Highlights  YouTube’s global importance is no secret, but monitoring its playlist performance hasn’t always been easy. Using our new YouTube Playlists chart, you can finally track which lists are getting the most play!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 16th, 2019.The Top YouTube Playlists to Land OnIf you’re tracking YouTube playlists as part of your daily routine, or if you want to start thinking about a digital strategy for the platform, then you’re in luck.Thanks to our brand new feature, you can check the rankings of more than 500 YouTube-curated playlists, sorting by total playlist views, number of videos, 28-day add ratio and last update date. Then, you can click through to see who's charting on the world's biggest video streaming platform.As it stands now, YouTube’s Popular Music Videos playlist is far and away the top performer with more than 1B total views, 200 tracks, and a 99 percent 28-day add ratio.It’s heavily weighted with Pop, Hip-Hop, and Rap artists from the USA — think Ariana Grande, Chris Brown, and Rick Ross — but R&B, Latin, and Reggaeton aren’t too far behind.In the No. 2 spot is the 72-track Pop Hotlist playlist, which has about a third of the views and half of the 28-day add ratio of the Popular Music Videos playlist.Katy Perry, OneRepublic, and Puerto Rican rapper Anuel AA rule this one — as does the USA, once again. YouTube has a number of genre-specific Hotlists, actually, including the Latin Hotlist at No. 4, the Hip-Hop and R&B Hotlist at No. 5, the Country Hotlist at No. 6, and the Regional Mexican Hotlist at No. 7.The No. 3 spot, however, goes to New Music This Week, which has a bit more than 300M views and a 100 percent 28-day add ratio.While Pop holds about a third of the market share on it, with R&B and Rap tied for second at a bit less than a tenth, Country rounds out third, tying with Hip-Hop and Metropopolis. USA dominates the playlist again, holding almost ¾ of the artist country market share.With such a global platform, you might expect to see less American representation and more international representation, but keep in mind, these market shares describe artist-track distribution on the playlists and not listener geography.So, Americans might be pumping out the majority of the content that’s landing on these playlists, but the global community is likely forcing it to the top. OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, August 16th, 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  We do our best to stay out of the political fray, but with the Democratic debates wrapping last week, we look at the candidates’ streaming profiles to get a sense of not only who they’re listening to — but who is listening to them. 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 9th, 2019.When Streaming Gets Political, Who Gets the Vote?Think profiles and playlists are only for artists? Think again.We do our best to stay out of politics, but with the debates wrapping last week, why not look at the candidates’ streaming profiles to get a sense of not only who they’re listening to — but who is listening to them ... and how?Since no one is vying for the Republican nomination, with Trump seeking a second term, we’ll look at six of the Democratic candidates: Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden, and Marianne Williamson.Booker’s Cory Booker’s Music playlist might only have around 150 followers, but what it lacks in popularity it makes up for in track popularity, with almost half of its 101 tracks at a popularity score of 60 or above.At around 180 followers, Biden’s streaming profile has about the same count as Booker’s playlist — but only 22 monthly listeners. Harris’ Kamala’s Summer Playlist ups the ante with more than 4,000 followers tuning into her heavily rap, hip-hop, soul, and funk oriented 46-song listing. O’Rourke’s BBQ for Beto has some 500 followers listening to his 94-song playlist, which ranges in genre from folk to classic rock and country to hardcore punk.Keep in mind, O-Rourke used to play in punk bands, so he definitely knows what’s up in that regard.As might be expected, Williamson’s streaming profile is heavily geared toward meditation, prayer, and motivational speeches — and it’s paying off.Williamson’s follower count is almost 1,800 with a Spotify monthly listener count of around 1,200, helping to make her listeners to followers ratio about 1 to 1.Perhaps most interesting, and maybe most unsurprising, is that her daily Wikipedia views shot up from some 12,000 to some 350,000 following the debate, correlating strongly with a daily change in her Instagram followers from around 600 to around 11,000 on Aug. 1.Yang’s Favorite Jams playlist leaves the others in the dust with more than 5,000 followers — despite it being primarily catalogue based.Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Yang appears to really enjoy Florence & the Machine and the Cure.Streaming performance might not be an indication of political performance, but it does give us some insight into who these candidates are looking to win over — or at least how good their music taste is.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, August 9th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com Article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Highlights  What happens when a global artist gets sued by another for copyright infringement? Not much for the former, but a notable increase for the latter...we’re talking about music data by the way, not legal damage payments.