The BBC Sound Index crawls social networking sites MySpace and Bebo as well as Usenet (via Google Groups), iTunes and YouTube to determine who’s talking about who when it comes to music.

For instance, as of 1 pm today (PDT), Coldplay was #1 on the chart, while Rihanna occupied the #2 position and The Ting Tings held down the third place slot.

The Sound Index updates every six hours, so your results may differ. Results are based on the number of mentions each band and artist receives, as well as song downloads and video streaming on the aforementioned sites.

Along with the Sound Index’s Top 1000 acts, users are invited to create their own charts based on their favorite artists and Web sites.

The BBC Sound Index is currently in a public service beta phase, so the site’s still evolving. Nevertheless, the BBC promises that all demographic data collected remains anonymous and no age or location data can be linked with any one user. It’s all about which band or artist is generating the most buzz, 24 / 7. See for yourself at bbc.co.uk/soundindex.