. It was neat to watch the traffic live with Chartbeat.

How has it impacted RockDex – new site traffic and leads or not at all?

The site has generated quite a bit of traffic to RockDex. I know a lot of people in music listen to Howard so its a good audience. Plus mentions of RockDex on air is cheap cheap advertising.

Where did this website fall in your work schedule – side project, main marketing effort, or one late night hack session?

Most of the tech was already built for RockDex so it was just a matter of plugging in a little data related to the Stern Show to start collecting. As far as design and putting it all together it took a couple of weekends. Nothing really excessive.

This past March you released a new RockDex version which also had a redesigned website, how has it been received?

RockDex is coming along great! My partners and I have been traveling a lot, showing off what we have and signing up new users.

Screenshot of rockdex.com

 

Outside of Power of Howard, what’s the latest news from RockDex?

Lots of new features, we’ve worked out some great partnerships with other companies in music, we’re part of the South by Southwest PanelPicker (panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/8037) (give us a nice vote or two!), we’ve spoken at several events about the importance of music and data and we’re going to many more. We’ve gotten a lot done with the amount of resources we have.

Any hints to your next side project? 

No hints unless you can find all of the domains I have registered. Honestly, I have a couple of cool ideas but no time right now.