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On this episode, we speak with Dan Runcie, the Founder of the business/hip-hop/culture media company Trapital. Launching in early 2018, Trapital began as a subscription-based newsletter, but provides now features a podcast and a free weekly memo focusing on the business strategy of hip-hop, talking about topics like Beyoncé’s streaming strategy, how the hip-hop’s indie community has taken off and How Tyler, The Creator Built a Cult-Like Following. Trapital’s readers are music executives, media moguls and venture capitalists, with clientele like Translation CEO Steve Stoute and SoundCloud CEO Mike Weissman. Trapital also offers advisory and speaking services.

Prior to running Trapital full-time, the San Francisco-based Runcie has a background in market analysis and business strategy, while also spending several years as a freelance writer for publications such as WIRED and Complex. He graduated Cum Laude in Marketing & Finance at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and earned an MBA from the University of Michigan, a fantastic place to hang out in in the winter.

Connect with Dan on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, but most importantly, sign up for the Trapital newsletter here! If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials. If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here. If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

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 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!

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!

HighlightsAmazon Music’s Brand New Music playlist features a few new Friday releases similar to Spotify and Apple, we’ve got the quick rundown for youMission   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 May 20th 2019.New Music Friday Monday: Amazon’s Brand New Music playlistIt’s New Music Friday Monday and we’re looking at Amazon’s Brand New Music playlist that updated on Friday before the weekend.Brand New Music is essentially the tech giant’s version of Spotify’s New Music Friday, currently featuring 70 tracks from big stars to legacy acts to up and comers.In the #1 playlist position is the DJ Khaled’s latest track featuring John Legend and the late Nipsey Hussle on “Higher”. Halsey’s “Nightmare” pulls up in the #2 spot while The Black Keys make their comeback with the new single “Go”, coming into the #3 position.The three major labels have the most singles on the list this week, with UMG having 14, Sony at 11 and Warner Music at 7. However, there is no shortage of independent labels on the list either, with 4AD, 300 Entertainment and AOMG all representing with one track each.Genre-wise, about 30% of the playlist’s tracks feature the “pop” genre tag, the most out of all genres, with Madonna, Mark Ronson and Charli XCX feat. Lizzo in that group. “Hip-hop/rap” takes 2nd place with another 20% of the list’s sound with none other than Wu-Tang Clan debuting a new record to accompany their recently-released Showtime documentary series.EDM and rock have 6 and 5% of the tracks respectively to round things out, with Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum and Maddie & Tae contributing to the “country” genre tags for a total of 4% of the list.Brand New Music’s artists this week are mostly from English-speaking countries, almost 85% of it, which fits in nicely with the fact that 72% of the smart speaker market last year was solely based in the US and the UK.Between Spotify’s top 10 tracks on the New Music Friday and Brand New Music’s top 10, only 4 of the tracks overlap, coincidentally in the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 7th position.And if we throw in Apple Music’s equivalent playlist- Best of the Week- we have the 1st and 2nd position in common with the other two.So if you pulled up all three Global Release Day playlists on any of the platforms, you’re guaranteed to hear DJ Khaled and then Halsey, in that order.In all three, you’ll also end up hearing Lana Del Rey’s Sublime cover of “Doin’ Time”  before you hit track 6.There seems to be some slight experimentation going on: for example, you’ll hear Tyler the Creator on all platforms, but his track “WHAT’S GOOD” on Spotify and Amazon, while hearing “EARFQUAKE” on Apple.On the Latin front, Colombian rapper Maluma debuts a purely Spanish track “11 PM” on Amazon, while he shows off both Spanish and English vocals on another track, “Tu Vecina (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)” on Apple Music.Check out some of these interesting playlist differences for yourself before this Friday comes around!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday May 20th 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!