Highlights  Australian singer-songwriter Tones and I and North Carolina-born/Eastern Europe-raised rapper Ashnikko are some of the first notable case studies in TikTok virality. How are they capitalizing on it?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.We’re on the socials at “chartmetric” — that’s Chartmetric, one word and no “S.” Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, Oct. 18, 2019.The Young Female Artists Capitalizing on Their TikTok ViralityAs TikTok’s popularity intensifies, so does the scrutiny, which is why the National Music Publishers’ Association recently claimed the platform “consistently violated US copyright law and the rights of songwriters and music publishers.”Whether or not this is true, it’s clear the platform-on-the-rise, which is making its mark as a new breeding ground for discovery, is benefiting some creatives substantially.We first noticed 19-year-old Australian singer-songwriter Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey,” for instance, on the TikTok charts a couple of months back. At the time, the Sony artist’s Spotify footprint was promising, but not exactly huge.When “Dance Monkey” first came out in May, she had around 3.5K Followers.Once July hit and the TikToks started pouring in, her Spotify Follower stats rose precipitously, from 15K in July to 30K in August, 70K in September, and 150K this month.Four of the Top 44 TikTok videos are still sporting “Dance Monkey” soundtracks, and the song is still in the Top 200 on TikTok’s track charts. There’s a similar story happening with North Carolina-born and Eastern Europe-raised rapper Ashnikko, aka Ashton Casey.23-year-old Ashnikko, who embraces Japanese anime and video game references, recently dropped the collaborative track “STUPID” with Yung Baby Tate, and her TikTok climb is stunning. Six of the Top 44 TikTok videos are already using her track, and she’s also in the Top 200 on TikTok’s track charts.Right now, her stats across other platforms like Spotify are exhibiting a growth pattern similar to Tones and I’s when she first started carving out her TikTok niche, so all indications point to Ashnikko being an artist to watch going into 2020 — and not just on TikTok.With edgy, stylish teenage phenom Billie Eilish having worked wonders for Universal — are Tones and I and Ashnikko, respectively, Sony and Warner’s rebuttal? OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Oct. 18, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comIf you haven’t downloaded 6MO, our Global Music Industry Data Report, yet, you can find it all across our socials and in our show notes!Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week! 

Highlights  UK singer-songwriter and producer prodigy Labrinth has created a hallucinatory experience with his soundtrack of HBO’s new show Euphoria, and with data as our guide, we’re going to try to navigate the psychedelic experience with you.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.We’re on the socials at “chartmetric” — that’s Chartmetric, one word and no “S.” Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, Oct. 11, 2019.Take a Psych Trip Through Labrinth’s ‘Euphoria’Besides collaborating with Sia, Diplo, and Beyonce in recent years, Timothy Lee McKenzie, better known by his stage name, Labrinth, just scored — literally and figuratively — his first TV series, HBO’s Euphoria.According to Rolling Stone, “His soundtrack ... hums with soft electricity, perfectly complementing the journey of the main character, Rue, a teenager caught in limbo between the euphoria of a drug high and the harsh consequences of addiction.”It’s rare that a TV show soundtrack generates high — if any at all — demand, but according to McKenzie himself, “If I put a post up, the first message is ‘Where’s the album? Where’s the soundtrack?!’ So I’m like, ‘OK, don’t worry.’ We’re working on getting ‘em what they need.”And he and the HBO team did just that, releasing the soundtrack last Friday.Though his early April releases of “SIN” and LSD, his Sia/Diplo collab, accounted for his highest Spotify Follower gains this year, at 5K and 3K, respectively, Euphoria has him at a 2K increase.That said, on Insta and Wikipedia, an early single drop from the soundtrack on Aug. 3 gave Labrinth his most significant spikes with a 5K follower increase and 3.5K views, respectively.It’s an interesting strategy for artists, labels, and managers to think about, because not only are there upfront fiscal upsides from synchronizations, but there are also the inherent promotional upsides couched in the television and video streaming industry’s massive marketing budgets. That’s not to say that it limits a series to only one artist, of course.Euphoria’s official Spotify playlist, which includes every track used in Season 1, ranges from Solange to Lizzo, Blood Orange to Randy Newman and much, much more.Unfortunately, an individual curator seems to have ripped the official Euphoria playlist and pawned it off as their own, outperforming the official playlist by about 3 to 1 in terms of follower count.Which just goes to show — albeit unscrupulously — that understanding and anticipating trends and listener behavior can go a long way toward building audiences in the streaming era.  OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Oct. 11, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comIf you haven’t downloaded 6MO, our Global Music Industry Data Report, yet, you can find it all across our socials and in our show notes!Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week! 