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, 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, August 7th, 2019.Katy Perry, Flame and the Effects of PublicityWe’ve all seen industry gossip and trade news before...but have you ever used it to measure the impact of publicity?For the past week, both general and industry news sources have been reporting on the lawsuit of American rap artist Flame and the alleged copyright infringement of Katy Perry and team on her widespread 2013 hit, “Dark Horse”.Though debate still rages in the industry on whether it was valid in the eyes of copyright law, the jury itself decided it was indeed infringement, and ordered the American pop star and songwriting team to pay $2.78M in collective damages to the defendant.From a data perspective, what’s interesting is how this kind of news affects their digital profiles.For example, looking at the past week of social and streaming data for Katy Perry since news of the lawsuit first broke around July 30th, there was….basically no effect.No extra playlists or apparent correlation to Instagram follower count or Spotify monthly listeners….just more Katy Perry-level numbers, which is more than 7K new daily Spotify followers, 13M more daily YouTube views and 21K new daily IG followers….all in a day’s work.But for a lesser known artist like the Christian rapper Flame, he did experience a notable increase in digital profile.As of late, Flame in comparison had only gained about 67 new daily Spotify followers and 184 new YouTube daily views….and actually did score a few new charts.For example, “Joyful Noise”, which was the 2009 Flame track that was allegedly knowingly copied from by the Perry team, charted on official Viral 50 Spotify daily charts for the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada.It was for one day on August 2nd, a few days after the news had been able to make the news rounds in places like the Guardian, Rolling Stone, the BBC and Associated Press, and the track itself sat in the 13th, 15th and 24th respective positions on the 50-track viral charts.Its YouTube video went from 1800 daily views on Monday July 30th to more than 580 times that, peaking on July 31st at over 1M daily views….even the track’s Genius page, which only had less than 10 daily views the week prior, jumped to 740 the week of the proceedings.More than the track itself, Flame’s general artist profile gained 331 Spotify followers on July 31st, almost 5x his recent daily average, and his Spotify monthly listener count as of Monday August 5th has more than doubled in size to over 500K from his count only a week prior.He experienced similar multiples of increase in Twitter followers, retweets and Wikipedia views.So what does this mean for the rest of us? Possibly, a way to measure the effects of publicity….it’s virtually impossible to do so on a global superstar, but with an artist with a relatively little daily digital footprint, we can see which platforms are most affected by such news on certain given sources...and maybe be able to plan for future publicity expectations when working with your own artists.Because as they say in the show biz, “Any publicity is good publicity.”Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, August 7th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com Article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, see you on Friday!

Highlights  Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer’s biggest playlists are growing — both in terms of follower count and also track count — but what does that mean for artists looking to land a big add?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.Feature: Labels PageHey Rutger, it’s Jason — sorry to interrupt, but can I just do a quick product update? Of course, what’s up?Thanks, man. Hi Chartmetric fans, you may or may not have gotten a chance to check out the new Labels Page feature that we discussed in the last podcast episode this week.We’ve temporarily pulled the feature back from its soft release because we just don’t think it’s up to the music analytics standard we strive for.If you’ve been with us for some time, you’ve seen how dedicated we are to innovating and as we say in the tech world, sometimes “breaking things”.Well, we’ve gotten a lot of your feedback and realize that we jumped the gun a bit early and we need to better clean, organize and visualize the label metadata that we have, which is what we do best.So we recognize the issue, and we are working swiftly to bring the Labels Page back with verve and more importantly, accuracy!Back to our regularly scheduled program, take it away, Rutger!Thanks, Jason!DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, August 2nd, 2019.How 2019’s Playlist Growth Might Affect Emerging ArtistsThese days, getting onto streaming’s top playlists is sort of the name of the game.It really determines the visibility of emerging artists and cements the longevity of established ones.So, it got us wondering…. What’s been going on on the top playlists in 2019?Hitting the Playlists tab on the Chartmetric homepage brings up tons of playlist information for Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and Amazon.From there, we can compare everything going on when it comes to the playlists claiming the top spots across a number of different measurements.On Spotify, Today’s Top Hits maintains the highest follow number, starting the year off with 22.3M and hitting 23.6M by the end of June.That’s 5.8 percent increase for that six month period.On Deezer, Les Titres Du Moment claims the top follower spot, and over the same period, experienced only about 1 percent growth from 9.8M followers to 9.9M followers.Digging in a bit deeper, we can also compare playlist length, aka number of tracks.For that six month period, for example, Spotify’s Hot Country playlist grew 31.4 percent in length, while Apple Music’s The A-List: Pop playlist grew the same amount.But those aren’t the highest numbers. Spotify’s EDM-focused Mint playlist grew 35.8 percent, and Apple’s Hip-Hop-oriented Gymflow playlist grew 66.7 percent.Overall, Apple added more tracks to its top playlists than Spotify did — about 11 percent vs. 23 percent, to be exact. The growth of these playlists, both in terms of follower count and also track count, means a higher chance of an emerging artist landing on one of them and a significant increase in visibility if they do.However, it also makes it more likely that they get lost in the noise, making it hard to capitalize on an otherwise super exciting add.Knowing the genre breakdown of tracks and also the country distribution of artists can help, but we’ll have to save that for another episode. You can also tell us what you find by doing your own digging at chartmetric.com!Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, August 2nd, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comAnd if you like what we’re doing, don’t forget to leave us a rating or review!Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Highlights  What’s in a name? For the subgenre game on Spotify, Apple, Deezer, and Amazon’s top playlists … a lot.