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How Music Charts

2019-03-15 – 2022-04-12 Podcasts Visit website ↗

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Welcome to How Music Charts, a music business podcast by Chartmetric. Join the music industry's brightest minds as they bridge data, culture, and creativity in real time. Looking for more? Sign up for a free account at chartmetric.com, subscribe to Beats & Bytes at blog.chartmetric.com, and reach out on our socials.

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What Follower Counts Say About Social and Streaming Trends

2019-07-19 Listen
podcast_episode
Josh Hayes (Chartmetric) , Rutger (Chartmetric)

Highlights  Is there any relation between follower counts on streaming services and follower counts on social media? Here’s a sneak peek at the trends we’re tracking for some of the biggest artists in the world.Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.Don’t forget to reach out to us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn! We’d love to hear from you.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, July 19th, 2019.What Follower Counts Say About Social and Streaming TrendsIn the old days, customers became fans if they not only bought CDs but also concert tickets — consistently and repeatedly.In the digital era, the live space is still important, but streaming platform followers and social media followers are the new metrics for measuring fandom. But does streaming popularity correlate with social media popularity?Is it consistent across the board, or does each streaming platform relate differently to each social platform?To test out these queries, we pulled follower data for artists topping the charts from January through June, and then determined the correlation coefficients for Spotify and Instagram, Spotify and Twitter, and Spotify and Facebook, repeating this process for YouTube, SoundCloud, and Deezer.What panned out from all of our calculations and pretty charts? For the whole story, you’ll have to stay tuned for something special we have in the works for the near future.In the meantime, here’s a teaser: One thing that pops out immediately is how poorly Facebook is correlated with streaming services across the board.If we take the average correlation across eight of the top artists for the past six months, Facebook turns up negligible negative correlation coefficients for Spotify and YouTube and negligible positive correlation coefficients for SoundCloud and Deezer.Instagram, on the other hand, turns up near one-to-one correlations with Spotify and YouTube.Twitter correlates pretty well with each streaming service — but nowhere near the Instagram correlation.In the words of our resident Data Scientist Josh Hayes, “Seems like many of the platforms are moving in similar directions together … except for Facebook.”While Facebook owns both platforms, it’s apparent, at least for the top performing artists, that Facebook Fan growth has either stopped, declined, or failed to keep pace with follower growth on four streaming services.Naturally, the story gets a bit more complicated as we begin to look at trends for particular artists, genres, and more, but hang in there — the full story is coming soon!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 19th 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Latin America "Trigger" Cities

2019-07-17 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric) , Chaz Jenkins (Chartmetric)

Highlights  In Part 3 of the music "trigger cities" mini-series, we explore the music tastes of Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janiero, Bogotá, Lima and Santiago.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.We’re on the socials at “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, July 17th, 2019.Latin America "Trigger" CitiesIn case you missed them, we have been working on a written mini-series called “trigger cities”, it’s a concept that Chartmetric’s Partner and Advisor, Chaz Jenkins, an international marketing guru coined many years ago.It’s the idea that in the streaming environment, our algorithms on YouTube, Spotify and all platforms are connected with the tastes of huge cities around the world who also love the same apps.Lauv, the uber-successful independent artist first saw playlist success with his 2017 hit “I Like Me Better” in Southeast Asia! Lauv...is not Asian, but SE Asians adore great pop love songs.Reggaeton from the likes of huge superstars like Colombia’s J Balvin and Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny are now on top playlists like Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, a primarily English-language playlist...but their come-up was based on Latin American listeners supporting them more than any other region.So in the interest of knowing what the local markets are like, we wrote about  seven different metropolitan areas in Latin America: Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janiero, Bogotá, Lima and Santiago.Five speak Spanish, two speak Brazilian Portuguese, and all love the YouTube.It’s a known fact that Latin America turns to the Google platform more than anything else to listen to music, and the numbers are quite impressive: Bogotá, despite having less than half (10.7M) of Mexico City’s population, took the #1 spot in YouTube views in one week last month with 26.5M views across 1.6M+ artists. The Mexican capital, however, was not far behind with 24.8M, and the two cities seem to be leading YouTube’s consumption in the region, with Lima a distant #3 with 17.1M views.On Spotify, Mexico City-as Spotify’s proclaimed “World’s Music-Streaming Mecca”-took the top spot in the same week with 2.3B non-unique monthly listeners (and this is admittedly odd metric, check the show notes for a link to the explanation), far outstripping Santiago in the #2 spot with 1.5B non-unique monthly listeners (MLs).When it comes to genres, we compiled genre tags on Shazam chart occurrences in these seven cities and found what sounds each city was most curious about when they flipped out their phones.“Urbano latino”-which is primarily reggaeton and Latin trap and the most popular in Santiago, Lima and Bogotá-didn’t show up at all in Brazil, with Brazilian-native genres such as “Sertanejo” (Brazilian country music) asserting their unique identity in the region, with Pop/Rock/Dance all showing strongly in the past month for both cities.This is contrary to the idea that all of Latin America loves reggaeton...just not true.On Instagram, who do you think are the ten most followed artists in the region?Well there’s Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé…...there’s also Maluma and Daddy Yankee...But do you know pop queen Anitta, local icon Ivete Sangalo, comedian-entertainer Whindersson Nunes or the Beyoncé-inspired Ludmilla? They’re all Brazilian, showing how much Brazilians love IG, and also how much they love their own country’s artists.So there’s a taste of Part 3 of our trigger cities mini-series, please do check it out on Medium or LinkedIn and let us know what you think! If you’re into Southeast Asia, we wrote about that too (Medium or LinkedIn). We hope they’re useful insights as you target social media campaigns, forge international collaborations or plan out a tour!Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 17th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, and we’ll see you Friday! 

Vance Joy and AC/DC on Amazon Music and US Radio

2019-07-12 Listen
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Vance Joy , Mark Mulligan (Midia Research) , Jason Joven (Chartmetric) , AC/DC (AC/DC) , Steve Boom (Amazon Music)

Highlights  Who says music is all about young people and streaming? Amazon Music and American radio would beg to differ, and we’ll check out a couple of Australian artists who are doing well on them.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.We’re on the socials at “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.FYI, we’re scaling back to 2 episodes per week, why? Because we’re working on some special projects that we will certainly tell you about over the next few months, but we need to make the time to do them! So don’t worry, your phone isn’t playing games with your heart….it’s just us and the Backstreet Boys.Having said all that….DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, July 12th, 2019.Vance Joy and AC/DC on Amazon Music and US RadioThe Financial Times reported yesterday on the rise of Amazon Music, and how it has experienced a 70 percent growth in subscribers in the past year.The head of Amazon Music- Steve Boom (that’s a great name for a music guy)-  noted that all the other platforms were playing for the younger crowds, but not older consumers. Apparently 14 percent of subscribers to Amazon Music are aged 55 or older, compared with just 5 percent of Spotify’s customers, according to Midia Research’s Mark Mulligan.Now on the radio side of things, Music Business Worldwide reported that AM/FM US radio consumption is growing! Take that, streaming.Radio reached more folks than any other entertainment platform in 2019, according to Nielsen’s Audio Today 2019 report.272M Americans fire up their radios each week, that is 7M more listeners than 2016...and why? Because Americans love their cars, and radios are just there.Now to help illustrate that with actual artists, we’ll turn to two of Australia’s biggest ones, relative newcomer Vance Joy and classic rock gods AC/DC.Vance Joy, the pop/folk singer-songwriter from Melbourne is currently on19 Amazon editorial playlists, including the contextual playlists Rise and Shine, Road Trip: Folk and a chart-like playlist: Best Folk Songs of 2017.His massive hit “Riptide” is actually NOT the most playlisted on the platform, it’s actually another one of his records, “Lay It On Me”, placing in 9 of those 19 Amazon Music playlists.On the 300 influential American radio stations we cover, Joy had as many as 506 spins in the week of Sept 24th 2018, and the week of July 1st, it was down to 91.But it’s all good because the state of Wisconsin LOVES Vance Joy, as his songs have been 1% of all the tracks that state’s radio stations have played since September. Pretty impressive.Now for all-time rock greats AC/DC, straight out of Sydney:They are on 14 Amazon editorial playlists, including the #2 slot on Classic Rock for Lifting, the #5 spot for Pre-Game Grilling, and the #1 spot for 80s Hard Rock Workout...who’s feeling some testosterone?AC/DC hits like “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Back in Black” seem to resonate most in Boston, Massachusetts and Gainesville, Florida…...but what’s really good to remember is that in case your phone runs out of battery, you can find either of these artists or others by flicking on the old car radio, or simply asking Alexa to do it for you.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 12th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, and we’ll see you next week! 