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!

HighlightsIn just over a year, King Princess has gone from 10 Spotify playlists to more than 1,000 and 5,000 Twitter followers to more than 100,000. Now, they’re on Mark Ronson’s new track, “Pieces of Us.”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, June 24, 2019.New Music Friday Monday: the Royal Rise of King PrincessIn just a year, King Princess has gone from a humble 10 Spotify playlists to a star-powered 1K, and 5K Twitter followers to 100K+. The 20-year-old, New York City-born singer-songwriter/producer now finds themselves on Mark Ronson’s June 17 release, “Pieces of Us,” which currently sits at the No. 5 spot on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist. How’d they get there so quickly?Using the Analyze function on their artist page to compare their Spotify playlist evolution with their social follows, we can chart it.On March 9, 2018, King Princess had just under 5K Twitter followers and was only on 10 Spotify playlists.That’s great for a young indie artist, but clearly not on par with the metrics typical Mark Ronson collaborators (who include Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Adele, Miley Cyrus, and Amy Winehouse) usually boast. By June 21, 2018, King Princess got closer with almost 30K Twitter followers and 237 Spotify playlists.Mind you, that exponential jump was in a matter of just three measly months.Fast forward to March 9, 2019, and King Princess hit just a bit more than 92K Twitter followers, 374K Instagram followers, and was on 1,000 Spotify playlists.By then, they had also been booked to play this year’s Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Governors Ball festivals.                                                                                   Today, the alternative pop star has some 111K Twitter followers, 450K+ Instagram followers, about 25K Facebook fans, and sits on more than 1K Spotify playlists.In less than a year and a half, King Princess’ Spotify Popularity Index went from 0 to 75 out of 100.But it’s not all out of thin air.In February 2017, they became the first artist to sign to Mark Ronson’s Zelig Recordings, which is a Columbia Records imprint ultimately owned by Sony.It’s only natural for them to be featured on Mark Ronson’s “Pieces of Us,” which was released on June 17, and currently sits in the No. 5 spot on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist.You might say, with a little help from Ronson, King Princess’ royal rise was written in the stars all along.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 24, 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 Monday, see you tomorrow!

2019-06-20 // A2IM Indie Week, Day 3: Reeperbahn Festival HighlightsHamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival is presenting seven different acts on Day 3 of A2IM’s Indie Week, and we will check out how they’re doing in the data 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 Thursday, June 20, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 3At the corner of Allen and Houston on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, last night, six bands shared their live music as an official part of A2IM’s Indie Week: the Reeperbahn Festival, New York Edition.Based around the entertainment and red-light district in Hamburg, Germany, since 2006, the Reeperbahn Festival will be putting on more than 900 events in the area this September with international artists of all genres, in addition to a conference for music and related industry professionals.  In the 07:30-08:00pm slot was Winnipeg, Canada’s Yes We Mystic, with their melodic and experimental indie rock sound.With 7K Spotify monthly listeners and their top four listener cities being Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Montreal, they have obviously created a stir in their home country very effectively.Half of their 2.2K Instagram followers are from their hometown of Winnipeg, so Reeperbahn has done a lovely job of finding a truly homegrown act and bringing them to a bigger stage.Jerusalem-born singer-songwriter-producer ORI graced the stage in the 8:05-8:35pm slot. Using original looping samples of his own voice and instrumentation, he’s got over 10K monthly listeners and his 2017 single “Black Book” is currently on the The Austin 100 playlist from NPR Music and the official SXSW 2019 playlist, where he played two official sets this past March.His current Spotify Popularity Index may only be at 28 for now, but his work has also been sampled by Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock.Closing out the night in the 11:20-midnight slot was Surfbort, most likely because they are a hard act to follow with their hottest tracks titled “Hippoe Vomit Inhaler”, “Pretty little fucker” and “Dicks”.The Brooklyn-based punk outfit is named after a Beyoncé lyric and is just under 20K monthly listeners and is featured on Green Day’s “Oakland Coffee” playlist as well as the official SXSW 2019 playlist, as they also played a set in Austin last spring.In other slots were Germany’s Leoniden and Gurr, Austria’s Mira Lu Kovacs, and America’s Renata Zeiguer (US), but check them out...if Hamburg’s Reeperbahn NY Edition picked them, they’re sure to be worth the listen and maybe your latest favorite sound.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, June 20, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Thursday, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

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!

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!

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!