Our guest today is Marc Brown, Founder of Byta, a music sharing app that lets artists, studios, and managers share, collaborate on, and promote secure music files before uploading them to streaming services. Marc is currently based in Stockholm, Sweden, though he is originally from Canada and spent many years in London working in A&R and artist promotion. On this episode, we discuss how he came to found Byta, what sets the app apart from DropBox and Soundcloud, and what this might mean for the future of Hi-Fi audio and NFTs. Check out Byta here. To attend a free Byta symposium that explores "how the music ecosystem will evolve and adapt to the developing digital landscape," register here. Byta recently published a white paper on the state of music sharing, which you can check out 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.

Russ Tannen is President of DICE, a UK- and now NYC-based mobile ticketing, live streaming, and live music recommendation platform that partners directly with venues, labels, and promoters to bring upfront pricing to live music fans (no fees are added at checkout, so the price you see at first is the price you get). Before rising through the ranks at DICE, Russ spent many years as an artist manager at Deadly Management during — and after — his time as an Events Manager at Vice Media. Before that, Russ studied Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in the UK. Read 20 things we've learned about Music Live Streaming by DICE Founder & CEO Phil Hutcheon. Check out DICE here, and download the app on your phone. 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.

On this episode, we chat with Aileen Crowley, former Vice President of Global Streaming Marketing at Universal Music Group. Before leaving the major label world in November 2020, Aileen devised data-driven streaming strategy for developing artists, working directly with artist management to translate streaming analytics, develop artist release strategies, and implement plans for audience growth. 

Prior to that, Aileen was the General Manager of DigSin, a subscription-based independent music label focused on singles, playlisting, and data, as well as being an artist manager—and that was after spending almost seven years at world-renowned consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Today, Aileen runs The Streaming Story, a website dedicated to contextualizing streaming success with the narrative surrounding that success. Since recording this interview, Aileen has teamed up with Lark42, a digital consultancy that solves hard problems in the music, data, blockchain, streaming and startup space. You can connect with Aileen on LinkedIn 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.

On this episode, we chat with Andrew Thompson, Editor and Founder of Components, a media and culture publication focused on data journalism. Originally from California, Andrew received a degree in Political Science and Government from Temple University before moving into journalism. Becoming increasingly interested in data and data science, Andrew eventually became the Data Editor and Audience Development Manager at design software startup Ceros and then the Editorial Director of video streaming search engine Flixed. After a couple of years in New York City, he moved back home to Philly, taking Components from a side project to his full-time endeavor. Since 2018, Components has been covered and/or cited in Mashable, Vice, and more than 70 academic papers, and we were lucky enough to feature some of his research on our blog in an article he wrote called “What Spotify Follower Ratio Tells Us About Artist Growth and Fan Engagement.” Read "What Spotify Follower Ratio Tells Us About Artist Growth and Fan Engagement" 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.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, on this episode, we talk to Berklee's Camille Lopez-Silvero about the article she wrote for the Chartmetric blog entitled, The Under 27 Club: Music and Mental Health in the Streaming Era. Lopez-Silvero is a 2021 Global Entertainment and Music Business Master of Arts candidate at the Berklee College of Music program in Valencia, Spain, and a 2020 Northwestern University graduate. She currently serves as the Head of Marketing and Branding at Disrupción Records, an independent, student-run record label based out of Berklee’s graduate campus. She has previously interned at Paradigm Talent Agency in their Chicago office, and a host of diverse companies including a New York-based creative digital agency (Swell Shark), branding company (Siegel+Gale), investment firm (Loeb Enterprises), and startup (Thnks). Read The Under 27 Club: Music and Mental Health in the Streaming Era 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.

On this episode, we talk to the Founder and Director of London-based firm Songular, Sam Lee. We discuss streaming playlist strategies to grow your audience, how TikTok may or may not be for every artist, and how music data may be important, but at the end of the day, it's better if #ArtistsBeArtists (Songular's hashtag) According to Songular’s website: “We amplify creative voices through forward-thinking digital services.Songular is an independent music company that empowers fearless artists through strategic streaming campaigns. Our approach is artist-first and data-driven: this means that our bespoke campaigns are shaped by the stories our artists have to tell, and we use data to link the strategy to the story.” Songular’s roster includes Joji, Bakar, Young T & Bugsey, Zara Larsson, and Flume. Previously, Lee has served as a Music Editor for Deezer, a Radio Plugger, and in his earliest days, a Broadcast Assistant for the BBC and regular contributor to British culture outlet, NME. Connect with Sam via LinkedIn or Songular's Instagram.