Enter the World of Streaming Manipulation, Part 2 - Fake Artists

2019-07-01 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric)

Highlights  On Part 1 of our streaming manipulation series, we took you on a wild ride into depths of playlist fixing. Today, on Part 2, we’re zeroing in on fake artists.Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Monday, July 1st, 2019.Enter the World of Streaming Manipulation, Part 2 - Fake ArtistsFor Part 1 of our streaming manipulation series, we covered some funny business in the playlisting world. On Part 2, we’re scratching a different part of streaming’s underbelly: fake artist accounts.Last November, Pop Buzz and others covered a mysterious account uploading ostensibly unreleased Ariana Grande tracks under the name Zandhr.As it turned out, the tracks had been available online for some time, but that didn’t change the fact that a streaming account reportedly not linked to Ariana Grande, according to the BBC, was uploading her intellectual property to potentially profit off of.While the Zandhr account has since been taken down, our data suggests the fake artist accrued 9.5K Spotify followers and almost 30K monthly Spotify listeners, in addition to landing an “Ariana Grande - Every Song” playlist with some 20K+ followers of its own.Playboi Carti found himself in a similar predicament when three different fake accounts — Lil Kambo, Unocarti, and Unocompac — started uploading his tracks, with some pitch-shifting his songs in an attempt to disguise the illegitimate uploads.While both Lil Kambo and Unocarti’s profiles appear to have been taken down, the former amassed a 50K+ playlist reach from 37 playlists and the latter almost a 20K playlist reach from 19 playlists.Unocompac, meanwhile, appears to still have at least one Playboi Carti song up, enjoying 14K Spotify followers and a 30K playlist reach from 54 playlists.The best — or worst — part is that Unocompac’s artist gallery on Spotify includes three out-of-focus nighttime shots of a white suburban teenager posing and throwing up fake gang signs.Shaking my damn head.While this all might seem rather innocuous, as most of these accounts never amass more than a couple of thousand followers, it’s important to remember ...One, fake artist accounts effectively steal intellectual property and income from the legitimate artists they’re “impersonating.”And two, fake artist accounts devalue the work of all legitimate artists who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into making and marketing their art. While this phenomenon probably isn’t something to worry about in the short-term, how it’s handled now will determine how big of a problem it becomes in the long-term.With so many metadata errors, artist-song mismatches, and unclaimed blackbox royalties as a result, the last thing artists need is an army of mysterious impersonators gaming the system. OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, July 1st, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Monday, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Enter the World of Streaming Manipulation, Part 1 - Fake Playlists

2019-06-28 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric) , Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

Highlights  Fake streams! Playlist manipulation! Fake artists! There’s a lot of buzz about it, but what does this look like in the data?Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, June 28th, 2019.Enter the World of Streaming ManipulationLast week’s streaming code of conduct was signed by more than 20 major companies across the industry to combat streaming fraud, which is good for artist compensation and more forthcoming to the fans.How can we think about this prickly topic from a music data perspective? And when we say “this”, it’s not just fake streams. It’s also playlist manipulation and fake artist accounts.For sure, we are in very murky waters, and there is little actual data on the phenomenon.Recently American indie label Hopeless Records estimated 3-4 percent of global streams could be fraudulent.But a 2015 MBW article mentions how 60% or more Twitter followers on top artist accounts could also be fake.Granted, these are different types of fraudulent behavior, but it’s also a huge delta to try to account for.What we can do though is search for red flags in the music data available to us.For example: if we look at playlist manipulation, here’s one way to look at the data to try to identify potentially iffy behavior:We scanned the playlist charts looking for abnormally high 28-day follower increases, and found a non-editorial hip-hop genre playlist with a 262% increase in followers in the past month.While that could just be great marketing, currently having 110K followers-an impressive number-its max artist monthly listeners, however, is only ~470, which doesn’t seem to match up.This means that the only artist on the playlist that gets a lot of its unique listeners from here is getting less than 1% of its supposed followers actually listening to them.Again, possible, especially since the playlist has about 100 current tracks on it, but it’s ranked in the first third of the playlist, so it’s not likely.That artist, which only has a little over 200 followers, is playlisted among high-profile artists like Eminem, Kanye West and Cardi B, presumably to draw traffic, which would be smart marketing if done legitimately, but if so many followers are not streaming the actual tracks...it smells a little fishy.If that weren’t enough, there’s a three-piece pop band with only 16 followers, and two other rap artists who have 4 and 17 Spotify followers, respectively.All three have their listed label as a series of numbers, then “Records DK” or “DK2”, which is a default label for the distributor DistroKid, if left untouched.DistroKid is one of the most popular digital distributors available to independent artists and an official partner distributor with Spotify.If that still isn’t enough, all the playlist album artwork looks like carbon copies of official Spotify playlist album art. Again, good marketing tactic...or borderline deception?So while it’s admittedly an analytical leap, it is very possible that a playlist curator is buying illegitimate playlist followers to make themselves look good, they dupe unknowing artists into thinking they are getting amazing exposure, and the curator gets paid accordingly and in our opinion, unfairly.We could be completely 100% wrong on this, but the point is, there are certain ways you can look at the music data to try to suss out what’s likely real, and what at least should raise some red flags.We’ll try to unpack some other types of illegitimate activity from a data perspective next week.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, June 28th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Do you know how NPR does their ask for donations every so often? That’s what we’re about to do now! But we’re just asking for an Apple Podcasts rating.Rutger and I put at least a few hours a day into each episode, researching, writing, editing, recording, editing again, publishing to multiple platforms, checking analytics...and it’d be really cool for us to get some feedback on how we’re doing: the good/bad/ugly. So it’d only takes a few thumb swipes out of your day, and you’d be sending us so much joy: we’d appreciate it.As always, free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!

Tour, Catalog, and Marketing in Southeast Asia's Trigger Cities

2019-06-27 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric)

HighlightsFollow us down to the trigger cities of Southeast Asia where their Shazam, Spotify, and YouTube charts have some big implications for tour strategy and catalog exploitation.Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Thursday, June 27th, 2019.Trigger Cities in Southeast Asia On our blog this week, Jason did an epic analysis of Southeast Asia’s trigger cities, revealing what implications their Shazam, Spotify, and YouTube charts have for tour strategy and catalog exploitation.We’re just scratching the surface of it here.First, Shazam. From Singapore’s 41 pop genre tags to Jakarta’s 40 to Kuala Lumpur’s 37 down to Bangkok’s 30, an overwhelming Southeast Asian love of pop music in the past month would be an understatement.However, the region doesn’t appear to care much about querying hip-hop or rap, as the genre only makes a 10th place appearance in Jakarta.On Spotify, K-pop group BLACKPINK is currently the hottest act throughout the region, having 2.11M monthly listeners in the past month.Our good friend Lauv (remember him from our June 3 episode?) slides into #2 with 2.10M monthly listeners.With the exception of BLACKPINK, all other artists have US or UK origins.Given Spotify’s northern European origins and that its most popular artists are also of Western origin, this makes sense.Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, however, seems to exist in its own silo. More commonly known as Saigon, locals prefer Korean acts, sharing a love of K-pop boy band SEVENTEEN with Bangkok.But the city’s #1 most listened-to artist on Spotify is their “queen of V-pop,” Mỹ Tâm. An outlier here, however, is Ho Chi Minh City’s third most listened to artist on Spotify: Nashville’s Landon Austin.Austin’s covers are apparently catnip for Southeast Asia’s love of non-controversial pop, because his top five cities by Spotify monthly listeners are all in Southeast Asia.Should Austin be touring the region like a madman, then?Based on the available data, it sure looks like it, but we can’t rule out the possibility of bots and bought streams — for which a lot more research still has to be done.On YouTube, BLACKPINK and BTS, two of Korea’s biggest international acts, consistently appear in the top 10 artists by YouTube daily video views.Aggregating the top 10 artists of each of the six Southeast Asian cities for YouTube daily views, the #6 most viewed artist is Brad Kane. If you missed our May 16 podcast episode on Quezon City, Kane was the titular character’s original singing voice for the 1992 Disney animated film Aladdin, which has just been re-released as a live action film starring Will Smith.The fact that the New York City actor, singer, and producer’s rendition of “A Whole New World” has stirred up so much engagement 27 years later in Southeast Asia says something about how locals consume music … not necessarily to support the artist, but for their own karaoke endeavors!So, if you’re looking to exploit catalog records, this might be the perfect spot.But don’t count out domestic artists.Three Southeast Asian artists make the region’s top 10 most viewed: Bangkok trap rapper YOUNGOHM (at #4 with 1.1M daily views), Indonesian singer Nella Kharisma (at #7 with 637K daily views), and Bangkok punk rock band Labanoon (at #9 with 589K daily views).One distinct takeaway with these domestic artists is that their YouTube support comes exclusively from their home countries. Since all three are proudly delivering content in their mother tongues, they are likely limiting their global market appeal, but it’s also why they resonate so well with their fellow country people.As Jason puts it, looking at a certain market’s music data raises our awareness about who the fans are, what their specific cultural histories have been, and how they are now living as a reflection of it.  Well said, but something to consider beyond the computer screen is the fact that digital behavior doesn’t always correspond directly to behavior in the real world.Which is why, before you completely tailor your tour or marketing strategy to your streaming data, make sure you’ve considered all avenues of information.Spotify numbers don’t always translate to ticket sales.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, June 27th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.If you want to read Jason’s piece in full and look at some pretty charts, it’s up on our blog at blog.chartmetric.io.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Thursday, and see you tomorrow!

