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!

Highlights  Do you know what a playback singer is? Or how about that Mexican Norteño music has German polka in it? I sure didn’t, but our A&R tool did!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 14th, 2019.Found on Friday: 4 Indian Playback Singers and 2 Norteño BandasSo checking into our A&R tool which roams the Interwebs for the biggest delta, or change, in between now and 28 days ago, we focus on the singular metric of total YouTube views via their artist channel.Looking at the Top 20 biggest gains, what’s not surprising? Billie Eilish at #5, that’s cool, Will Smith at #7 after the new Aladdin movie releasing, that’s also awesome…But you know what’s really hot? Indian playback singers, because they occupy positions 1 through 4!A playback singer in Bollywood masterfully records world-class vocals for songs for the on-camera actors to lip-sync to during shooting. For us Westerners who are obsessed with authenticity, let’s just imagine a publicly accepted form of lip-sync that not only helps create great Indian movies, but also celebrates the playback singers themselves.In the #1 spot is Calcutta-born Kumar Sanu with 30% YouTube view growth to 16.5M, who also just appeared on TV show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs, which pits 5-15 year olds against each other in a singing competition.In the #2 position is Arijit Singh who saw 20% YouTube view growth to 18.7M, and just released “Bekhayali” from Indian dramatic film Kabir Singh on June 3rd.Coming #3 on our list, but #1 in the Bollywood industry, is Lata Mangeshkar with 19% view growth to 9M, but it’s honestly a footnote to one of the most well-known and highly-respected playback singers ever.Mangeshkar has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most recorded artist with over 30K tracks in 20 different languages, the recipient of the Bharat Ratna,    India’s highest civilian honor (equivalent to the US Presidential Medal of Freedom), recipient of France’s Legion of Honour, and publicly selected as 10th Greatest Indian of modern times.How’s that for achievement? I really don’t think she cares about her YouTube views right now, nor should she. Hats off to her.Moving to Mexico, Norteño music is a genre of Northern Mexico that blends German polka and waltz traditions with Mexican ones.For all of us not familiar with Mexican music, the key instruments that define Norteño is the accordion (gracias a los europeos) and the bajo sexto, which translates to “sixth bass”, and looks like a 12-string guitar, but is used as a bass instrument.Now in the #6 position is Los Invasores De Nuevo León, with 10% YouTube view growth to 26M.The Latin Grammy-nominated Los Invasores, or “The Invaders of Nuevo León”, formed in 1978, and are currently on tour in south Texas,In the #16 position is Los Tucanes De Tijuana, with 5% view growth to 132M.“Los Tucanes”, or “The Toucans of Tijuana”, made history this year as first norteño act to play Coachella, also getting keys to the city.And if you want to catch up with some meme action, look up the “La Chona” challenge...their fast-paced 1994 record received a revival last year when uploaders recorded themselves dancing to “La Chona” outside their moving vehicles, a la Drake’s “In My Feelings”.OutroBueno! That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, June 14th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Please give us a shout-out on iTunes. If you’re on an iPhone, dodge those crafty notifications and just scroll 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 appreciate it.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!

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!

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!

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!