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.

Will Page is an economist, a DJ, and most importantly, the biggest supporter of Tynecastle Park’s Heart of Midlothian Football Club #boysinmaroon. A graduate of Scotland’s University of Strathclyde and University of Edinburgh, he began his career as an economist with the Government of Scotland while moonlighting as a music journalist for the Straight No Chaser Magazine. Soon thereafter, Page became the Chief Economist for the United Kingdom’s largest collection society, PRS for Music. After that, he assumed the same title for Stockholm-based streaming platform Spotify. Will is now a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts in London, a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, and a non-Executive Director at music licensing company SoundVault. In what little spare time he has, he’s busy at work on his upcoming book Pivot, which is about digital disruption and the economics behind it. We discuss: His continuing love for soul music, including his DJ mixes on MixCloud and Blackstars of High Life, his documentary on Ghanian Jazz, Afrobeat, and FunkHis double agent life in his 20s as a Scottish government economist by day and Straight No Chaser music journalist by nightWhat economics has to do with the music industryHis May 2020 Billboard feature, "Peak Streaming: Are We There Yet?"His February 2020 Billboard feature, "Is the Music Copyright Business Worth More Than Ever?"His quotes in John Thornhill's March 2020 Financial Times op-ed, "How Covid-19 Is Accelerating the Shift From Transport to Teleport"His upcoming book on digital disruption, Pivot: Ten Lessons in Tarzan Economics that Help You Navigate DisruptionConnect with Will:https://www.linkedin.com/in/wpage/ Connect With Us:http://podcast.chartmetric.com/http://chartmetric.com/https://blog.chartmetric.comhttps://smarturl.it/chartmetric_social

We’ll still be bringing you our conversations with music industry professionals every month, but between those conversations, we’re sprinkling in important music data stories from our blog that you might have missed or haven’t had the time to sit down and read. This week, we're diving into our new analysis of how artist live streaming is affecting audience engagement during COVID-19: https://blog.chartmetric.com/covid-19-effect-on-the-global-music-business-part-3-live-streaming-artists/ Follow along with the article, which is full of pretty charts and graphs, and subscribe to our blog for more. How Music Charts is a podcast by Chartmetric that explores the dance between interpreting data and making creative decisions in the music business every day.

Highlights  Early 2000s emo princes of darkness My Chemical Romance dropped a special treat for fans on Halloween, revealing some incredible metrics for a band that has been on hiatus for six years. 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.Just a heads up that we’ll be switching formats from two times a week to two to three times a month as we transition to a longer form podcast that will include interviews with some very special guests.DateWithout further ado, this is your Data Dump for Friday, Nov. 1, 2019.My Chemical Romance’s Reunion Shows Scary Good NumbersHope you had a very spooky and safe Halloween.There’s no trick here: For early 2000s pop-punk nostalgists and emo aficionados, My Chemical Romance dropped a very special treat.The eye shadow-laden foursome announced their reunion on the most costume-heavy day of the year, and the internet was all about it.If you were sitting there thinking the emo/pop-punk thing was just a fad, think again, because MCR’s numbers show otherwise. Sure, it’s been six years since their break-up, but their numbers have been steadily climbing since we started tracking their data.In March 2018, the band was at 4.9M Spotify Monthly Listeners, 2.7M Followers, and a Spotify Popularity Index of 78 out of 100.As of Halloween, they’re at 6.7M Spotify Monthly Listeners, 4.3M Followers, and a Spotify Popularity Index of … drum roll please: 78!Those stats are pretty stunning — six years of effective inactivity, and MCR has managed to maintain their streaming numbers.If we look at their Neighboring Artists and filter by genre cluster, things get more impressive. Paramore, who are just above them in terms of Cross-Platform Performance rank, are at the same Spotify popularity level.However, Paramore released an album just two and a half years ago, and they were releasing new music videos as recently as last year.To be fair, MCR has had help from frontman Gerard Way’s award-winning comic books — one of which has a Netflix adaptation — in addition to his and other members’ side projects and the band’s 2016 reissue of 2006’s The Black Parade.However, with a band that hasn’t really had a frontline release for six years and is still maintaining their metrics, a Halloween announcement of their December reunion can only mean one thing right?There’s nowhere to go but up.Already, we see a daily Spotify Monthly Listener change from -891 to 7.4K, a daily Twitter Follower gain from 51 to 46K, a daily Instagram Follower gain from 140 to 12.7K, and a daily YouTube Channel Views gain from about half a million to just under a million.Now, that’s scary good, so bravo, My Chemical Romance, bravo.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Nov. 1, 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!Did we mention our Playlist Journeys feature is live now?Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you this month with our new format! 