A2IM Indie Week, Day 4: Beggars Group and Kill Rock Stars

2019-06-21 Listen
podcast_episode
Martin Mills (Beggars Group) , Jason Joven (Chartmetric) , Portia Sabin (Kill Rock Stars)

HighlightsFollowing a panel including Beggars Group’s Martin Mills and Kill Rock Star’s Portia Sabin, we’re looking at artists on their rosters and asking, “What makes them two of indie music’s longest lasting labels?”  Mission    Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, June 21, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 4Several Indie icons closed out A2IM’s Indie Week in New York City yesterday, two of them being the legendary Martin Mills and Dr. Portia Sabin sharing what’s helped them make Beggars Group and Kill Rock Stars, respectively, some of indie music’s longest lasting labels. Beggars Group is the parent company of 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador, XL Recordings and Young Turks.Mills started it in London in 1977, and his many labels have gone on to sign everyone from Adele to Radiohead.While Adele hasn’t released anything for some time, her 25 album, which released physically in November 2015 and digitally in June 2016 via a joint deal between XL Recordings and Sony’s Columbia, “single-handedly revived global album sales”, according to the Guardian.The album’s streaming success is no joke either, as it’s maintained a 70-80 Spotify Popularity Index score over the last three years, and has been included on upwards of 12.5K Spotify playlists.That kind of success under XL’s guidance gave Adele the leverage to be able to sign an enormous and unprecedented £90 million deal with Sony in May 2016.No doubt the industry will be keen to check her next album from one of the industry’s biggest major labels.Now entering the underground, since 2006, Sabin has run Pacific Northwest-based indie label Kill Rock Stars, which has been a home to riot grrrl legends Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, and folk rockers the Decemberists.Sabin’s roster is more niche than Mills’, but Kill Rock Stars’ ability to navigate catalog digitization and promotion has allowed their artists to prosper.Smith, for instance, maintains some 1.4M monthly listeners on Spotify, despite the fact that he passed away tragically in 2003. In March 2017, Kill Rock Stars released an expanded edition of his 1997 album Either/Or, which helped increase Smith’s Spotify followers by around 70 percent to 430K and spiked his monthly listenership by an estimated 250K. Whether by keen artist development or catalog revitalization, Beggars Group and Kill Rock Stars have each found a way to not only survive longer than most indie labels, but to also thrive while doing so.OutroThat’s it for Indie Week and your Daily Data Dump for Friday, June 21, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, and have a great weekend!

A2IM Indie Week, Day 2: Spotify’s Indie Curators

2019-06-19 Listen
podcast_episode

2019-06-19 // A2IM Indie Week, Day 2: Spotify’s Indie Curators HighlightsSpotify and major label curators always move the needle, but with Day 2 of A2IM’s Indie Week in the bag, we’re looking at important indies of the bunch.Mission    Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, June 19, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 2With Day 2 of A2IM’s Indie Week in the bag, we’re looking at important indie curators moving the needle on Spotify.Way up at the top is PopFiltr, with nearly 5 million playlist followers across 13 playlists.Boasting a 13 percent follower growth rate over the last 28-day period, PopFiltr has plenty to brag about, and artists or labels can submit their songs for consideration at popfiltr.com. Indiemono is another hidden gem, with 2.2 million playlist followers across a jaw-dropping 252 playlists, which a little something for everyone.In the last 28 days, Indiemono experienced a 3 percent follower growth rate, and they also offer an easy song submission process at indiemono.com.There’s also the indie indies, or the individual curators who are so good at what they do, they continue to kill it flying solo. Take Ignatious Pop, for example, whose 451 playlists have just over 2 million followers and a 4 percent growth rate in the last 28 days.Or Jesuss Vargas Gonzalez, whose 93 playlists have 1.5 million followers and an 11 percent growth rate in the last 28 days.Landing their playlists is probably going to be a bit harder, as they’re less about submissions and more about discoveries.Also keep an eye on up-and-comers Playlist Pop, with a 71 percent growth rate…. Independent Hits, with a 539 percent growth rate, meaning they’re probably new and growing really fast….And ambitious LA-based indie label and playlist network Plvylists (who’ve swapped out the “A” for a “V”), with a 125 percent growth rate.The more that major streaming platforms corral the radio market, the more important curators will become as promoters of what’s hot, what’s new, and what’s never been heard.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, June 19, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Wednesday, and we’ll see you tomorrow from Indie Week!

On the Road: A2IM Indie Week, Day 1

2019-06-18 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsWe’re on the road! We’re at A2IM’s Indie Week in New York City, Day 1 is over and my feet hurt.Mission    Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Tuesday, June 18, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 1Hi all, Jason reporting from New York City and this will admittedly be a quick one.Day 1 of Indie Week is over, wanted to first share some thoughts before we call it a night.In talks today with various labels, distributors, agencies and so on involved with different sectors of the music business, three takeaways were as follows:People might not always need super-charged, crazy data ninja magic insights...they simply want to know that they got on a playlist.Sometimes there’s so much going with multiple artists on a label roster or they have 30 Spotify or Apple for Artists tabs open, all with multiple tracks on playlists in different territories…...and you just want to know with a simple notification that a certain track made a playlist. We hear you, and simple can also be best.Stream count does not always equal revenue in other categories, like merchandise or branding opportunities or ticket sales.Dependent on genre or the way an artist engages with their fans, they may not be creating crazy streaming numbers on the typical music platforms, but they’ll still be selling out multiple shows or merch items.Maybe they resonate more on physical, or YouTube or terrestrial radio or TikTok, but the streaming playlist world isn’t the end all, be all.On the same token, just because an artist is highly touted with ba-jillion streams, doesn’t necessarily mean they do as well in other revenue categories.So make sure you’re taking all types of data into account, not just spins...any maybe what you really need to be tracking still has yet to find a quality, scalable data solution.Sharing data insights with your artists can help encourage desired behavior.Maybe your artist doesn’t like social media. Maybe they don’t want to tour in a particular part of town. Maybe they don’t want to work on a collaboration with another artist who could widen your fan base...these are all understandable things that from an artist’s perspective, might not be very obvious moves and might feel too “businessey” for them to buy into as a creative being.But most artists today I’d argue are quite data-savvy, and if you shared a certain chart of how that one Tweet you did get them to do helped get them 10 or 100 more followers for them to connect with down the road, all the better. Or that even though they just want to tour stateside...what if they saw their last EP over-indexed by 35% in monthly listeners in Jakarta, Indonesia in the past month...maybe it’s time to renew that passport?All this to say: of course you’re sharing your coolest data insights with your marketing team or promotion person or what have you….but consider being more proactive with sharing them with your artist, because they might just appreciate it!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 18, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Tuesday, we’ll see you tomorrow from Indie Week! Peace.

New Music Friday Monday: Fresh Indie on Amazon (Khruangbin, Julien Baker, Vagabon)

2019-06-17 Listen
podcast_episode
Vagabon (Nonesuch Records) , Jason Joven (Chartmetric) , Khruangbin (Dead Oceans) , Julien Baker (Matador Records)

HighlightsWe’re on the road! We’re at A2IM’s Indie Week in New York City and so we’ll publish our music data-related thoughts and experiences for you starting in tomorrow’s episode in case you can’t make it.But for today, we’ll celebrate the indie community on Amazon Music with an indie-focused New Music Friday Monday!Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Monday, June 17, 2019.New Music Friday Monday: Fresh Indie on AmazonHopping over to the “Fresh Indie” playlist on Amazon Music, we’ve got no less than 60 tracks of the most brand spanking new independent music in the streaming world.The tracks all come from over 35 different indie labels to include 4AD, ATO Records and XL recordings.Over 64% of the artists featured are from the US, 16% from the UK, and then Canada/Norway/Australia/New Zealand making up the rest of the Anglo-focused playlist.Just under half of the list has either the indiepop, folk-pop or indietronica genre tag attached to it, with 15+ other genre tags thrown in to make for a diverse-sounding set.In the #4 position is the funk-addled “Mary Always” instrumental track by Houston-born band Khruangbin, mixing soul, dub, psychedelia, and Thai funk.The track is currently on nine Spotify editorial playlists including All New Indie w/ 958K followers and 2 Apple editorial playlists including Today’s Indie Rock.The great playlist promotion is coming out of Bloomington, Indiana, where the track’s Dead Oceans label is housed with the Secretly Group, an umbrella of indie labels putting out rock music of different flavors.In the #9 spot is the spacious, introspective track “Conversation Piece” by Memphis, Tennessee’s Julien Baker.Currently on no Spotify editorial playlists and 1 Apple editorial playlist, the Late Night Menu, the Matador Records release is the latest from the singer-songwriter known for heart-wrenching lyricism and melody.What’s uber cool about Baker is that she is also part of supergroup boygenius, also under Matador, with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, kind of following the K-pop model of supergroup splitting off into solo careers, but just the reverse, as boygenius formed in 2018 and each member had solo careers as early as 2014. Last but not least is “Flood Hands” by Vagabon, coming from Nonesuch Records.Vagabon is in the #12 slot on the Amazon playlist, currently on 3 Spotify editorial playlists, also including All New Indie with Khruangbin and 2 Apple editorial playlists, also including Today’s Indie Rock.Released on June 13, it’s the latest from the Cameroon-born multi-instrumentalist now based in NYC...where we are this week for A2IM’s Indie Week!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 17, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Monday, we’ll see you tomorrow from NYC’s Indie Week floor! Bye.