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, July 26th, 2019.Odd Subgenres Gaining Ground on Streaming’s Top PlaylistsEver heard of Brostep, Lilith, Etherpop, Crunk, Redneck, Metropopolis, or Pagode?No? Well, chances are, you’ve listened to examples of some of these subgenres, because they now comprise a small but significant portion of the top playlists on Spotify, Apple, Deezer, and Amazon.Thanks to the new subgenre feature on our Artists tab, where we've categorized the more than 7,000 Spotify genre tags into a handful of parent genres, finding artists that fit these niche descriptors is easy.Just select the main genre and then scroll through the subgenres to filter to your heart’s content.If we apply this taxonomy to Spotify’s Hot Country playlist, which boasts around 5.5M followers, Redneck and Brostep account for 5.7 and 2.9 percent of that playlist’s track distribution when it comes to genre market share.What exactly do those subgenres sound like? Well, let’s just say that Redneck is REALLY country and Brostep is in-your-face Dubstep. On Get Turnt, which also has around 5.5M followers, Crunk has 1.6 percent of the playlist’s genre makeup.The Subgenre is also featured on Apple Music’s Rap Life, #OnRepeat, It’s Lit!!!, and Gymflow playlists, and on Amazon’s Rap Rotation playlist, finding its low at 0.8 percent and its high at 2.9 percent.Crunk actually emerged as a subgenre of Hip-Hop during the ‘90s in the American South.Crank it up.Deezer’s Brand New UK and Neue Hits playlists, meanwhile, feature something called Metropopolis, which is apparently a neologism of Spotify’s and includes artists like Charli XCX, Bleachers, and St. Vincent.That portmanteau — think urban pop — sits at 5.6 percent on Brand New UK (tied with House) and at 5.1 percent on Neue Hits (tied with Rap).Apple’s The A-List: Pop playlist and Amazon’s Pop Hits playlist share a subgenre called Etherpop, which sounds pretty self-explanatory as a combination of ethereal and pop.It wins out on Amazon, where it has 2.9 percent share of the playlist (tied with Emo and R&B) vs. 1.2 on Apple, where it’s tied with Rap, House, K-Pop, and yup, Metropopolis.And that brings us to two subgenres exclusive to Deezer and Amazon’s top playlists, respectively.On Deezer, the Pagode subgenre is seeing success on its Top Brazil and Explosão Brasil playlists, which makes total sense, considering it’s a form of Samba.Brazilians love it, too, as it dominates Explosão Brasil with a 20.8 percent share and comes in third on Top Brazil with 13.3 percent.Lilith, which claims 2.1 percent on Amazon’s Fresh Country and 5.8 percent on Amazon’s I Miss the ‘90s, seems to also be a geo-specific subgenre, with its roots in the Canadian-American traveling music festival, Lilith Fair, which featured an inspiring number of female-fronted folk and rock acts in the ‘90s.If you’re curious about what artists might fall into each of these subgenres — Brostep to Lilith, Etherpop to Crunk, Redneck to Metropopolis, or Pagode to … C86? — you’re in luck with our subgenre filter. Nerd out for free with a Chartmetric account!Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 26th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Highlights  Is there any relation between follower counts on streaming services and follower counts on social media? Here’s a sneak peek at the trends we’re tracking for some of the biggest artists in the 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.Don’t forget to reach out to us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn! We’d love to hear from you.DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, July 19th, 2019.What Follower Counts Say About Social and Streaming TrendsIn the old days, customers became fans if they not only bought CDs but also concert tickets — consistently and repeatedly.In the digital era, the live space is still important, but streaming platform followers and social media followers are the new metrics for measuring fandom. But does streaming popularity correlate with social media popularity?Is it consistent across the board, or does each streaming platform relate differently to each social platform?To test out these queries, we pulled follower data for artists topping the charts from January through June, and then determined the correlation coefficients for Spotify and Instagram, Spotify and Twitter, and Spotify and Facebook, repeating this process for YouTube, SoundCloud, and Deezer.What panned out from all of our calculations and pretty charts? For the whole story, you’ll have to stay tuned for something special we have in the works for the near future.In the meantime, here’s a teaser: One thing that pops out immediately is how poorly Facebook is correlated with streaming services across the board.If we take the average correlation across eight of the top artists for the past six months, Facebook turns up negligible negative correlation coefficients for Spotify and YouTube and negligible positive correlation coefficients for SoundCloud and Deezer.Instagram, on the other hand, turns up near one-to-one correlations with Spotify and YouTube.Twitter correlates pretty well with each streaming service — but nowhere near the Instagram correlation.In the words of our resident Data Scientist Josh Hayes, “Seems like many of the platforms are moving in similar directions together … except for Facebook.”While Facebook owns both platforms, it’s apparent, at least for the top performing artists, that Facebook Fan growth has either stopped, declined, or failed to keep pace with follower growth on four streaming services.Naturally, the story gets a bit more complicated as we begin to look at trends for particular artists, genres, and more, but hang in there — the full story is coming soon!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 19th 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