Highlights  This week, two huge artists let the track lists of their upcoming albums slip and a couple of other big names released music videos. Let’s see if they reaped any data rewards. 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. 25, 2019.Track List Reveals and Music Videos: Stunts or Bumps?Coldplay and Miley Cyrus let the track listings for their respective upcoming albums drop this week, while Doja Cat and Selena Gomez released some music video eye candy to promote their upcoming album releases.We’re not saying the strategies are mutually exclusive by any means, but what are the actual gains from each, from a data perspective?Coldplay, who cheekily revealed the track list of their upcoming album by posting a classified ad in North Wales’ Daily Post, have been pretty good about staying in the spotlight, but amidst collabs and side projects, they’ve still managed to put together a double album called “Everyday Life,” which is due out Nov. 22.So far, the sneaky announcement has garnered tons of press, helped along by the release of “Arabesque” and “Orphans,” two tracks from each album.It probably didn’t cost them very much, either.While the effect seems relatively negligible now due its two-day freshness, across most platforms, they’re showing signs of an upward trajectory.They’ve gained some 30K Spotify followers, 5K Insta followers, 2K Twitter followers, and 8.5K Wikipedia views. They’ve also increased their Spotify popularity by a point, which is not insignificant in just a day or two’s work.Clearly, Coldplay had a lot of intention behind their track list leak, but Miley Cyrus’ situation is a bit murkier.During a livestream on Instagram on Sunday, viewers spotted a whiteboard behind Miley with a bunch of, well, presumably track names scrawled all over it.It doesn’t look staged, but then again, her upcoming album isn’t exactly a secret, so there could be a bit of guerilla marketing going on there.Seeing as she hasn’t released anything “tangible” this week, her metrics are a bit more stagnant, which is not to diminish her No. 10 rank across eight platforms, according to our Cross-Platform Performance ranking system.Two artists who have some audiovisual tangibility to show are former Disney star Selena Gomez and LA-based rapper Doja Cat.Gomez’s “Look at Her Now” music video has bumped her up in terms of fan acquisition on Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, SoundCloud, and YouTube, but her streams and views aren’t seeing a huge lift … yet.She did just release two new singles within a day of each other, so those follower gains are likely to bump up her listener and views gains in the coming days.Star-on-the-rise Doja Cat was trending hard on Twitter following her music video/single drop of “Rules” and her streaming numbers are climbing and climbing.Just six months ago, Doja was at 1.9M Spotify Monthly Listeners.That number started accelerating in August, from 2.6M to 3.7M, and just this month, she’s gone from 4.6M to nearly 6M. Combined with her half-a-million-Spotify-followers-and-climbing, her Spotify popularity score is edging near the upper echelons of the streaming world.With the kind of attention that Doja’s powerfully provocative video is getting, there’s some definite streaming staying power there.So, while album track list leaks don’t appear to be particularly indicative of a data bump on their own, combined with a double-single release — especially if you’re Coldplay — they can be a relatively inexpensive strategy for generating a lot of attention.There’s nothing like a really cool music video to train and sustain all eyes on an artist, though.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Oct. 25, 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! 