Excursion Thursday: Trigger City São Paulo, Brazil

2019-06-13 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric)

HighlightsIt’s time to hit the road again, so we’re heading down south to trigger city São Paulo, Brazil. What makes it such an important global music marketplace?Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Thursday, June 13th, 2019.Excursion Thursday: Trigger City São Paulo, BrazilWe’re hitting the road again, heading down south to trigger city São Paulo, Brazil, to see what makes it such an important global music marketplace. First, it’s important to note that São Paulo is also a state in Brazil — naturally, the state in which São Paulo, the city, is located. Obviously, this presents some major metadata problems, which are compounded by the fact that São Paulo (with a tilde) and “Sao Paulo” (without a tilde) are reported as different cities. Adjusting for metadata errors, the city, which is Brazil’s wealthiest and most populous, is ranked third in the world for non-unique monthly Spotify listeners, based on our calculations from a week in May.For that same week, São Paulo came in ninth for global YouTube views.They’re really living up to their city motto, “I am not led; I lead.”It’s not just local artists and the longstanding sertanejo style updated for younger people skyrocketing São Paulo with regional streams.Scanning our top artists charts, the city comes up on three of the Top 10 artists — namely, J Balvin, Justin Bieber, and Shawn Mendes — as somewhere people listen most.Of the Top 100 artists globally according to our Cross-Platform Performance metric, São Paulo is in the Top 5 listener cities for 26, or just a bit more than a quarter, of them.Zooming in a bit and looking at Top Artists by Spotify Monthly Listeners on São Paulo’s city page, Brazilian artists do tend to dominate, with the 10 most listened-to artists, except for Lady Gaga, calling Brazil home.On Top Artists by YouTube Views, the Top 10 are all Brazilian as well, but when it comes to Top Artists by Shazam Chart Occurrences, only two Brazilians make the Top 10, suggesting São Paulo locals are loyal to their countrymen and countrywomen on major streaming platforms, but Shazam is where they learn what’s happening in the Anglo music world.And they certainly have an ear for British and American hits like “Giant” by Calvin Harris and Rag ‘n’ Bone Man or “Happier” by Marshmello and Bastille.With a population comparable to New York City and Los Angeles combined, São Paulo tops each of those cities on the global stage, thanks to a musical ecosystem — not to mention tradition — as robust as the Amazon rainforest and an appetite for pop hits from their neighbors on the northern side of the Tropic of Cancer.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, June 13th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.If you’re interested in learning more about trigger cities, check out Jason’s in-depth analysis on our blog at blog.chartmetric.io.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Thursday, and see you tomorrow!

Measuring Artist Success Across Platforms? Let Data Scientist Josh Hayes Light the Way

2019-06-12 Listen
podcast_episode
Josh Hayes (Chartmetric) , Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsSpecial interview episode today: Does data science scare you? Does it keep you up at night when you hear or read about it at a panel or on some podcast, and you think to yourself, “I have no idea what they are talking about.”Rest easy and let Chartmetric’s Resident Data Scientist assuage your fears.How do you measure artist success across multiple streaming, social and other Internets platforms? We might have something for you.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason and Josh here at Chartmetric usually with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, June 12th, 2019.Interview OutlineWhat is Cross-Platform Performance scoring and ranking on Chartmetric?Josh’s blog article / CPP explanationCPP measurementsStage: This is the amount of “reach” or “exposure” that an artist has over audiences. The bigger the stage, the more people actively listening, watching, or consuming what the artist is creating.Followers: This is the size of an artist’s “fanbase” or an artist’s “stickiness” with audiences. Followers have opted into tracking an artist and therefore are more likely to re-engage with the artist’s products in the future. Followers are not actively engaging with an artist all the time, but artists have an easier job of connecting with followers than non-followers.Cool CPP video to visualize the data science (made by Graphic & Motion Design Artist Anastasiya Bulavkina)Philosophical debate: what is “best” nowadays?Is there a way for people to reach out to you on the Interwebs, Josh?Josh’s LinkedIn profilehi (at) chartmetric (dot) comOutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, June 12th, 2019. This is Josh and Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, see you tomorrow!

Technique Tuesday: DJ Khaled vs. Tyler, the Creator

2019-06-11 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric) , Tyler, the Creator (Self) , DJ Khaled (Self)

2019-06-11 // Technique Tuesday: DJ Khaled vs. Tyler, the Creator HighlightsDJ Khaled is taking on Billboard’s charting calculations and Tyler, the Creator is caught in the crossfire. So, how do the two artists stack up in the streaming world?Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Tuesday, June 11th, 2019.Technique Tuesday: DJ Khaled vs. Tyler, the CreatorYesterday, Music Business Worldwide and Pitchfork reported that DJ Khaled, who just released his new album “Father of Asahd,” is taking on Billboard’s charting methods following the album’s No. 2 placement on the Billboard 200 Albums chart behind Tyler, the Creator’s “Igor.”At the heart of the issue is a discrepancy in physical album sales due to the practice of bundling, or wrapping up the sale of an album with the sale of merchandise.Here are the numbers: Billboard credited Tyler, the Creator with 165,000 total album sales for the week, and DJ Khaled with 137,000. For “Igor,” that’s 74,000 physical albums sold, 90,000 Streaming Equivalent Albums sold (SEA) and 1,000 Track, or download, Equivalent Albums sold (TEA).For “Father of Asahd,” the same breakdown came out to 35,000 physical, 95,000 SEA, and 7,000 TEA.So far, the ostensibly arbitrary SEA measurement isn’t DJ Khaled’s issue here, but if he really is pursuing a lawsuit, then Billboard’s charting methods for streams could come under scrutiny as well.Here’s how they’re calculating it: According to the New York Times’ Ben Sisario, four years ago, 1,500 streams equalled the equivalent of one physical album sale, but Billboard’s new method comes out to 1,250 for paid streams and 3,750 for free streams.We can’t measure differentiated streams for DJ Khaled and Tyler, the Creator according to Billboard’s new method, but we can use our Analyze function to visibly compare the changes in their monthly Spotify listeners on a custom chart.While Tyler starts off at an estimated 6.5 million monthly listeners, DJ Khaled is at an estimated 18 million around the release of their albums on May 17.By the end of the week, Tyler has crossed the 10 mil threshold and DJ Khaled has racked up an estimated 20.7 mil. This means Tyler experienced a more than 50% growth rate in monthly listeners and DJ Khaled only around 15% for their album debut week ending on May 23.However, DJ Khaled still ends up with around twice as many monthly Spotify listeners for the week. Does this translate to what Billboard calculated as each artist’s SEA? That’s difficult to say, because each unique monthly listener only gets counted once for every 28-day period -- no matter how many times they play a track.While DJ Khaled is more exposed on the playlist front, Tyler saw a bigger gain in monthly listeners during their album release week.Tyler also overtook Khaled’s Spotify Popularity Index score with a 92, vs. Khaled’s 88, out of 100.Based on this data, Tyler’s “Igor” is complementing his catalogue and driving more of his streaming collectively, while DJ Khaled’s success depends on a handful of mega hits.It’s a cult hip-hop icon vs. a Top 40 superstar, but DJ Khaled, with some 2.8 billion YouTube video views for the week in question, compared to just 442 million for Tyler, the Creator, shouldn’t have too much to complain about.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 11th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!

New Music Friday Monday: Shazam’s Best New Music Recommendations…on Apple Music?