Highlights  In Part 3 of the music "trigger cities" mini-series, we explore the music tastes of Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janiero, Bogotá, Lima and Santiago.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, no “S ”- follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, July 17th, 2019.Latin America "Trigger" CitiesIn case you missed them, we have been working on a written mini-series called “trigger cities”, it’s a concept that Chartmetric’s Partner and Advisor, Chaz Jenkins, an international marketing guru coined many years ago.It’s the idea that in the streaming environment, our algorithms on YouTube, Spotify and all platforms are connected with the tastes of huge cities around the world who also love the same apps.Lauv, the uber-successful independent artist first saw playlist success with his 2017 hit “I Like Me Better” in Southeast Asia! Lauv...is not Asian, but SE Asians adore great pop love songs.Reggaeton from the likes of huge superstars like Colombia’s J Balvin and Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny are now on top playlists like Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, a primarily English-language playlist...but their come-up was based on Latin American listeners supporting them more than any other region.So in the interest of knowing what the local markets are like, we wrote about  seven different metropolitan areas in Latin America: Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janiero, Bogotá, Lima and Santiago.Five speak Spanish, two speak Brazilian Portuguese, and all love the YouTube.It’s a known fact that Latin America turns to the Google platform more than anything else to listen to music, and the numbers are quite impressive: Bogotá, despite having less than half (10.7M) of Mexico City’s population, took the #1 spot in YouTube views in one week last month with 26.5M views across 1.6M+ artists. The Mexican capital, however, was not far behind with 24.8M, and the two cities seem to be leading YouTube’s consumption in the region, with Lima a distant #3 with 17.1M views.On Spotify, Mexico City-as Spotify’s proclaimed “World’s Music-Streaming Mecca”-took the top spot in the same week with 2.3B non-unique monthly listeners (and this is admittedly odd metric, check the show notes for a link to the explanation), far outstripping Santiago in the #2 spot with 1.5B non-unique monthly listeners (MLs).When it comes to genres, we compiled genre tags on Shazam chart occurrences in these seven cities and found what sounds each city was most curious about when they flipped out their phones.“Urbano latino”-which is primarily reggaeton and Latin trap and the most popular in Santiago, Lima and Bogotá-didn’t show up at all in Brazil, with Brazilian-native genres such as “Sertanejo” (Brazilian country music) asserting their unique identity in the region, with Pop/Rock/Dance all showing strongly in the past month for both cities.This is contrary to the idea that all of Latin America loves reggaeton...just not true.On Instagram, who do you think are the ten most followed artists in the region?Well there’s Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé…...there’s also Maluma and Daddy Yankee...But do you know pop queen Anitta, local icon Ivete Sangalo, comedian-entertainer Whindersson Nunes or the Beyoncé-inspired Ludmilla? They’re all Brazilian, showing how much Brazilians love IG, and also how much they love their own country’s artists.So there’s a taste of Part 3 of our trigger cities mini-series, please do check it out on Medium or LinkedIn and let us know what you think! If you’re into Southeast Asia, we wrote about that too (Medium or LinkedIn). We hope they’re useful insights as you target social media campaigns, forge international collaborations or plan out a tour!Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 17th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, and we’ll see you Friday! 

Highlights  Who says music is all about young people and streaming? Amazon Music and American radio would beg to differ, and we’ll check out a couple of Australian artists who are doing well on them.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, no “S ”- follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.FYI, we’re scaling back to 2 episodes per week, why? Because we’re working on some special projects that we will certainly tell you about over the next few months, but we need to make the time to do them! So don’t worry, your phone isn’t playing games with your heart….it’s just us and the Backstreet Boys.Having said all that….DateThis is your Data Dump for Friday, July 12th, 2019.Vance Joy and AC/DC on Amazon Music and US RadioThe Financial Times reported yesterday on the rise of Amazon Music, and how it has experienced a 70 percent growth in subscribers in the past year.The head of Amazon Music- Steve Boom (that’s a great name for a music guy)-  noted that all the other platforms were playing for the younger crowds, but not older consumers. Apparently 14 percent of subscribers to Amazon Music are aged 55 or older, compared with just 5 percent of Spotify’s customers, according to Midia Research’s Mark Mulligan.Now on the radio side of things, Music Business Worldwide reported that AM/FM US radio consumption is growing! Take that, streaming.Radio reached more folks than any other entertainment platform in 2019, according to Nielsen’s Audio Today 2019 report.272M Americans fire up their radios each week, that is 7M more listeners than 2016...and why? Because Americans love their cars, and radios are just there.Now to help illustrate that with actual artists, we’ll turn to two of Australia’s biggest ones, relative newcomer Vance Joy and classic rock gods AC/DC.Vance Joy, the pop/folk singer-songwriter from Melbourne is currently on19 Amazon editorial playlists, including the contextual playlists Rise and Shine, Road Trip: Folk and a chart-like playlist: Best Folk Songs of 2017.His massive hit “Riptide” is actually NOT the most playlisted on the platform, it’s actually another one of his records, “Lay It On Me”, placing in 9 of those 19 Amazon Music playlists.On the 300 influential American radio stations we cover, Joy had as many as 506 spins in the week of Sept 24th 2018, and the week of July 1st, it was down to 91.But it’s all good because the state of Wisconsin LOVES Vance Joy, as his songs have been 1% of all the tracks that state’s radio stations have played since September. Pretty impressive.Now for all-time rock greats AC/DC, straight out of Sydney:They are on 14 Amazon editorial playlists, including the #2 slot on Classic Rock for Lifting, the #5 spot for Pre-Game Grilling, and the #1 spot for 80s Hard Rock Workout...who’s feeling some testosterone?AC/DC hits like “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Back in Black” seem to resonate most in Boston, Massachusetts and Gainesville, Florida…...but what’s really good to remember is that in case your phone runs out of battery, you can find either of these artists or others by flicking on the old car radio, or simply asking Alexa to do it for you.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 12th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, and we’ll see you next week! 