HighlightsPeloton’s recent IPO has us wondering about the most popular fitness playlists on Spotify and Deezer, so slap on some cross-trainers and fire up those Bluetooth earbuds.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, one word and no “S.” Check us out on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019.Music + Fitness: Shaping Up Spotify and Deezer’s Top Workout PlaylistsPeloton, the indoor fitness brand best associated with its high-energy, online-class guided cycling experiences, went public on Oct. 7th, but closed its first day 11% under its initial public offering price, according to CNN.Competitor SoulCycle pulled out of IPO-ing last year, and maybe it has something to do with the music issues Peloton is now facing: a $300M lawsuit from a group of music publishers.Whether they’re using IP legitimately or not, there’s a lot at stake when it comes to music’s intimate relationship to fitness, according to music/tech journalist Cherie Hu’s latest newsletter.And it’s definitely illustrated by Spotify’s most popular workout playlists, six of which are in the Top 100 in terms of Follower count:Beast Mode is the most popular context-based fitness playlist on the Swedish platform, and the 9th most followed overall at 6.5M Followers.Post Malone is currently getting the most unique monthly listeners from four playlist slots he’s currently sitting in, acquiring 891K MLs.Reggaeton king J Balvin and American DJ/producer Marshmello are in the #2 and #3 slots with 592K and 577K Beast Mode-specific MLs respectively.Almost 20% of the current list is tagged as EDM, and more than 30% if you include Brostep.More than half of the current list are American artists, with the second most-represented country being high-energy Dutch electronic artists like Armin van Buuren, Hardwell and R3HAB...but still comprising only 13% of the list.Spotify’s Motivation Mix at 4.4M Followers and the simply-titled Workout playlist at 3.3M are the next most popular fitness lists there, but an interesting juxtaposition may be Deezer’s most popular fitness playlist, Rock Workout.That’s right: the #1 list to work out to on the French streaming platform is based around the rock genre, which is very different from Spotify’s top workout mixes, which are usually hip-hop, pop or dance-based.Rock Workout has 342K fans and currently a 70-track count, compared to Beast Mode’s 200 track count.Up until mid-May this year, Beast Mode only held 50 tracks at once, and though the amount of slots open up in the playlist, they do a great job of keeping things fresh, with a 100% 28-day ratio, meaning that the entire list has changed in the past month.With Rock Workout, only 3% of the list has changed in the past month, even though it’s less than ¼ of Beast Mode’s track count, featuring artists such as Linkin Park, Nickelback and AC/DC.Other Deezer workout playlists like Rap & Sport and Motivation Hits at 324K fans each feature much of the same pop/hip-hop/EDM fare you may expect...but it just goes to show that not all sweat beads to the same drummer.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comIf you haven’t downloaded our semi-annual global industry report 6MO yet, you can find it all across our socials and in our show notes!Happy Wednesday, we’ll see you Friday! 

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! 