2019-06-06 // Excursion Thursday: Honoring D-Day With Popular Normandy Locals in Rouen, France HighlightsIt’s Excursion Thursday, and in honor of D-Day, we’re heading to Rouen, France, to see which Normandy locals are the most popular right now.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 6th, 2019.Excursion Thursday: Honoring D-Day With Popular Normandy Locals in Rouen, FranceOn this D-Day edition of Excursion Thursday, which marks 75 years since the Normandy landings during World War II, we’re heading to Normandy’s capital, Rouen, France, to see which Normandy locals are the most popular right now.During the Middle Ages, Rouen was one of the most important cities in Europe, and in 1944, it was left in ruins in the aftermath of D-Day operations. Today, the city has a population of somewhere around 112,000, and its most notable current or former local from the music world is 19-year-old tropical house DJ and producer Petit Biscuit — remember him from Monday’s episode?He’s currently the 685th most popular artist on Spotify according to monthly listeners and is ranked a bit more than 2,000th across Spotify, YouTube, Deezer, SoundCloud, Instagram, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter, according to our new Cross-Platform Performance, or CPP, score. While Kanka’s “deep and hypnotic bass” has him at around 36,000th when it comes to monthly Spotify listeners, across all platforms, the dub star is at around 89K, according to CPP.Indie pop outfit Tahiti 80, who formed while students at the University of Rouen, are arguably the more popular locals, with a Spotify monthly listener rank that’s barely higher than Kanka’s, but with a CPP ranking of around 25K, that puts them some 63,000 spots ahead of fellow compatriot Kanka and almost 23,000 spots behind Rouen comrade Petit Biscuit.Rouen indie rockers La Maison Tellier seem to have a bit more uniformity between their Spotify monthly listener rank of 48K and their CPP ranking of around 59K.Outside of Normandy, Parisian DJ David Guetta is ranked 18th on Spotify but 9th according to CPP, and Parisian legend Serge Gainsbourg is in the mid 5,000s and around 3,000th.And for a little global perspective, Taylor Swift is ranked 16th on Spotify but 5th according to CPP, Beyonce is 46th and 15th, Ariana Grande is 9th and 2nd, and the Beatles are 114th and 103rd. Keep in mind, however, that there are an estimated 1.5 million artists in this data pool, so even Kanka’s CPP rank of almost 89,000 puts him in the top 6 percent.Not too shabby.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, June 6th, 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 Thursday, thank you to all of our veterans out there, and see you tomorrow!

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!

Highlights   It’s Found on Friday, and we’re celebrating the big five-oh by unearthing some breaking artists according to social and Spotify follows.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 Friday, May 31st, 2019.Found on Friday: A Dutch YouTube Personality, a Turkish Rocker, and Sisters in a Cover Band It’s Found on Friday, and we’re celebrating our 50th episode by unearthing three artists breaking on the social and Spotify follow growth charts.First up: 22-year-old Dutch YouTube personality and rising European pop star Simon De Wit, aka Blanks, who experienced a 27 percent growth in SoundCloud followers over the last 28 day period. Along with SoundCloud growth, he’s also experienced a 52 percent increase in Spotify followers and a 27.6 percent increase in Instagram followers. Blanks’ bio reads, “Make yourself happy,” and he’s got to be feeling pretty happy about those stats right about now.His beachy, funky pop vibe is sure to put a smile on listeners faces as well.Next up, it’s Turkish rocker Ufuk Beydemir, who is absolutely killing it on Insta with a 595 percent increase in followers.And it’s translating well on other platforms, too, with a 31 percent increase in Spotify followers over the last 28 day period.I don’t speak Turkish, but I don’t think you really need to to understand the wistfulness in his catchy and accessible rock ballads. Thought cover bands couldn’t gain traction? Think again. American sisters Sidney and Caitlin Powell, who comprise folk duo Neoni, are going viral thanks to their acoustic renditions of prominent pop songs like Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee. Just a quick glance at their YouTube channel reveals the sheer breadth of their covers, from Evanescence to Gnarls Barkley songs.But enough of the fluff, what about the numbers? Neoni have gone from zero to 100 (and then some) in their Spotify followers over the last 28 day period, which far surpasses any growth they’re seeing on other platforms. Their Instagram follower growth is down, in fact, by .6 percent, and their SoundCloud followers are up by only .9 percent.From May 14 to May 15, Neoni’s follower count skyrocketed from 179 to 16,730, which is interesting, because they don’t appear to have been added to any prominent playlists. While this smells like a metadata error at first sniff, a closer whiff shows why it’s not.What that exponential growth tells us is that Neoni either just joined Spotify within the last month and happened to bring some of their YouTube popularity with them all of the sudden, or…. something else is going on.Ah, the power of a name change. With a little digging, we find that Neoni used to be called Facing West, and the Powell sisters announced their official name change on Instagram on May 4.Looking at Facing West’s Spotify follower stats reveals an astonishing drop from 16,682 to 59. Can you guess when that happened? Yep, May 14 to May 15. It might have taken 10 days, but through their label or distributor, the sisters were able to transfer their Spotify follower count from Facing West to Neoni, which accounts for the lopsided, and ultimately deceiving, growth percentage for Neoni’s Spotify followers. All that to say, sometimes, numbers can be deceiving if you’re not looking at the bigger picture. Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, May 31st, 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, have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!

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!

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!