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!

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!