2019-06-10 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsShazam isn’t just in the music fingerprinting and identification game — it’s also playlisting on Apple Music with Shazam Recommends: Best New Music. Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Monday, June 10, 2019.New Music Friday Monday: Shazam’s Best New Music Recommendations … on Apple Music?Did you know that Shazam moonlights as playlisting curator on Apple Music?It’s currently managing 11 official playlists, including a mix of prediction-oriented genre-based ones like “Shazam Risers: Latin” or “Shazam Risers: K-Pop”, or exclusive celebrity playlists from the likes of David Guetta or BLACKPINK.Interestingly, Shazam also runs the “Shazam Recommends: The Best New Music” playlist, which is refreshed primarily on Fridays and Saturdays.Apple acquired Shazam in September of 2018, though we have Shazam playlists dating back to early 2017.So now that Shazam is now officially an Apple asset, it’s likely Apple Music is incorporating Shazam’s unique predictive dataset as a way to predict future hits...but does it actually work?If we compare last week’s Shazam “Best New Music” playlist with the Apple Music Top 100 charts today, we can try to see if- at least within the Apple Music platform- that actually becomes true or not.After some quick spot checks, the Shazam “Best New Music” playlist is actually global: it’s the same tracks and ordering no matter which country storefront you’re listening from. So the best comparison would naturally be the Apple Music Top 100 Global chart.The last Shazam “Best New Music” playlist was updated on June 1st, and comparing it to today’s Apple Top 100 global chart, there are actually four tracks in common:“The London” by Young Thug at #2 on the Top 100“Cross Me” by Ed Sheeran at #28“Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel at #59“Easier” by Five Seconds of Summer at #66 of the Top 100So out of last week’s “Best New Music” playlist, 4 of out of the 24 total tracks ended up charting one week later, about 15%. Pretty cool.Now, cross-checking last week’s “Best New Music” playlist, but now comparing it to Shazam’s own Top 200 chart, which is its own chart independent of the Apple platform, we have the same, and only the same, four tracks pop up: the ones from Young Thug, Ed Sheeran, Mabel and Five Seconds of Summer.That’s interesting because finding tracks that are only on Apple’s Top charts are subject to Apple algorithms and other playlists, while Shazam Top charts are privy to being played in public spaces and people having the app and Shazaming those tracks.But to find the same track on both charts, must really mean that the tracks are achieving a kind of success both in user curiosity and actual streaming activity on one of biggest platforms in the world.Now, what feeds Shazam’s “Best New Music” playlist in the first place, as they are all new releases and so Shazam doesn’t really have any data on them...well, we don’t know either.Maybe they are doing granular music analysis on the song waveforms or maybe it’s just a result of traditional playlist pitching, but what we can measure in the data, is see which ones stick. Just give it a week!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 10, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Monday, see you tomorrow!

Playlist Reach Uncovers a Galician DJ, an American lo-fi beats producer and an Irish Literary Songwriter

2019-06-07 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric) , Hurley Mower , Jealous of the Birds , Jason Joven (Chartmetric) , Zeper

Highlights  It’s Found on Friday, and we’re using Spotify playlist adds and reach to introduce you to a tropical DJ from Spain, an American lo-fi beats producer and an Irish singer-songwriter with literary flair.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, June 7th, 2019.Found on Friday: Playlist Reach Uncovers a Galician DJ, an American lo-fi beats producer and an Irish Literary SongwriterIt’s Found on Friday, which means we are digitally crate-digging for new artists in the proverbial streaming record shops of the Internets, and this time through the lens of “reach”.In the world of social media, reach is the unique number of people who see a particular piece of content, and we can contrast that with “impressions”, which are the total number of times they see that content, and “engagement”, which is the number of interactions those audience members actively take upon that content.In Spotify’s streaming world, reach in one sense is obviously playlisting, and we can aggregate how many followers a particular playlist has, and at the artist-level, aggregate how many total playlist followers that artist has at any given point.These of course are non-unique follower counts, as we all are probably following dozens if not hundreds of playlists from each of our single profiles.Nevertheless, it’s still a measure of reach, and that can be an important metric for determining which artists are in a great position to break. Now ranked by number of new popular playlists adds in the past 30 days, Spanish DJ Zeper occupies the #1 spot today.From Pontevedra, Galicia, the young producer has a very accessible tropical dance vibe that has Majestic Casual vibes and would easily fit in any college student’s chillout or study playlist. Currently on 50 playlists with 10K or more followers, Zeper’s total playlist reach is over 2.8M followers, growing over 45K total followers since last week.His latest release was “Stop” on May 31st collaborating with another emerging artist KRIMETZ.Now added on an additional 39 playlists with over 10K followers each is American artist Hurley Mower.With his polished take on the lo-fi beats genre, Mower gained nearly another 30K aggregated playlist followers in the past week, bringing him over the 2M mark.With 207K monthly listeners and only 5.3K followers on his own Spotify profile, he’s got a listener to follower ratio of 38, which definitely puts him well into the promising artist category for that metric.Last but not least is Jealous of the Birds. Such an interesting name.On 5 playlists with more than 10K followers, the Irish singer-songwriter has over 767K total playlist followers, including Spotify’s Evening Acoustic playlist in the 84/100 spot and the Sad Indie playlist in the 60/80 position.She’s no stranger to attention however, her previous tracks have been from NPR’s All Songs Considered and BBC Radio 1’s Tune of the Week.No matter what you’re vibe, there’s some new artists hanging out on your smartphone, check them out this weekend!Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, June 7th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Do you like this podcast? Does it help your day? If so, this is the part where we grovel at your feet for an iTunes rating or review...we are a business to business podcast, so it’s not like we’re trying to blow up, but if we can grow our audience some more to maybe start a music data interest community, we think that could be a really cool thing.So if you like what we do, please give us a shout-out on iTunes. If you’re on an iPhone, just scroll all the way down on the Daily Data Dump page in your Apple Podcasts app or in the Ratings and Review tab in your iTunes app on your laptop, and show some love, Rutger and I will do a silent happy dance for every star that we get.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!

Charting the End of iTunes

2019-06-04 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric)

2019-06-04 // Charting the End of iTunes HighlightsIn the wake of Apple’s announcement that it will end the iTunes digital download as we know it, we’re scanning the iTunes Charts to see what, if anything, will be lost.    Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Tuesday, June 4th, 2019.Charting the End of iTunesToday, we’re looking at the U.S. iTunes Charts following Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) announcement that it will be ending the iTunes digital download as we know it and spinning out the iTunes app into three separate apps for Apple Music, podcasts, and television.What will that mean for the music you already purchased and downloaded? Rest assured, Apple is making provisions for the digital downloads you already own. The company wouldn’t be ending the iTunes digital download era without good cause — namely, most consumers stream; they don’t mp3 anymore.That said, what will be lost? We’re gonna walk you through how to figure that out using the iTunes Top 100 Tracks and iTunes Albums charts for U.S. storefronts.Looking solely at chart position, there’s a lot of correlation between high performing pop downloads and high performing pop streams on Apple’s iTunes and Music apps, respectively. Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road,” Katy Perry’s “Never Really Over,” Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s “I Don’t Care,” and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” being prime examples.Differences emerge with different genres, however. At No. 2 on the U.S. iTunes chart for June 3rd is John Rich’s “Shut Up About Politics,” which is nowhere on the Apple Music Daily Tracks chart. Blake Shelton’s “God’s Country,” which is at No. 6 on the U.S. iTunes chart for June 3rd, ranks just 89th on the U.S. Apple Music Daily Tracks. It’s a similar story for Morgan Wallen’s “Whiskey Glasses” at No. 7 on iTunes but No. 71 on Apple Music, and for Luke Combs’ “Beer Never Broke My Heart” at No. 12 on iTunes but No. 64 on Apple Music. What will this mean for country fans who tend to prefer digital downloads? In 2017, Pandora's chief executive, Tim Westergren, saw promise in converting country listeners into paying subscribers considering how active country fans and artists are on the platform. We’ll see if the end of iTunes chases country fans from Apple to Pandora, but that would still require an adjustment from a download oriented consumer base to a streaming oriented consumer base.iTunes has also been huge for another important segment of the music industry: movie soundtracks. Looking at chart summaries by artist, Elton John and Will Smith have nine and four tracks on the iTunes Top 100, respectively, and it’s all thanks to the recent Elton John biopic, Rocket Man, and Guy Ritchie’s live-action Aladdin movie, starring Will Smith as the genie. Jumping over to the iTunes Albums in All Genres chart for June 3rd, the Aladdin soundtrack is at No. 3 and various Elton John albums and/or compilations scatter the top 10. Amazingly, the soundtrack for The Greatest Showman — a movie released two years ago — is at No. 9.While the end of iTunes probably won’t affect income streams for most artists — as the majority of music consumers have largely forgotten about mp3s anyway — for country music stars and artists on movie soundtracks, the end of this era just might sting a little. OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 4th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!