Highlights  On Part 1 of our streaming manipulation series, we took you on a wild ride into depths of playlist fixing. Today, on Part 2, we’re zeroing in on fake artists.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, July 1st, 2019.Enter the World of Streaming Manipulation, Part 2 - Fake ArtistsFor Part 1 of our streaming manipulation series, we covered some funny business in the playlisting world. On Part 2, we’re scratching a different part of streaming’s underbelly: fake artist accounts.Last November, Pop Buzz and others covered a mysterious account uploading ostensibly unreleased Ariana Grande tracks under the name Zandhr.As it turned out, the tracks had been available online for some time, but that didn’t change the fact that a streaming account reportedly not linked to Ariana Grande, according to the BBC, was uploading her intellectual property to potentially profit off of.While the Zandhr account has since been taken down, our data suggests the fake artist accrued 9.5K Spotify followers and almost 30K monthly Spotify listeners, in addition to landing an “Ariana Grande - Every Song” playlist with some 20K+ followers of its own.Playboi Carti found himself in a similar predicament when three different fake accounts — Lil Kambo, Unocarti, and Unocompac — started uploading his tracks, with some pitch-shifting his songs in an attempt to disguise the illegitimate uploads.While both Lil Kambo and Unocarti’s profiles appear to have been taken down, the former amassed a 50K+ playlist reach from 37 playlists and the latter almost a 20K playlist reach from 19 playlists.Unocompac, meanwhile, appears to still have at least one Playboi Carti song up, enjoying 14K Spotify followers and a 30K playlist reach from 54 playlists.The best — or worst — part is that Unocompac’s artist gallery on Spotify includes three out-of-focus nighttime shots of a white suburban teenager posing and throwing up fake gang signs.Shaking my damn head.While this all might seem rather innocuous, as most of these accounts never amass more than a couple of thousand followers, it’s important to remember ...One, fake artist accounts effectively steal intellectual property and income from the legitimate artists they’re “impersonating.”And two, fake artist accounts devalue the work of all legitimate artists who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into making and marketing their art. While this phenomenon probably isn’t something to worry about in the short-term, how it’s handled now will determine how big of a problem it becomes in the long-term.With so many metadata errors, artist-song mismatches, and unclaimed blackbox royalties as a result, the last thing artists need is an army of mysterious impersonators gaming the system. OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, July 1st, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Monday, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

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!

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!

HighlightsFollowing a panel including Beggars Group’s Martin Mills and Kill Rock Star’s Portia Sabin, we’re looking at artists on their rosters and asking, “What makes them two of indie music’s longest lasting labels?”  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 21, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 4Several Indie icons closed out A2IM’s Indie Week in New York City yesterday, two of them being the legendary Martin Mills and Dr. Portia Sabin sharing what’s helped them make Beggars Group and Kill Rock Stars, respectively, some of indie music’s longest lasting labels. Beggars Group is the parent company of 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador, XL Recordings and Young Turks.Mills started it in London in 1977, and his many labels have gone on to sign everyone from Adele to Radiohead.While Adele hasn’t released anything for some time, her 25 album, which released physically in November 2015 and digitally in June 2016 via a joint deal between XL Recordings and Sony’s Columbia, “single-handedly revived global album sales”, according to the Guardian.The album’s streaming success is no joke either, as it’s maintained a 70-80 Spotify Popularity Index score over the last three years, and has been included on upwards of 12.5K Spotify playlists.That kind of success under XL’s guidance gave Adele the leverage to be able to sign an enormous and unprecedented £90 million deal with Sony in May 2016.No doubt the industry will be keen to check her next album from one of the industry’s biggest major labels.Now entering the underground, since 2006, Sabin has run Pacific Northwest-based indie label Kill Rock Stars, which has been a home to riot grrrl legends Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, and folk rockers the Decemberists.Sabin’s roster is more niche than Mills’, but Kill Rock Stars’ ability to navigate catalog digitization and promotion has allowed their artists to prosper.Smith, for instance, maintains some 1.4M monthly listeners on Spotify, despite the fact that he passed away tragically in 2003. In March 2017, Kill Rock Stars released an expanded edition of his 1997 album Either/Or, which helped increase Smith’s Spotify followers by around 70 percent to 430K and spiked his monthly listenership by an estimated 250K. Whether by keen artist development or catalog revitalization, Beggars Group and Kill Rock Stars have each found a way to not only survive longer than most indie labels, but to also thrive while doing so.OutroThat’s it for Indie Week and your Daily Data Dump for Friday, June 21, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Friday, and have a great weekend!