Highlights  Rolling Stone, Music Ally, and others were particularly interested in a surprising data point from Part 2 of 6MO, our first-ever Global Music Industry Data Report. What’s that all about? Find out here.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, 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. 4, 2019.6MO Global Music Industry Data Report, Part 2: Platform-Playlist AnalysisThe domination by North American artists of the top streaming playlists was of particular interest to many major music publications as soon as we dropped 6MO.Obviously, it was to us too, but there was another trend that intrigued us in the Platform-Playlist Analysis section, or Part 2, of our Global Music Industry Data Report.That trend? The Top 5 genre differentiators on Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, and Spotify’s Top 30 playlists.What exactly do we mean by genre differentiators and how did we get there?Well, we pulled geographic and genre metadata tags for every artist included on each of those 120 playlists, filtering out personalized and artist-specific ones, and then, we calculated the distribution for each platform set. What we found is that virtually across the board, Pop and Hip-Hop & Rap take the Top 2 spots in terms of artist genre distribution for all four of those streaming platforms on June 30, 2019.Generally speaking, those genres account for about half of the market share on those top playlists for those platforms.Where things get interesting is in the No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5 spots, because that’s where the platforms begin to diverge from one another. This is what we mean by genre differentiators in the Top 5 for each platform.On Amazon Music, for instance, Country makes the Top 5, which is not the case for any other platform. On Apple Music, R&B/Soul fills that role, on Deezer, it’s Latin & Carribean, and on Spotify, it’s Folk, Traditional, and World.Surprising? Maybe not, if you’ve had that hunch all along.It is both satisfying and also illuminating to see it borne out in the data, however — and that’s what we’re all about. If you want to see where Indie or any geographic region outside of North America stacks up, dig in to 6MO more here.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Oct. 4, 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 our 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  It’s official: We've launched 6MO, our first-ever Global Music Industry Data Report! We're thrilled to present you with our comprehensive view — from a music data perspective — of the first six months of 2019. Dig in to Part 1 with us here.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, 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 Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019.6MO Global Music Industry Data Report, Part 1: Semi-Annual AwardsIf you haven’t heard yet, we officially released our first-ever Global Music Industry Data Report on Tuesday, and the response has us very excited to dive into it with you guys here.Last week, we explained the 30-page structure: Semi-Annual Awards, Platform-Playlist Analysis, and Strategic Business Insights.Today, we’re tackling Part 1, our Chartmetric Semi-Annual Awards, which rank the top performing artists in terms of absolute and percentage-based growth across multiple metrics on June 30, 2019, the last day of the six-month period we tracked.By the way, if you’ve got the report in hand, feel free to scroll or flip along with us.First off, our Cross-Platform Performance Award, as you might imagine, revealed some familiar names in the Top 10 in terms of overall streaming and social popularity — from T. Swift to Shawn Mendes and Rihanna to Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.However, the interesting stories were J Balvin at No. 2 and Daddy Yankee at No. 7, reflecting Latin’s growth outside of Latin America itself, and the late Avicii at No. 10, likely due to his strong catalog consistently driving 3M+ YouTube views daily, his April release of “SOS” with Aloe Blacc, and the full posthumous album release of Tim on June 6.When it came to YouTube Channel Views gain as of June 25, 2019, six of the Top 10 artists with the highest gains were primarily Spanish-speaking, showcasing the strength of both Latin content and also the popularity of the YouTube platform for Latin audiences.Keep in mind, however, that India-specific music charts didn’t launch until two weeks ago, so that data could very well change up the distribution in a big way.Stay tuned for our July to December report to see if 6MO months prove that to be the case!For Spotify Monthly Listener Gain as of June 30, 2019, collaborations were crucial to Lunay’s 557 percent and Jhay Cortez’s 521 percent lifts — not to mention Billy Ray Cyrus’ 3,032 percent increase as a result of his “Old Town Road” collab with Lil Nas X.On Twitter, Follower Gain was all about diversity, with three Korean groups, three Americans, two Brazilians, one Nigerian, and one Turkish rocker comprising the Top 10 percentage gains.And on our own platform, BTS won out on the Artist Follower front and Spotify curators dominated in terms of Playlist Followers. It would be an understatement to say that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Part 1, so please, keep digging into it, and let us know what else you find!Next up, we’re taking on Part 2, our Platform-Playlist Analysis, where we break down artist country market share and artist genre market share on Amazon, Apple, Deezer, and Spotify’s top 30 playlists.So, stay tuned for that!Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comBy the way, if you haven’t downloaded our report yet, you can find it all across our socials and in our show notes!Happy Wednesday, and we’ll see you on Friday for Part 2!