2019-05-30 // Excursion Thursday: Tokyo, Japan

2019-05-30 Listen
podcast_episode
Ichiro Asatsuma (Fujipacific Music) , Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsIt’s Excursion Thursday, we’re teleporting to Tokyo, Japan, where local music matters for Spotify and Instagram, but not for Shazam. What does that say about public and private listening habits in Tokyo?Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Thursday, May 30th, 2019.Excursion Thursday:As Japan’s capital and the world’s largest city with a population of around 38 million, Tokyo is the heart of the No. 2 music market in the world.Despite streaming’s rescue of the global music industry from a $14.6B decline in global revenue since the 2000s, a lot of Japanese simply don’t care as 71% of their local recorded music revenue in 2018 came from physical sales.Along with their love of physical music goods, Japan’s consumer base also remains faithful to its local artists. According to Ichiro Asatsuma, Chairman of Fujipacific Music., the breakdown of the country’s physical sales is typically 85-90% Japanese repertoire and 10-15% international.Now how does this percentage distribution hold up in Tokyo’s digital market? Looking at Top Artists by Spotify Monthly Listeners in the past month, 18 of the top 25 are Japanese, and by recent Instagram Followers, 15 of the Top 25 Artists are also local. But Spotify and Instagram are generally more private platforms when it comes to use, at least in comparison to an audio fingerprinting app like Shazam, which is utilized in a public space like a bar or a club.So, what’s the Shazam spread look like? Of the 25 Top Artists by Shazam Chart Occurrences in the past month, only three are Japanese.So recently, locals tend to prefer Japanese artists on Spotify and Instagram, at 72 and 60 percent respectively, but not at quite the same 85-90 percent distribution that Asatsuma suggests for physical.On Shazam, the preference for Japanese artists bottoms out at only 12% domestic.This suggests that Tokyo locals are more likely to listen to their fellow countrymen and women when they’re in a personal streaming mode and they’re simply curious about foreign music when they’re in a public environment.But YouTube, arguably the most “global” platform of this bunch and the 2nd most visited website in the world, seems to have more of a globalizing effect on Tokyo’s use of it. Looking at Top Artists by local YouTube Video Views, only eight of the top 25 are Japanese. Same story when it comes to Top Tracks by local YouTube Views, with just three of the top 10 originating in Japan. That’s a 32 and a 30 percent distribution, respectively, indicating international preference just might increase the more global the streaming platform gets.Granted, these streaming stats are from the last 28 days, so they’re more current, and also susceptible to fluctuation and recent releases...so if a few Japanese bangers make some great YouTube videos next month, then the numbers might be telling a different story.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, May 30th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!

2019-05-29 // Winner Wednesday: Does SoundCloud Have More Edge?

2019-05-29 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger (Chartmetric)

Highlights It’s Winner Wednesday, and we’re scanning the top of the SoundCloud and QQ Music charts to see what moods are winning out on two very different streaming platforms. Mission    Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.Date This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, May 29th, 2019.Winner Wednesday: Welcome back to this week’s Winner Wednesday, where we’re scanning the SoundCloud and QQ Music charts to see what song valences are winning out on those two very different streaming platforms.First, what the heck is valence? Think of it as the mood or emotional quality of a track. With high valence songs, there’s going to be more positive or cheerful energy, and low valence songs are going to sound a bit more negative, sad, or angry. In other words, 100 percent valence suggests a song might be the happiest you’ve ever heard. 0 percent valence suggests it’s going to be downright depressing.Note that we measure valence irrespective of lyrical content, so there’s plenty potential for a low valence song to have uplifting lyrics, but that’s not typically the case.  Looking at the top of the SoundCloud charts for May 18-24, there’s a clear and unsurprising frontrunner when it comes to genre: hip-hop. In fact, the genre overwhelms the Top 100 consistently, making the Swedish-founded streaming service almost exclusively important to the rap scene. Why does this matter for valence? SoundCloud was crucial for helping niche sub-genres like emo rap and trap — both of which tend to be characterized by melancholy — go mainstream. So much so, in fact, that dark and gritty “SoundCloud rap” has become a genre altogether.   So, is it borne out in the data? For the most part, yes. At No. 1, “Shotta Flow” by NLE Choppa has a 45 percent valence measurement; at No. 3, “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X is at 47 percent; and if we dip down to No. 4 and No. 5, “Pop Out” by Polo G featuring Lil TJay is only at 25 percent and Earfquake by Tyler, the Creator is only at 41 percent. The outlier here is “Suge” by DaBaby, which is at No. 2 with 85 percent valence.  And that brings us to Chinese streaming service and Tencent subsidiary, QQ Music. Looking at the platform’s Western Music Chart behavior during a similar timeframe, pop and dance are the genre frontrunners, with 50 of 96 songs tagged with those genre identifiers. Here, hip-hop only accounts for eight. With pop and dance frontloading QQ Music’s Western Music Chart, you’d probably expect high valence songs at the top. Would you be right?“Me!” by Taylor Swift featuring Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie, “Rescue Me” by One Republic, and “If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes hit the high notes here with 66, 64, and 82 percent valence measurements, respectively. But Carly Rae Jepsen and Lana Del Rey, at No. 4 and No. 5, bring out our sensitive side with 37 and 45 percent. Taking the average valence of the top five on each of these charts gives us a total score of 48.6 percent valence for SoundCloud. QQ Music, meanwhile, is a bit less moody at 58.8 percent valence. So, does SoundCloud have more edge? We can’t say that definitively across the board, but we can say that the top of the SoundCloud Chart is less positively valenced than the top of QQ’s Western Music Chart when it comes to mood — and it’s all in the genres each streaming service caters to, which might suggest something about audience geography. Does China have a bigger appetite for happy pop than Westerners with a palette more open to edgy rap?Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, May 29th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Have a winning Wednesday, see you tomorrow!

2019-05-24 // What Do J-Pop, Texas Rap, and Swedish Folk Have in Common?

2019-05-24 Listen
podcast_episode
Momoiro Clover Z (Momoiro Clover Z) , Rutger (Chartmetric) , Yella Beezy , Junip (Junip)

Highlights It’s Found on Friday, and we’re digging in with our A&R tool to find breaking artists based on YouTube Channel Views, and that’s important, because YouTube is technically the most popular streaming platform in the world.Mission    Good morning, it’s Rutger again at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.Date This is your Data Dump for Friday, May 24th 2019.Found on Friday: Momoiro Clover Z, Yella Beezy & Junip Welcome back to Found on Friday. We’re digging in with our A&R tool to find artists breaking through the surface in a global way. If we search according to highest growth percentage in YouTube Channel Views, we land on three artists with notable momentum on YouTube right now: Momoiro Clover Z, Yella Beezy, and Junip.First up, J-pop group, let's call them MCZ for short, the first to make theme music for Sailor Moon, Pokémon, AND Dragonball Z, in addition to being the fourth highest grossing artist in Japan in 2013, based on CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray sales — yes, physical is still VERY important in the Japanese music market — they've experienced a 14 percent growth in their YouTube channel views over the last 28-day period.Their Spotify monthly listeners have spiked almost 29 percent over the last 30 days as well. But the group is not new, so what shot them to the top of the breaking list? Well ... they did just come out with a new album on May 17th.…Just about tied with MCZ is Texas rapper Yella Beezy, whose growth percentage is up to 14.4 percent this period from the previous 30 days’ 9.5 percent. Yella Beezy, whose latest track features Gucci Mane and Quavo from Migos, also soared 16 spots from No. 50 to No. 34 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. Switching gears altogether now for Sweden’s folk rock duo Junip, composed of soft-spoken singer-songwriter Jose Gonzalez and Tobias Winterkorn, who experienced a 13 percent jump in the last 28 day-period. This correlates with a 10.2 percent increase in their YouTube channel subscribers over the last 30 days, which is surprising, as it doesn’t look like they’ve released anything recently…. Maybe fans of Rogue Wave and Ben Howard got turned on to them? We don’t know. What we do know is Junip’s monthly Spotify listeners dropped an estimated .2 percent in the last 30 days, but their Spotify followers increased .4 percent in the same period. So, no, not all streaming services are created equal.Check out these stats: YouTube is technically the biggest music streaming source in the world, with close to a billion users consuming music via user upload video streaming. Compare that with just over 200 million users consuming music via “traditional” streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, and the importance of YouTube stats as some indication of an artist’s digital presence worldwide becomes clear.So there you have it — a Japanese idol group, a Texas rapper, and a Swedish folk duo comprise an eclectic trio of international artists on a YouTube hot streak right now.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, May 24th 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Friday, see you tomorrow!