2019-06-19 // A2IM Indie Week, Day 2: Spotify’s Indie Curators HighlightsSpotify and major label curators always move the needle, but with Day 2 of A2IM’s Indie Week in the bag, we’re looking at important indies of the bunch.Mission    Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, June 19, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 2With Day 2 of A2IM’s Indie Week in the bag, we’re looking at important indie curators moving the needle on Spotify.Way up at the top is PopFiltr, with nearly 5 million playlist followers across 13 playlists.Boasting a 13 percent follower growth rate over the last 28-day period, PopFiltr has plenty to brag about, and artists or labels can submit their songs for consideration at popfiltr.com. Indiemono is another hidden gem, with 2.2 million playlist followers across a jaw-dropping 252 playlists, which a little something for everyone.In the last 28 days, Indiemono experienced a 3 percent follower growth rate, and they also offer an easy song submission process at indiemono.com.There’s also the indie indies, or the individual curators who are so good at what they do, they continue to kill it flying solo. Take Ignatious Pop, for example, whose 451 playlists have just over 2 million followers and a 4 percent growth rate in the last 28 days.Or Jesuss Vargas Gonzalez, whose 93 playlists have 1.5 million followers and an 11 percent growth rate in the last 28 days.Landing their playlists is probably going to be a bit harder, as they’re less about submissions and more about discoveries.Also keep an eye on up-and-comers Playlist Pop, with a 71 percent growth rate…. Independent Hits, with a 539 percent growth rate, meaning they’re probably new and growing really fast….And ambitious LA-based indie label and playlist network Plvylists (who’ve swapped out the “A” for a “V”), with a 125 percent growth rate.The more that major streaming platforms corral the radio market, the more important curators will become as promoters of what’s hot, what’s new, and what’s never been heard.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, June 19, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Wednesday, and we’ll see you tomorrow from Indie Week!

HighlightsWe’re on the road! We’re at A2IM’s Indie Week in New York City, Day 1 is over and my feet hurt.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 Tuesday, June 18, 2019.A2IM Indie Week, Day 1Hi all, Jason reporting from New York City and this will admittedly be a quick one.Day 1 of Indie Week is over, wanted to first share some thoughts before we call it a night.In talks today with various labels, distributors, agencies and so on involved with different sectors of the music business, three takeaways were as follows:People might not always need super-charged, crazy data ninja magic insights...they simply want to know that they got on a playlist.Sometimes there’s so much going with multiple artists on a label roster or they have 30 Spotify or Apple for Artists tabs open, all with multiple tracks on playlists in different territories…...and you just want to know with a simple notification that a certain track made a playlist. We hear you, and simple can also be best.Stream count does not always equal revenue in other categories, like merchandise or branding opportunities or ticket sales.Dependent on genre or the way an artist engages with their fans, they may not be creating crazy streaming numbers on the typical music platforms, but they’ll still be selling out multiple shows or merch items.Maybe they resonate more on physical, or YouTube or terrestrial radio or TikTok, but the streaming playlist world isn’t the end all, be all.On the same token, just because an artist is highly touted with ba-jillion streams, doesn’t necessarily mean they do as well in other revenue categories.So make sure you’re taking all types of data into account, not just spins...any maybe what you really need to be tracking still has yet to find a quality, scalable data solution.Sharing data insights with your artists can help encourage desired behavior.Maybe your artist doesn’t like social media. Maybe they don’t want to tour in a particular part of town. Maybe they don’t want to work on a collaboration with another artist who could widen your fan base...these are all understandable things that from an artist’s perspective, might not be very obvious moves and might feel too “businessey” for them to buy into as a creative being.But most artists today I’d argue are quite data-savvy, and if you shared a certain chart of how that one Tweet you did get them to do helped get them 10 or 100 more followers for them to connect with down the road, all the better. Or that even though they just want to tour stateside...what if they saw their last EP over-indexed by 35% in monthly listeners in Jakarta, Indonesia in the past month...maybe it’s time to renew that passport?All this to say: of course you’re sharing your coolest data insights with your marketing team or promotion person or what have you….but consider being more proactive with sharing them with your artist, because they might just appreciate it!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 18, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Tuesday, we’ll see you tomorrow from Indie Week! Peace.

HighlightsWe’re on the road! We’re at A2IM’s Indie Week in New York City and so we’ll publish our music data-related thoughts and experiences for you starting in tomorrow’s episode in case you can’t make it.But for today, we’ll celebrate the indie community on Amazon Music with an indie-focused New Music Friday Monday!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 Monday, June 17, 2019.New Music Friday Monday: Fresh Indie on AmazonHopping over to the “Fresh Indie” playlist on Amazon Music, we’ve got no less than 60 tracks of the most brand spanking new independent music in the streaming world.The tracks all come from over 35 different indie labels to include 4AD, ATO Records and XL recordings.Over 64% of the artists featured are from the US, 16% from the UK, and then Canada/Norway/Australia/New Zealand making up the rest of the Anglo-focused playlist.Just under half of the list has either the indiepop, folk-pop or indietronica genre tag attached to it, with 15+ other genre tags thrown in to make for a diverse-sounding set.In the #4 position is the funk-addled “Mary Always” instrumental track by Houston-born band Khruangbin, mixing soul, dub, psychedelia, and Thai funk.The track is currently on nine Spotify editorial playlists including All New Indie w/ 958K followers and 2 Apple editorial playlists including Today’s Indie Rock.The great playlist promotion is coming out of Bloomington, Indiana, where the track’s Dead Oceans label is housed with the Secretly Group, an umbrella of indie labels putting out rock music of different flavors.In the #9 spot is the spacious, introspective track “Conversation Piece” by Memphis, Tennessee’s Julien Baker.Currently on no Spotify editorial playlists and 1 Apple editorial playlist, the Late Night Menu, the Matador Records release is the latest from the singer-songwriter known for heart-wrenching lyricism and melody.What’s uber cool about Baker is that she is also part of supergroup boygenius, also under Matador, with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, kind of following the K-pop model of supergroup splitting off into solo careers, but just the reverse, as boygenius formed in 2018 and each member had solo careers as early as 2014. Last but not least is “Flood Hands” by Vagabon, coming from Nonesuch Records.Vagabon is in the #12 slot on the Amazon playlist, currently on 3 Spotify editorial playlists, also including All New Indie with Khruangbin and 2 Apple editorial playlists, also including Today’s Indie Rock.Released on June 13, it’s the latest from the Cameroon-born multi-instrumentalist now based in NYC...where we are this week for A2IM’s Indie Week!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 17, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Monday, we’ll see you tomorrow from NYC’s Indie Week floor! Bye.

