TastemakerX：像炒股一样炒明星

    股票经纪人在发掘下一个Lady Gaga方面是否拥有优势呢？大概不会吧。然而，社交游戏TastemakerX的联合创始人马克•鲁辛及桑德罗•普格里斯希望使发掘下一个热门艺人看起来更像是纽约证券交易所（the New York Stock Exchange）的投资活动。这款游戏可以使玩家发掘、支持新的乐队，它经过了几个月的试运行之后，已经于上周四正式上线。

    这家公司成立于2011年，构想是让玩家通过买卖某艺人的“股票”来发掘乐坛新人，而这些股票的涨跌取决于一系列因素，包括哪些人在一直买入该股票，以及相关艺人在网上及线下所获得的市场关注程度。玩家的回报则是赚取游戏的虚拟货币“notes”。它相当于现实世界里吹牛的资本：比如，某不知名的乐队成为大热门之前自己曾是它的伯乐。目前在该游戏中，已有95,000多个音乐艺人通过了该软件的“首次公开募股（IPO）”计算程序，该程序根据一系列指标来决定其“股票”的初始价格，比如该艺人的作品在另一个音乐发现服务网站Last.fm上被播放的次数以及在Facebook上被“喜欢”的人数。

    因此，该公司一部分业务就在离纽交所不远的曼哈顿诺荷区（NoHo）运营也就完全合情合理了。同时担任公司首席技术官（CTO）的普格里斯在纽约处理业务，而公司首席执行官鲁辛则在旧金山执掌公司。（TastemakerX不仅横跨美国东西两岸，而且还横跨两国：该公司在墨西哥瓜达拉哈拉聘有大量软件开发人员。）

    考虑到这款游戏的精神特质，该公司植根于纽约可谓得其所哉。行业杂志网站《数字音乐新闻》（Digital Music News）创始人兼主编保罗•雷斯尼科夫说：“纽约布鲁克林现在经历着一股音乐复兴的洪流。从这个角度来看，纽约或许是它落户之地的首选。”（普格里斯住在布鲁克林的DUMBO街区附近）

    这并不是鲁辛和普格里斯第一次从纽约乐坛中获益。他俩最初在哈密尔顿学院（Hamilton College）相识，而且都在百代唱片公司（EMI）工作过。1993年，他俩去纽约市下东区（Lower East Side）温馨的Fez Under Time Cafe bar咖啡酒吧观看过一场表演。在舞台上表演的是当时尚未出名的杰夫•巴克利——这位有重大影响的音乐艺人直到1997年英年早逝之后才获得了主流媒体的大量报道。普格里斯说：“当时我环顾四周，看到这么多的音乐业内人士都露出惊艳的表情，我从来没见过这种情形。我们现在正努力让人们及早发现像杰夫•巴克利这样的明星艺人。”

    Do stockbrokers have an edge in discovering the next Lady Gaga? Probably not. But Marc Ruxin and Sandro Pugliese, co-founders of the social game TastemakerX, want to make finding the next hit artist look more like the New York Stock Exchange. The game, which allows players to unearth and support new bands, officially launched on Thursday, after months in beta mode.

    Founded in 2011, the idea is for users to discover new bands by buying and selling an artist's "stock," which rises and falls depending on factors that include who's been buying it and the amount of buzz an artist is getting on and offline. Players get rich by earning "notes," the game's form of currency. In the real world, this translates to bragging rights: being the first to spot an unknown band before they're blowing up the airwaves. The pool of over 95,000 musical artists in the game have passed through the software's "IPO" algorithm, which determines a "stock's" initial pricing based on metrics like number of plays on Last.fm -- another music discovery service -- and Facebook "likes."

    So it is only fitting that part of the company's operations take place not too far from the NYSE, in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood. Pugliese, who is also CTO, handles business in New York while CEO Ruxin heads the company from San Francisco. (Not only is TastemakerX bi-coastal, it's also bi-national; it has a throng of developers in Guadalajara, Mexico.)

    Considering the ethos of the game, the company's New York roots might be spot on. "There's a tremendous musical renaissance in Brooklyn right now. From that standpoint, there may be no better place to be," says Paul Resnikoff, who runs the trade publication website Digital Music News. (Pugliese lives in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn.)

    And this isn't the first time proximity to the New York's music scene has helped Ruxin and Pugliese. In 1993, the two, who met at Hamilton College and both worked at record label EMI, went to a performance at the intimate Fez Under Time Cafe bar on the Lower East Side of New York City. On stage was a then-unknown Jeff Buckley, the seminal musician who didn't amass much mainstream exposure until his untimely death in 1997. "I looked around and I've never seen so many music industry people with their jaws dropped," says Pugliese. "We're trying to get people to discover the Jeff Buckleys earlier."