2019-05-23 // Excursion Thursday: Mumbai, India

2019-05-23 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsGrab your passports, it’s Excursion Thursday, and we’re headed to Mumbai, India’s largest city and Spotify’s largest potential market.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Thursday, May 23rd, 2019.Excursion Thursday: MumbaiOn today’s Excursion Thursday, we’re taking off to India’s most populated city, Mumbai, which has quickly become a testing ground for Spotify’s global expansion strategy. Until 1995, the “Hollywood of India” was also called Bombay, what many in India saw as a vestige of British colonialism, hence the name change. The city’s booming movie industry lends the city its other famous moniker, “Bollywood”.Mumbai is not only the wealthiest city in India, but it’s also arguably the financial, arts, and entertainment capital of the entire country with an estimated 22.5 million  Mumbaikars more than doubling the population of New York City!It’s clear why Spotify’s weathering its recent challenges in-country, as India’s population is currently at 1.4 billion and climbing — that’s almost 20 percent of everybody on earth, while North America comprises around 5 percent. So, if Spotify’s been able to acquire an estimated 50M monthly active users out of North America’s 366M people and an estimated 60M monthly active users out of Europe’s 743M people, that gives them a market penetration rate lying somewhere between 8 and 15 percent. Apply that to a population of 1.4B, and SPOT’s stock price will rise, for sure.So, based on the city’s listening profile….how’s it going? Unfortunately, it’s too early to tap into Spotify’s local monthly listeners, but we can at least look at other Western platforms that are operating there.Mumbai’s Shazam and YouTube charts definitely reflect the battle between domestic and foreign repertoire preferences.According to the Top 90 tracks by Shazam Chart Occurrences in the past month, a total of 22 bear Indian ISRC codes. That’s around 25% of total Shazam’d tracks we captured, while there are 38 US-based ISRCs present, about 40%.Moving to Shazam’s most charted artists in Mumbai over the last 30 days, American rappers Swae Lee and Lil Nas X come in 1st and 3rd with 52 and 47 chart appearances, respectively, and Puerto Rican singer Farruko in 2nd with 50. Fourth and 5th place go to film music composers Vishal-Shekhar and star singer Arijit Singh with 42 and 41 chart appearances each.Using Top Tracks by YouTube Views, we see a mixed bag at the top, with T. Swift and Brendon Urie’s “Me!” at 235K average daily views and Katy Perry and Migos’ “Bon Appétit” at 77K daily views in 1st and 3rd place respectively. Second place goes to “Aankh Mare” from Bollywood movie Simmba sitting pretty at 188K views. Genre-wise on the Shazam charts in the past month, it’s still a battle between local and foreign fare: with Hip-Hop at 11 genre tags from mostly American artists, Dance at 15 genre tags from an international artist roster, and Pop at 22 genre tags from both Western and Indian artists. Twelve of Pop genre tags are from domestic artists, suggesting there’s a slight skew in the past month  toward the local when it comes to the genre.While Spotify competes with the entrenched Indian streaming service JioSaavn, partly headquartered in Mumbai and specializing in Bollywood music , Mumbai’s demand for both Indian and Western music will prove to either be Spotify’s ace in the hole or rock in its shoe.OutroThat’s a wrap for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, May 23nd, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Hope you’re not too jet-lagged from today’s Excursion Thursday, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

2019-05-22 // Winner Wednesday: Deezer & Spotify Charts...Which Are More Global?

2019-05-22 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsIt’s Winner Wednesday again, and we’re looking at who’s hot on the Spotify and Deezer charts to examine just how global Europe’s biggest streaming services are?Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019.Winner Wednesday: Deezer & Spotify...who's more global?On today’s Winner Wednesday, we’re looking at who’s hot on Europe’s biggest streaming services, Spotify and Deezer, on their Top 200 Spotify and Top 100 Deezer track charts for May 20th. The #1 and #2 tracks are the same across both platforms, with “emerging artists” Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber taking the lead spot with “I Don’t Care”, tallying 58.4M streams on Spotify this week and having a 10/10 popularity score on Deezer. Holding strong for almost two months now, Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” occupies the #2 position on both apps, with 41.4M streams on Spotify this week and a 9.95/10 popularity score on Deezer currently. But starting from #3 down, the differences between Sweden’s Spotify and France’s Deezer are as wide as the North Sea in between them.For example, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road (Remix)” was 3rd on Spotify’s chart but only 9th on Deezer, where Daddy Yankee’s “Con Calma” took 3rd on Deezer but only 14th on Spotify.Shawn Mendes and the late Avicii both appear in each platform’s Top 10 in different places, but otherwise the tracks are completely different.Let’s look at the daily chart summaries: Billie Eilish has 13 songs on Spotify’s Top 200 chart, followed by Tyler, the Creator with 11, Post Malone with 8, with Cardi B and Khalid at 6 tracks each. On Deezer, a blast from the past: Neue Deutsche Härte (or German industrial metal) group Rammstein hold the top spot with 10 tracks in the Deezer Top 100 since their May 17th self-titled album release. For those that were of musical awareness in 1998, the German rockers managed to peak on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart at #20 and even appear on MTV’s Total Request Live, which was then the epicenter of US pop culture.Puerto Rico’s Ozuna followed Rammstein with 8 tracks in the Deezer Top 100, and fellow reggaeton kings Daddy Yankee, J Balvin and Anuel AA took the 3rd, 4th and 5th spot with 6 tracks each that day. Note that Spotify’s most placed artists this week are decidedly American, while Deezer’s winners are German, Colombian, and Puerto Rican. So, is Deezer the more global streaming service between the two?Well technically, yes: Deezer is operating in 187 countries compared to Spotify’s 79, though stateside, the now publicly-traded Spotify takes up most of our headlines.But remember: Deezer really just started expanding into the U.S. since 2016, and is privately owned by American conglomerate Access Industries, who also happens to own all of Warner Music Group. So keep your eyes peeled for different charts and each platform’s preferences, as it always helps to remember that no matter where your fans come from, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube, Apple Music, and Amazon listeners all buy the same concert ticket!OutroThat’s a wrap for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Have a winning Wednesday, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

2019-05-21 // Technique Tuesday: Curating the Curators

2019-05-21 Listen
podcast_episode
Rutger Rosenborg (Chartmetric)

HighlightsThis Technique Tuesday brings you a fresh way to take a bite out of your data by learning how to curate the curators, the streaming world’s sometimes mysterious movers and doers. Mission   No, this isn’t Jason with a cold; it’s Chartmetric’s newest voice, Rutger Rosenborg, and I’m happy to be here uploading charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world. DateThis is your Data Dump for Tuesday, May 21st, 2019.Technique Tuesday: Curating the CuratorsOn today’s Technique Tuesday, we’re bringing you a fresh way to take a bite out of your data with a spoonful of meta-curation. Curators are the sometimes mysterious movers and doers of the streaming world determining what’s hot, what’s not, and what might have a shot — and all with a playlist. It might not be a surprise to anyone that Apple and Spotify are themselves the biggest curators in the streaming world — after all, they control their own DSPs. Let’s look at the green giant, Spotify,  which has a whopping 7,000-plus self-curated playlists to its name…. with a staggering 1.1 billion followers. How does that work, if its total user count is something like 200 million, counting both premium and ad-based users? Well, users must like Spotify playlists enough to subscribe to tons of them.On the other side of the ring, despite its lower worldwide subscriber count, as a curator, Apple boasts more than twice the number of playlists than Spotify at around 17,500, all said and done.C’est tout? Non, less is more for French streaming service Deezer, which  interestingly features official curators composed of a combination of geographic or genre based anonymous “editors” and face-forward “editors” like Fabio from Brazil, Emilia from Romania, and Stanislav from Russia. While Deezer’s playlist count is low, on the order of 1,500 or so dispersed amongst some 40-odd official Deezer editors, each editor ranges from thousands to multi-millions of followers.There’s also Amazon’s mysterious Music Experts, who dictate all 2,800 playlists in their ecosystem, from “All Hits” to “Country Heat,” and “Pop Culture” to “I Miss the ‘90s.” “Cleaning the House” is a good one too, by the way.But we’re talking macro level here. Let’s get into the weeds. As a curator, Spotify is clearly geared toward frontline pop hits, with its “Today’s Top Hits” playlist absolutely dominating the platform in terms of both listenership, at an estimated 5.7 million a month, and also follower count, at 23.2 million. Apple Music, on the other hand, is a bit more evenly dispersed, with its Hip-Hop, Alternative, and Pop sub-curators sitting at around 1,300 playlists each. Jazz, Rock, Indie, and Country hover between 800 and 1,000. Deezer is a bit more difficult to parse, numbers wise, because its curation focus is more geographic based. Suffice it to say, you’re probably not going to want to hit up Fabio for a Country Western pitch anytime soon.Still too macro? Then it’s microscope time. What about those other curators — you know, the ones who aren’t necessarily funded by billion-dollar corporations.On second thought … Fltr, Digster, and Topsify are three of the biggest third-party playlist curators, and they’re owned by Sony, Universal, and Warner, respectively. While it’s no secret where their curation interests lie, there are still the classic DJ tastemakers like Dmitri Vegas & Like Mike, who boast close to 2 million EDM-focused followers, or market-specific influencers like Hugo Gloss with 1.4 million Brazil-focused followers.What’s clear here is that Spotify and Deezer are somewhat more democratic and accessible platforms for individual tastemakers with some skin in the game. Aside from prominent artists, individual users have managed to rack up hundreds of thousands of followers and exert influence on the playlist game. Apple Music and Amazon Music, on the other hand, have a tighter grip on the curation wheel, making their platforms more difficult to penetrate for third-party tastemakers. OutroThat’s a wrap for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, May 21st, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Have a good rest of your Tuesday, and long live King Bran the Broken!