HighlightsIt’s time to hit the road again, so we’re heading down south to trigger city São Paulo, Brazil. What makes it such an important global music marketplace?Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Thursday, June 13th, 2019.Excursion Thursday: Trigger City São Paulo, BrazilWe’re hitting the road again, heading down south to trigger city São Paulo, Brazil, to see what makes it such an important global music marketplace. First, it’s important to note that São Paulo is also a state in Brazil — naturally, the state in which São Paulo, the city, is located. Obviously, this presents some major metadata problems, which are compounded by the fact that São Paulo (with a tilde) and “Sao Paulo” (without a tilde) are reported as different cities. Adjusting for metadata errors, the city, which is Brazil’s wealthiest and most populous, is ranked third in the world for non-unique monthly Spotify listeners, based on our calculations from a week in May.For that same week, São Paulo came in ninth for global YouTube views.They’re really living up to their city motto, “I am not led; I lead.”It’s not just local artists and the longstanding sertanejo style updated for younger people skyrocketing São Paulo with regional streams.Scanning our top artists charts, the city comes up on three of the Top 10 artists — namely, J Balvin, Justin Bieber, and Shawn Mendes — as somewhere people listen most.Of the Top 100 artists globally according to our Cross-Platform Performance metric, São Paulo is in the Top 5 listener cities for 26, or just a bit more than a quarter, of them.Zooming in a bit and looking at Top Artists by Spotify Monthly Listeners on São Paulo’s city page, Brazilian artists do tend to dominate, with the 10 most listened-to artists, except for Lady Gaga, calling Brazil home.On Top Artists by YouTube Views, the Top 10 are all Brazilian as well, but when it comes to Top Artists by Shazam Chart Occurrences, only two Brazilians make the Top 10, suggesting São Paulo locals are loyal to their countrymen and countrywomen on major streaming platforms, but Shazam is where they learn what’s happening in the Anglo music world.And they certainly have an ear for British and American hits like “Giant” by Calvin Harris and Rag ‘n’ Bone Man or “Happier” by Marshmello and Bastille.With a population comparable to New York City and Los Angeles combined, São Paulo tops each of those cities on the global stage, thanks to a musical ecosystem — not to mention tradition — as robust as the Amazon rainforest and an appetite for pop hits from their neighbors on the northern side of the Tropic of Cancer.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, June 13th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.If you’re interested in learning more about trigger cities, check out Jason’s in-depth analysis on our blog at blog.chartmetric.io.Free accounts are at chartmetric.comAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Thursday, and see you tomorrow!

HighlightsSpecial interview episode today: Does data science scare you? Does it keep you up at night when you hear or read about it at a panel or on some podcast, and you think to yourself, “I have no idea what they are talking about.”Rest easy and let Chartmetric’s Resident Data Scientist assuage your fears.How do you measure artist success across multiple streaming, social and other Internets platforms? We might have something for you.Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason and Josh here at Chartmetric usually with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, June 12th, 2019.Interview OutlineWhat is Cross-Platform Performance scoring and ranking on Chartmetric?Josh’s blog article / CPP explanationCPP measurementsStage: This is the amount of “reach” or “exposure” that an artist has over audiences. The bigger the stage, the more people actively listening, watching, or consuming what the artist is creating.Followers: This is the size of an artist’s “fanbase” or an artist’s “stickiness” with audiences. Followers have opted into tracking an artist and therefore are more likely to re-engage with the artist’s products in the future. Followers are not actively engaging with an artist all the time, but artists have an easier job of connecting with followers than non-followers.Cool CPP video to visualize the data science (made by Graphic & Motion Design Artist Anastasiya Bulavkina)Philosophical debate: what is “best” nowadays?Is there a way for people to reach out to you on the Interwebs, Josh?Josh’s LinkedIn profilehi (at) chartmetric (dot) comOutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, June 12th, 2019. This is Josh and Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Wednesday, see you tomorrow!

