Systems and methods are described for training a predictive model using social media data for artists from a period of time prior to the immediate past year and for using the trained model on social media metrics collected in the immediate prior year for the same set of artists to predict probability of success in a future period of time. The “training set” of artists includes both artists that have experienced success in the past year and artists that have yet to experience any success according to selected criteria. The predictive model predicts the next big musical success in the entertainment marketplace.
Please help me write a proper abstract based on the patent claims. CLAIM: 1. A method comprising: collecting social media data of a first time period and generating a database that includes the social media data, wherein the social media data corresponds to a plurality of musical artists and comprises network metrics that are subject to a set of transformations; generating a trained predictive model by training a predictive model using the social media data of the first time period; collecting the social media data of a second time period that is different from the first time period; applying the trained predictive model to the social media data of the second time period; and generating a probability of success for each musical artist of the plurality of musical artists, wherein the probability of success corresponds to a future time period and comprises a probability of each musical artist achieving a success criterion. 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first time period comprises a time period prior to an immediate past year as determined according to a current date. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the second time period comprises the immediate past year as determined according to the current date. 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the success criterion comprises at least one of an album-based criterion, a track-based criterion, a video-based criterion, an appearance metric-based criterion, and a revenue-based criterion. 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the success criterion comprises at least one of appearance on an album ranking chart, appearance on an album download ranking chart, appearance on a track ranking chart, appearance on a track download ranking chart, appearance on a video ranking chart, appearance on a video download ranking chart, having at least one sell-out tour, and achieving a revenue threshold. 6. The method of claim 1, comprising generating the plurality of musical artists by: generating a list of seed artists of a first network; and iteratively expanding the list by identifying artist friends of the first network that correspond to the seed artists, and identifying new musical artists from the artist friends. 7. The method of claim 6, comprising obtaining artist profiles of the musical artists of the expanded list, wherein the expanded list includes the plurality of musical artists, wherein the obtaining of the artist profiles comprises obtaining artist profiles from a plurality of networks, wherein the plurality of networks include the first network. 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the network metrics comprise data of at least one of song plays, video views, followers, subscribers, profile views, page views, posted messages, and posted comments. 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the network metrics comprise at least one of SoundCloud plays, SoundCloud followers, Wikipedia pageviews, Vevo video views, Rdio plays, Rdio track listeners, Facebook page likes, Mediabase feed radio spins, Twitter mentions, Twitter retweets, Twitter followers, YouTube video views, and YouTube subscribers. 10. The method of claim 8, wherein each network metric is subject to a set of transformations. 11. The method of claim 10, wherein the set of transformations comprises at least one of a new social media data metric, growth of a corresponding social media data metric, change of a corresponding social media data metric, and a total metric representing a total of a set of social media data metrics. 12. The method of claim 11, wherein the new social media data metric comprises at least one of New over 7 days, New over 30 days, and New over 90 days. 13. The method of claim 11, wherein the growth of the corresponding social media data metric comprises exponential growth of observed occurrences in the corresponding social media metric. 14. The method of claim 13, wherein the growth of the corresponding social media data metric comprises at least one of Virality over 7 days, Virality over 30 days, and Virality over 90 days. 15. The method of claim 11, wherein the change of the corresponding social media data metric comprises at least one of Percent change over 7 days, Percent change over 30 days, and Percent change over 90 days. 16. The method of claim 11, wherein the total metric representing the total of the set of social media data metrics comprises a transformation of each network metric tallying total all time occurrences for each indicator. 17. The method of claim 8, wherein the network metrics include success of an artist for a time period. 18. The method of claim 17, comprising identifying the success using a measure of market exposure, wherein the measure of market exposure comprises at least one of album sales data, track sales data, album download data, track download data, ranking data of chart services, at least one of number of concert appearances and type of concert appearances, at least one of number and type of media references to an artist, and revenue data. 19. The method of claim 1, comprising adjusting the collected social media data of the first time period to counter metric creep, wherein the adjusting comprises transforming and then standardizing each metric. 20. The method of claim 19, wherein the transforming comprises transforming each metric on an inverse hyperbolic sine scale, wherein the standardizing comprises standardizing each metric to have a mean equal to zero and a variance equal to one. 21. The method of claim 1, comprising accounting for missing social media data from the collected social media data of the first time period. 22. The method of claim 21, wherein the accounting for the missing social media data comprises using surrogate variables as substitutes for missing predictors of the social media data. 23. The method of claim 1, wherein the predictive model comprises a gradient boosted model. 24. The method of claim 23, wherein the training of the predictive model comprises training the predictive model using stochastic gradient boosted decision trees with a Bernoulli loss function. 25. The method of claim 1, comprising adjusting the collected social media data of the second time period to counter metric creep. 26. The method of claim 1, comprising removing any musical artist having previously met the success criterion, wherein the removing follows the generating of the probability of success.