Highlights  Obsessed with streaming? Rightfully so, but after almost a year of coverage on Chartmetric, let’s go over some useful US radio facts that may help your artist’s overall distribution strategy.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.Chartmetric’s social media handle is Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us onTwitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook- we’re always posting useful music tidbits, we’d love to hear from you!DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019.Radio in the Streaming Era: US Radio Facts for Streaming ExpertsComing up on one year ago, Chartmetric added 300 US radio stations to our 20+ sources of music data.Why? Well, radio is still considered one of the major ways to break an artist into the mainstream here in the States, and to many, it remains a strong advantage of the major labels, who are well-networked in the radio community.You can check our blog article about it in the show notes, but for those who maybe never got a chance to learn about the world before streaming, we thought we’d take the time to review some basic radio facts to help you put it all in context.First, a radio spin does NOT equal a streaming play! Nowadays, we’re so used to looking at total streams on whatever platform, how many plays are coming from what playlist, or how many plays came from a user’s library...but nonetheless, each stream is just a one-to-one relationship with a listener.With radio, one spin can mean thousands of listeners, at the same time, and usually in the same geographic area! A one to many relationship is how terrestrial radio differentiates itself from streaming, and it requires a certain appreciation to realize that just because radio spin counts aren’t as big in quantity as streams in a given time period, they are much more geographically attributable, they’re time-stamped, and they play to many more people.On the many more people part, one term to be aware of is “AQH”, which stands for average quarter-hour persons, or the amount of unique listeners in a 15-minute period listening for at least 5 minutes.Have you ever been stuck in highway traffic and flipped through radio stations, only to hear commercials? Well, I bet it was around one quarter hour before or after the hour when that happened.Why? The reason is the way Nielsen Audio records AQH, because by playing commercials on the :15 and :45 minute marks, they maximize the period of time they play music (and thus, get the highest AQH possible). This raises their profile for advertisers wanting to buy time and more exposure on their station.The AM Drive during morning rush hour is primo ad time, so while 5-10AM is highly lucrative for radio stations, it’s probably not when your new song is going to get played. You probably have a better chance in the PMD (guess what that is), Evening or Overnight dayparts.Location-wise, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago stations tend to have the highest AQH ratings, which makes sense given they’re the top three populated cities in the country.Another term you may have heard is “Radio Format”, and this loosely refers to the type of genres a station plays, and it’s really more of a way for advertisers to recognize a station’s listener demographics.Surely you’ve heard “Top 40”, and that also goes by Contemporary Hit Radio, or “CHR”, and it’s what you’d expect, the latest and greatest from mostly major labels.Country is another format, and of course it plays best in the South, but also a sizeable presence in other places like Chicago.Urban plays better in the Midwest/South/East and is made up of hip-hop and rap, while Rhythmic plays bigger in the West; a mix of Top 40 and Urban where R&B, dance, hip-hop, and pop all intermingle.Other formats like “Triple A”, Alternative and Hot Adult Contemporary exist as well, we invite you to check out the blog article to learn more. Many thanks to our data supplier RadioWave and Seth Keller for their expertise.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, and we’ll see you on Friday!