2019-06-11 // Technique Tuesday: DJ Khaled vs. Tyler, the Creator HighlightsDJ Khaled is taking on Billboard’s charting calculations and Tyler, the Creator is caught in the crossfire. So, how do the two artists stack up in the streaming world?Mission   Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Tuesday, June 11th, 2019.Technique Tuesday: DJ Khaled vs. Tyler, the CreatorYesterday, Music Business Worldwide and Pitchfork reported that DJ Khaled, who just released his new album “Father of Asahd,” is taking on Billboard’s charting methods following the album’s No. 2 placement on the Billboard 200 Albums chart behind Tyler, the Creator’s “Igor.”At the heart of the issue is a discrepancy in physical album sales due to the practice of bundling, or wrapping up the sale of an album with the sale of merchandise.Here are the numbers: Billboard credited Tyler, the Creator with 165,000 total album sales for the week, and DJ Khaled with 137,000. For “Igor,” that’s 74,000 physical albums sold, 90,000 Streaming Equivalent Albums sold (SEA) and 1,000 Track, or download, Equivalent Albums sold (TEA).For “Father of Asahd,” the same breakdown came out to 35,000 physical, 95,000 SEA, and 7,000 TEA.So far, the ostensibly arbitrary SEA measurement isn’t DJ Khaled’s issue here, but if he really is pursuing a lawsuit, then Billboard’s charting methods for streams could come under scrutiny as well.Here’s how they’re calculating it: According to the New York Times’ Ben Sisario, four years ago, 1,500 streams equalled the equivalent of one physical album sale, but Billboard’s new method comes out to 1,250 for paid streams and 3,750 for free streams.We can’t measure differentiated streams for DJ Khaled and Tyler, the Creator according to Billboard’s new method, but we can use our Analyze function to visibly compare the changes in their monthly Spotify listeners on a custom chart.While Tyler starts off at an estimated 6.5 million monthly listeners, DJ Khaled is at an estimated 18 million around the release of their albums on May 17.By the end of the week, Tyler has crossed the 10 mil threshold and DJ Khaled has racked up an estimated 20.7 mil. This means Tyler experienced a more than 50% growth rate in monthly listeners and DJ Khaled only around 15% for their album debut week ending on May 23.However, DJ Khaled still ends up with around twice as many monthly Spotify listeners for the week. Does this translate to what Billboard calculated as each artist’s SEA? That’s difficult to say, because each unique monthly listener only gets counted once for every 28-day period -- no matter how many times they play a track.While DJ Khaled is more exposed on the playlist front, Tyler saw a bigger gain in monthly listeners during their album release week.Tyler also overtook Khaled’s Spotify Popularity Index score with a 92, vs. Khaled’s 88, out of 100.Based on this data, Tyler’s “Igor” is complementing his catalogue and driving more of his streaming collectively, while DJ Khaled’s success depends on a handful of mega hits.It’s a cult hip-hop icon vs. a Top 40 superstar, but DJ Khaled, with some 2.8 billion YouTube video views for the week in question, compared to just 442 million for Tyler, the Creator, shouldn’t have too much to complain about.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 11th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.comHappy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsShazam isn’t just in the music fingerprinting and identification game — it’s also playlisting on Apple Music with Shazam Recommends: Best New Music. 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 Monday, June 10, 2019.New Music Friday Monday: Shazam’s Best New Music Recommendations … on Apple Music?Did you know that Shazam moonlights as playlisting curator on Apple Music?It’s currently managing 11 official playlists, including a mix of prediction-oriented genre-based ones like “Shazam Risers: Latin” or “Shazam Risers: K-Pop”, or exclusive celebrity playlists from the likes of David Guetta or BLACKPINK.Interestingly, Shazam also runs the “Shazam Recommends: The Best New Music” playlist, which is refreshed primarily on Fridays and Saturdays.Apple acquired Shazam in September of 2018, though we have Shazam playlists dating back to early 2017.So now that Shazam is now officially an Apple asset, it’s likely Apple Music is incorporating Shazam’s unique predictive dataset as a way to predict future hits...but does it actually work?If we compare last week’s Shazam “Best New Music” playlist with the Apple Music Top 100 charts today, we can try to see if- at least within the Apple Music platform- that actually becomes true or not.After some quick spot checks, the Shazam “Best New Music” playlist is actually global: it’s the same tracks and ordering no matter which country storefront you’re listening from. So the best comparison would naturally be the Apple Music Top 100 Global chart.The last Shazam “Best New Music” playlist was updated on June 1st, and comparing it to today’s Apple Top 100 global chart, there are actually four tracks in common:“The London” by Young Thug at #2 on the Top 100“Cross Me” by Ed Sheeran at #28“Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel at #59“Easier” by Five Seconds of Summer at #66 of the Top 100So out of last week’s “Best New Music” playlist, 4 of out of the 24 total tracks ended up charting one week later, about 15%. Pretty cool.Now, cross-checking last week’s “Best New Music” playlist, but now comparing it to Shazam’s own Top 200 chart, which is its own chart independent of the Apple platform, we have the same, and only the same, four tracks pop up: the ones from Young Thug, Ed Sheeran, Mabel and Five Seconds of Summer.That’s interesting because finding tracks that are only on Apple’s Top charts are subject to Apple algorithms and other playlists, while Shazam Top charts are privy to being played in public spaces and people having the app and Shazaming those tracks.But to find the same track on both charts, must really mean that the tracks are achieving a kind of success both in user curiosity and actual streaming activity on one of biggest platforms in the world.Now, what feeds Shazam’s “Best New Music” playlist in the first place, as they are all new releases and so Shazam doesn’t really have any data on them...well, we don’t know either.Maybe they are doing granular music analysis on the song waveforms or maybe it’s just a result of traditional playlist pitching, but what we can measure in the data, is see which ones stick. Just give it a week!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 10, 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!

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!