Quote:It’s a cloudy midwinter morning at Next Big Sound’s New York headquarters, and the scene is pure startup. The walls are exposed brick. The bagels are free. The music is guilty-pleasure indulgent: ‘N Sync, in honor of Justin Timberlake’s newly announced album.

But here they’re not just listening for fun. As the singer’s falsetto soars over the clatter of ergonomic keyboards, Next Big Sound’s employees are quantifying the impact of Timberlake’s news, counting 308,200 Twitter followers, 335,800 Wikipedia page views and 4.6 million Vevo views more than the two weeks prior–data that weren’t on the radar when his last album came out in 2006.

“The consumer in that world heard ‘SexyBack’ on the radio and went to Virgin Megastore,” says Alex White, the 26-year-old who cofounded Next Big Sound four years ago. “The consumer now goes to Spotify and streams Justin Timberlake’s entire back catalog and then follows him on Twitter to see real-time updates and watch his behind-the-scenes YouTube videos. It’s a totally different consumer experience, but the industry still needs to track that behavior.”