2019-05-17 // A rapper, DJ and pop star walk into a bar...and spike in Spotify popularity

2019-05-17 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric) , Xhensila , MAJ , Adam Brown

HighlightsIt’s Found on Friday: we dig up an American rapper, a Dutch DJ and Albanian pop star spiking in their Spotify Popularity Index.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday May 17th 2019.Found on Friday: MAJ, Adam Brown & XhensilaIt’s Found on Friday where we dip into our A&R tool to find emerging artists making their way into the public eye.If we search by the biggest change in Spotify Popularity Index (or SPI) in the past 28 days, we uncover three artists with very different backgrounds: Amercian rapper MAJ, Dutch DJ/producer Adam Brown and Albanian pop star Xhensila.I hope I’m saying these artists’ names correctly, here we go.Going from 1 to 39 SPI in the past month is MAJ, currently based out of Dallas, Texas, featuring “grunge-inflected production, soulful delivery, and nocturnal hip-hop with stark vulnerability and confessional storytelling.”With 155K Spotify monthly listeners and only 3K followers, this gives him a listeners to followers ratio of 51, which for a strong signal for him.From April 26th to May 3rd, he enjoyed a #47 slot on the 100-track New Music Friday playlist, which has 3.2M followers currently.MAJ is still enjoying a Spotify editorial playlist placement on the Shisha Lounge playlist at 375K followers, but more interestingly, he’s on 27 playlists with more than 10K followers that seem to be focused on sub-culture categories such as “sad” or “emo rap” or gaming culture playlists like EA Sports’ NHL franchise. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that these lower-tier playlists are likely playing a big part in MAJ’s strong rise on the platform.Adam Brown in the Netherlands currently has 11 dance music tracks on Spotify, with his latest track “Your Body” being what seems to be driving his SPI rise in the past month from 1 to 31.This increase isn’t from Spotify playlisting, as he’s on no editorial playlists, and his biggest one is currently “Dance Hits” by curator globalmusicx with only 6.5K followers.The reasons for his jump in SPI in late April is not clear, but by checking his Twitter, it may be from a more organic off-platform source via his own hosted local dance radio show or possibly from club play, given the very electronic music-oriented region and that his #2 and #3 top Spotify monthly listener cities are very locally Dutch: Ermelo and Harderwijk. Definitely butchered those names.Last but not least is pop star Xhensila from Albania, who represents the kind of “emerging artist” that is only emerging to the Spotify market, as Xhensila is already a big deal in her part of the world.In the past month, she jumped from an SPI of 2 to 56 despite having only 100 monthly listeners with 449 followers for a ratio under 1.Her most followed playlist, “Albanian Hits 2019” has 20K followers, but her six total tracks don’t seem to be generating that much attention playlisting wise.More than likely, Xhensila’s Spotify popularity is being generated by her 1.3M followers on Instagram, where her streaming link in her IG bio leads to Spotify. One of the lessons that can be gleaned here is that Spotify statistics are just Spotify statistics...Xhensila obviously is quite the star in Albania, further proven by her 154K YouTube followers and her nine very popular music videos there, the biggest one hitting 39M views to date.So we’ll leave you for the weekend with an American rapper, Dutch DJ and Albanian pop queen to explore...three different paths, three different vibes.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday May 17th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Friday, see you tomorrow!

2019-05-16 // Where the heck is Quezon City?

2019-05-16 Listen
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Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsIt’s Excursion Thursday and we’ll be exploring the music tastes of not London, not New York, not LA….but Quezon City. Don’t know where that is? Well, pack your bags.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Thursday May 16th 2019.Excursion Thursday: Quezon CityWe’re trying out a new segment called Excursion Thursday where we explore the music profile of a city or region and see what’s good.And for kicks, let’s start out with a city you may frequently see in your own streaming platform data but may not be that familiar with: Quezon City in the Philippines.If you’re not familiar with the Philippines, it’s a country in SE Asia. South of Taiwan, east of Vietnam, and north of Indonesia.It’s really thousands of islands that also feature two official languages: Tagalog and English. This is obviously important for the Western music market and definitely a factor in why the Philippines can play a huge part in how English language artists fare in the region.For example, American singer Khalid currently has the most Spotify monthly listeners on the entire Swedish platform at 49.6M.While his most popular Spotify cities are LA and London at 1M monthly listeners, and Chicago, Dallas and NYC between 800K to 1M...Quezon City silently pulls up in the #6 spot with a whopping 769K monthly listeners. Not bad for a city you might have not known about.Examples in other genres include rapper Travis Scott pulling 202K local monthly listeners and English pop rockers the 1975 featuring 126K themselves.Now, Quezon City sits adjacent to Manila, the country’s capital, and loosely speaking, is what Orange County is to Los Angeles, or what Brooklyn is to Manhattan: a bigger, heavily populated extension of its more popular sister city.Besides the language connection, part of what is likely driving such strong streaming activity specific to Quezon City is the fact that two of the country’s most popular universities- the University of the Philippines Diliman and Ateneo de Manila- are also located here.Some of the top artists by YouTube video daily views show more of a regional focus: K-pop supergroup BLACKPINK currently has 496K local daily views, BTS 215K and Korea/Japan-focused girl group TWICE at 136K.However Western artists still stand toe to toe, with Taylor Swift at 253K local daily views, Post Malone coming in at 127K and Brad Kane at 241K.Wait what? Who’s Brad Kane, you say? Well, if you were around for the original Disney animated movie Aladdin in 1992, he was the original singing voice for main character on the soundtrack.And how does this make sense in Quezon City? Well, if you don’t have any Filipino friends, suffice it to say that karaoke is a national pastime, and well, practicing the Disney hits are probably a part of what’s going on here.Now when it comes to Instagram, this is a whole other world. While in the States, Instagram is the natural social media backdrop to the music industry, Western artists just aren’t that popular for Quezon City citizens.As a matter of fact, the first Western music artist that shows up on our top followed IG artists is Hailee Steinfeld in 58th place at 62K. And before her are a legion of Filipino artists who, like Steinfeld, either bounce between the worlds of music/TV/film or make OPM.Now if you don’t know what OPM is, that stands for Original Pilipino Music, which stands next to the country’s love for Western music, as a matter of pride in their domestic artistry. It’s so popular that Spotify made an OPM hub that Music Ally wrote about back in February. The star playlist is called Tatak Pinoy, featuring OPM music and over 1M followers to date...check it out!So next time you see Quezon City in your streaming data, hopefully this will put some context to it...and while you’re at it, might as well license your tunes to Filipino karaoke bars posthaste!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday May 16th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!

2019-04-24 // Top 30 Trending Music Videos on YouTube

2019-04-24 Listen
podcast_episode
Jason Joven (Chartmetric)

HighlightsIt’s Winner Wednesday: Rap, Latin and K-pop rule the Top 30 Trending Music Videos on YouTube this weekMission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday April 24th 2019.Winner Wednesday: YouTube Trending Music VideosThe Top Songs on YouTube in the US this week aren’t too surprising, with Lil Nas X continuing to dominate the video streaming platform with an additional 48.2M views for “Old Town Road” feat. Billy Ray Cyrus.But if you switch over to the Trending Music Videos, things get a little more interesting: rapper Lil Dicky’s “Earth” takes the #1 Trending YouTube Music Video spot.The Philadelphia rapper who frequently releases comedic rap songs with high-profile collaborations does it again, this time for Mother Earth.Released on April 18th before Earth Day, the video addressing climate change had 34M views as of yesterday.Rap power couple Offset and Cardi B took the #2 spot with “Clout”, while K-pop’s BTS takes the #3 position with their still-hot single featuring Halsey, “Boy With Luv”.Latin music took 5 of the top 30 spots, including singles from Becky G & Maluma, Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee, but the highlight is probably the reunion of New York City’s bachata legends Aventura, releasing their first new music in almost a decade with the video “Immortal” in the #20 spot.Four of the top 30 videos were taken by K-pop, with TWICE and the fresh-off-Coachella group BLACKPINK placing in the late 20 ranks.But it’s BTS that pulled off two of the top videos with the same track: “Boy With Luv” in the #3 spot, and also appearing in the #15 position, but this time, with the official choreography video.This is a common practice in the K-pop world, where the official video drops first, then the choreography rehearsal video more than a week later. This maximizes the official video’s view count, while still giving fan service while the track is fresh.BTS goes the extra mile in their case, as in their choreography videos, they don’t even use the actual audio on the video besides the low-quality track playing in the dance studio, presumably to drive viewers to the official music video.Another case of a track making a double appearance on the trending video list is Florida rapper Kodak Black, in a diss track called “Expeditiously” against Atlanta rapper T.I.The original video, which is just a static image with the song is in the #5 spot with the official video coming out four days later in the #8 spot this week.It’s worth noting that just like Spotify’s Viral 50 chart or SoundCloud’s New & Hot chart, YouTube’s trending music video chart is filtered not by total views, but the ones showing the most virality. For example, Kodak Black’s #5 position video has 5.6M views while BLACKPINK’s video ranked 29th has 43x more views at 243M. Since YouTube updates this chart weekly, likely we’re looking at an algorithm that prioritizes the most views in the past seven days, which makes sense given the recent nature of the top charting video release dates.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday April 24th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Wednesday, see you tomorrow!