2019-09-20 // Taylor Swift enjoys Chinese success on QQ Music, with R3HAB set to in the near future with Tencent Highlights  If the 2000s belonged to 50 Cent, the future belongs to Tencent. We’ll check out a few Western artists who are active in the Chinese market, and how the tech conglomerate may matter to them in the near future.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.Chartmetric’s social media handle is Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook- we’re always posting fun music facts, we’d love to hear from you!DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, Sept. 20, 2019.Taylor Swift enjoys Chinese success on QQ Music, with R3HAB set to in the near futureMusic Business Worldwide yesterday reported on Tencent, the giant Chinese tech company responsible for running the massively popular WeChat messaging platform with over 1B users and related music streaming app QQ Music, with over 650M active monthly users. One piece highlighted how Tencent is reportedly in talks to buy 10 to 20% of Universal Music Group, in a move that would surely be a boon for all artists operating with the major label.Some already there don’t need it! Looking at the QQ Music Western chart for this week, one of their artists under the Republic Records imprint is already enjoying her access to Chinese music fans, an artist by the name of Taylor Swift.While Tay Tay isn’t in the Top 20 this week, she does have by far the most tracks on the 100 track chart, placing 17 tracks of her recent Lover album onto the list.This obviously suggests that her entire album is getting quite an amount of attention on the platform, rather than just a few hits like Camila Cabello at 3 tracks or Ed Sheeran at 2.She’s not the only artist with new album release doing well there however, as Post Malone placed seven of his 17-track album Hollywood’s Bleeding in the QQ Western Top 100 and showing that Chinese fans are into trap just as much as pop music.Someone who doesn’t show up on the QQ Chart this week but may be doing so very soon is Dutch-Moroccan DJ/producer R3HAB, who just signed to Tencent’s joint venture label with Sony, named Liquid State.The Hong-Kong based electronic-focused label must be excited to host the international artist’s content in the Chinese market, as he’s played at least five live shows on the mainland this year, the last three being in Shanghai, Harbin and Chengdu, according to Songkick data.R3HAB’s exposure on Spotify and YouTube has been mostly European, getting most of his streams from cities like Amsterdam, Oslo, Warsaw and Paris, but the electronic sound does indeed lend itself to a global audience, just like Liquid State “ambassador” Alan Walker can attest to.The British-Norwegian DJ has an almost 35% Instagram follower demographic from Asia, over 30% of them hailing from Indonesia and India alone and accounting for over 2M followers in those markets.So with Liquid State and Tencent now in his corner, it looks like R3HAB could very well start exhibiting Taylor Swift-like success there, because with over 83% of the Chinese music market controlled by Tencent, the promotional advantages will be plenty.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Highlights  Streaming might favor frontline singles, but some tracks buck the trend. Looking at Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Deezer’s Top 100 charts, we examine what tracks and artists are able to ride the wave of longevity.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, 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 Wednesday, Sept. 18th, 2019.Post Malone Leads Track Longevity on Streaming ChartsWhen it comes to streaming, we’re trained to think immediacy and expendability, because, let’s face it, those are the kinds of qualities that characterize today’s digital singles-driven industry.On the streaming charts, however, things aren’t that simple, and some tracks can ride out their Top 100 position for more than a year. Pulling up Spotify’s Daily Global Chart on our charts tab, for example, we can scroll down a little to see chart summaries according to many different variables, including “By Time on Chart.” Within Spotify’s Top 100, Post Malone’s “Rockstar” might only be sporting a No. 81 spot, but it’s been on the chart for 508 days — that’s almost a year and a half.If we extend the Daily Global Chart to include the next 100 tracks, “Closer,” by the Chainsmokers and Halsey, might be in a precarious position at No. 199, but the track has enjoyed some 1,103 days on Spotify’s Top 200.To be clear, that’s three years.Toggling Apple’s Top 100, at No. 58, Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” claims the top spot, in terms of time on chart, with 361 days, or just short of a year.Meanwhile, Amazon’s Top 100 features a four-way tie at 210 days. At No. 20, it’s “High Hopes,” by Panic! At The Disco.No. 41 is Bebe Rexha’s “Meant to Be (featuring Florida Georgia Line).”No. 56 is “Youngblood” by 5 Seconds of Summer.And No. 60 is “Better Now,” by, guess who? Post Malone.Interestingly, Deezer’s Top 100 has a six-way tie at 195 days.At No. 10, it’s “Con Calma” by Daddy Yankee and Snow, while No. 19 is “Calma” by Pedro Capó and Farruko — ¾ of whom are Puerto Rican who all like to keep it cool.No. 27 is once again Post Malone, but this time, with “Sunflower,” from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack.No. 66 is “Te Vi” by Piso 21 and Micro Tdh, No. 68 is “Adan Y Eva” by Paulo Londra, and No. 70 is “Giant” by Calvin Harris and Rag'n'Bone Man.So, while Amazon and Deezer’s track longevities might be a bit more evenly spread, they’re also significantly lower than the longest lasting tracks on Apple’s and Spotify’s charts.Another takeaway here is that Posty has managed to keep tracks from two separate releases, Beerbongs & Bentleys and the Spider-Man soundtrack, relevant — and that’s irrespective of his new album, Hollywood’s Bleeding, dominating the top of those same charts.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, Sept. 18th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, and we’ll see you on Friday!

