As someone who has built TAM models for various industries - I can attest this isn;t always easy. Many analyst firms (former analyst here) typically do some surveys and research among public company revenue reports for the year and then do some pixie dust extrapolating.

The hard thing about a market where startups like Datameer play is that it is a) a nascent market and b) not a "zero sum" game. This makes it difficult to a) fully understand WHICH companies actually are in the market for this flavor of BI and b) know how the space is developing in terms of white space AND disrupting the entrenched BI giants.

You might want to look at the press published versions (read: free) of analyst market share reports, and extrapolate from their. Also, back-channel gossip may give you some revenue numbers on these players - and if you assume pipeline is 3-4x revenue, build a model from there.

Hope this helps.

As a long time musician and performer, I can understand the issue here. The sad fact is, today - many musicians still rely on the literal "bulletin board" for finding new band members, promoting performances, etc. Or, they create printed and digital flyers and try to grow their own community via Facebook, Bandcamp etc.

Today, I think the best way would be some targeted ads on places like Facebook, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Monkeybars and Grooveshark - if budget exists.

Otherwise, post heavily on as many musical equipment message boards and forums, Craigslist etc. as you can physically manage - all for free and see what kind of critical mass you can accumulate.

As a tech marketer - I am always looking for the fastest, cheapest yet reliable research in order to create competitive intelligence internal documents, stats for blog posts, etc.

Some people live by the "if it isn't on the first page, it doesn't matter" when it comes to leveraging search engines as a research tool.

However, often when we are looking for value, we have to realize that anything REALLY worthwhile these days from a content perspective is typically gated behind a web form, or nestled inside a blog post.

So, expect to spend a few hours in order to get through all the form gates, and also make sure you're using as specific and direct search terms as possible - then getting more generic if results are not ideal.

Some other tips:

-Have a few "burner" email addresses setup with gmail or hotmail, etc. - these allow you to get content when filling out forms to get White Papers, Reports, Case Studies, etc. without your primary inbox getting stuffed with marketing emails.

-In the form fill process, if available put "student" or "researcher" as typically sales reps pass by these "leads" when the form gets dumped into the CRM queue.

-Don't forget specialty search sites and tools like Wolfram Alpha for more "numbers" derived searches.

-Also, like your question here - always seek the wisdom of crowds in addition to machine learning algorithms!

Hope this is helpful! Search on!