Highlights  Howdy! Today, we’re going Country, looking at the CMAs’ full list of nominations and making some educated guesses about who might win based on streaming and social data.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, 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, Sept. 6th, 2019.Data Predictions for the 2019 Country Music Association AwardsSaddle up, because we’re heading to Nashville, figuratively speaking, to check out what’s going on with this year’s CMAs. Based on streaming and social data, can we make some educated guesses about who might win at this year’s ceremony?12 categories comprise the full range of awards, including Album of the Year, Single of the Year, Musical Event of the Year, Music Video of the Year, and New Artist of the Year, among others.Maren Morris leads the pack with a total of six noms, and if we filter our “Artists” tab for the Country genre, Morris comes up at No. 3 in terms of Chartmetric rank, so she’s gotta at least win one, right?Her track “Girl,” which is nominated for Single of the Year, alongside Blake Shelton’s “God’s Country,” has a good shot.While neither are currently charting on Apple Music or Spotify, if we filter for genre on Amazon’s Track Charts, Shelton has the edge over Morris with a No. 5 rank compared to No. 12 for Morris.But Shelton’s Chartmetric rank is No. 7 compared to Morris’ No. 3, so this one’s going to be close — a real tossup, if data has anything to say about the matter.Overall, Morris also has some competition from Carrie Underwood, who is up for an impressive three awards. When it comes to Album of the Year, though, Morris leads with an 81 Spotify popularity score for her album “Girl,” compared to 65 for Underwood’s “Cry Pretty.”Morris’ closest competition in this category, if we’re going strictly by streaming performance? Thomas Rhett’s “Center Point Road” at 79.Looking at the Nashville “Cities” page, Rhett also has the seventh highest Spotify Monthly Listener count for the Tennessee capital where the CMAs will be held.And then there’s the category everyone’s wondering about: Musical Event of the Year.The category is interestingly described on the CMAs website as “a collaboration of two or more people either or all of whom are known primarily as a Country artist.” After being quietly stripped of his brief Country label by Billboard, Lil Nas X can at least find solace in the fact that his “Old Town Road” collab with Billy Ray Cyrus landed a Musical Event of the Year nom at this year’s CMAs.We probably don’t need to go back over how big of a viral sensation this surprise crossover hit was, so we’ll just say that, as far as Chartmetric rank goes, Lil Nas X is sitting at No. 32 out of all 1.7M+ artists that we track, and Billy Ray Cyrus is at No. 1 if we filter our “Artists” tab for the Country genre.So, even if “Old Town Road” doesn’t win the CMA award, I think we can all agree it really was the musical event of the year … so far. OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, Sept. 6th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Highlights  Don’t call it a comeback: This week, the VMAs wrapped and the CMAs dropped their noms, but do the ceremonies even matter to an artist’s bottom line? Let’s dive into Missy Elliott’s data and see.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, 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, August 30th, 2019.The Music Awards Effect: Bump or Bust?With the VMAs wrapping and the CMAs dropping their noms this week, the ceremonies grabbed a lot of headlines, but what exactly does that mean for artist success? Missy Elliott’s highly anticipated return and long overdue recognition with both an electrifying performance and also a gracious acceptance of MTV’s Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at Monday night’s VMAs should offer the perfect case study as we look forward to the 53rd Annual Country Music Association Awards in November.While she’s been workin’ it since the late ‘90s and even late ‘80s, Elliott’s Super Bowl halftime performance in 2015 had some youngsters thinking she was a new artist on the verge of blowing up.Those in the know had to flip it and reverse it on the younguns to let ‘em know about her four wins and 22 nominations at the Grammy Awards, her 30 million records sold in the U.S. and status as the best-selling female rapper in Nielsen Music history (as of 2017), and her history-making induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year — the first female rapper ever!With her surprise Iconology album release last week and this week’s VMA-driven visibility, do the data say comeback or consistency?It really depends what data sources we’re talking about.For an artist like Elliott, whose streaming numbers have consistently been on the incline since the beginning of the year, this awards ceremony doesn’t appear to have made much of a splash.Elliott’s daily Spotify follower change has generally hovered at around 700, bringing her from 922K on Jan. 1, 2019, to 1.1M on Aug. 29, 2019.Save for a minor dip in March, her Spotify popularity has generally been on the upswing from 76 on Jan. 1, 2019, to 79 on Aug. 29, 2019.The lowest it got was 73 — so not much variation at all.But the behavior of her social media growth tells another story.On Instagram, Twitter, and Wikipedia, we see a dramatic spike in followers and views — most significantly around her VMAs appearance.On Insta, from Thursday, Aug. 22, the date of her album release, to Monday, Aug. 26, her daily change in followers jumped from 2K to 15K.Following her VMAs appearance, however, that daily change spiked to almost 42K.There’s a similar pattern on Twitter, where Friday and Saturday gave her a 3K daily follower increase, up from low to mid hundreds, and following her VMAs appearance, she shot up to around 6KThe music awards effect is perhaps the most pronounced when it comes to Elliott’s daily Wikipedia views, which have hovered between 2K and 5K since the start of the year.Last Thursday, on the day of her album drop, however, that number almost reached 33K. On Monday, the night of the VMAs? Almost 150K.So, at least with an artist as influential as Missy Elliott, a big music awards moment could lead to a big bump in social relevancy, even if that same artist might not see quite as much volatility in their streaming data.As we edge nearer to the CMAs, where Maren Morris and Lil Nas X are the big standouts this year, let’s see if the same trends follow suit.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, August 30th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!