2019-06-04 // Charting the End of iTunes HighlightsIn the wake of Apple’s announcement that it will end the iTunes digital download as we know it, we’re scanning the iTunes Charts to see what, if anything, will be lost.    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 4th, 2019.Charting the End of iTunesToday, we’re looking at the U.S. iTunes Charts following Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) announcement that it will be ending the iTunes digital download as we know it and spinning out the iTunes app into three separate apps for Apple Music, podcasts, and television.What will that mean for the music you already purchased and downloaded? Rest assured, Apple is making provisions for the digital downloads you already own. The company wouldn’t be ending the iTunes digital download era without good cause — namely, most consumers stream; they don’t mp3 anymore.That said, what will be lost? We’re gonna walk you through how to figure that out using the iTunes Top 100 Tracks and iTunes Albums charts for U.S. storefronts.Looking solely at chart position, there’s a lot of correlation between high performing pop downloads and high performing pop streams on Apple’s iTunes and Music apps, respectively. Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road,” Katy Perry’s “Never Really Over,” Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s “I Don’t Care,” and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” being prime examples.Differences emerge with different genres, however. At No. 2 on the U.S. iTunes chart for June 3rd is John Rich’s “Shut Up About Politics,” which is nowhere on the Apple Music Daily Tracks chart. Blake Shelton’s “God’s Country,” which is at No. 6 on the U.S. iTunes chart for June 3rd, ranks just 89th on the U.S. Apple Music Daily Tracks. It’s a similar story for Morgan Wallen’s “Whiskey Glasses” at No. 7 on iTunes but No. 71 on Apple Music, and for Luke Combs’ “Beer Never Broke My Heart” at No. 12 on iTunes but No. 64 on Apple Music. What will this mean for country fans who tend to prefer digital downloads? In 2017, Pandora's chief executive, Tim Westergren, saw promise in converting country listeners into paying subscribers considering how active country fans and artists are on the platform. We’ll see if the end of iTunes chases country fans from Apple to Pandora, but that would still require an adjustment from a download oriented consumer base to a streaming oriented consumer base.iTunes has also been huge for another important segment of the music industry: movie soundtracks. Looking at chart summaries by artist, Elton John and Will Smith have nine and four tracks on the iTunes Top 100, respectively, and it’s all thanks to the recent Elton John biopic, Rocket Man, and Guy Ritchie’s live-action Aladdin movie, starring Will Smith as the genie. Jumping over to the iTunes Albums in All Genres chart for June 3rd, the Aladdin soundtrack is at No. 3 and various Elton John albums and/or compilations scatter the top 10. Amazingly, the soundtrack for The Greatest Showman — a movie released two years ago — is at No. 9.While the end of iTunes probably won’t affect income streams for most artists — as the majority of music consumers have largely forgotten about mp3s anyway — for country music stars and artists on movie soundtracks, the end of this era just might sting a little. OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 4th, 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!

HighlightsIt’s Excursion Thursday, we’re teleporting to Tokyo, Japan, where local music matters for Spotify and Instagram, but not for Shazam. What does that say about public and private listening habits in Tokyo?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 Thursday, May 30th, 2019.Excursion Thursday:As Japan’s capital and the world’s largest city with a population of around 38 million, Tokyo is the heart of the No. 2 music market in the world.Despite streaming’s rescue of the global music industry from a $14.6B decline in global revenue since the 2000s, a lot of Japanese simply don’t care as 71% of their local recorded music revenue in 2018 came from physical sales.Along with their love of physical music goods, Japan’s consumer base also remains faithful to its local artists. According to Ichiro Asatsuma, Chairman of Fujipacific Music., the breakdown of the country’s physical sales is typically 85-90% Japanese repertoire and 10-15% international.Now how does this percentage distribution hold up in Tokyo’s digital market? Looking at Top Artists by Spotify Monthly Listeners in the past month, 18 of the top 25 are Japanese, and by recent Instagram Followers, 15 of the Top 25 Artists are also local. But Spotify and Instagram are generally more private platforms when it comes to use, at least in comparison to an audio fingerprinting app like Shazam, which is utilized in a public space like a bar or a club.So, what’s the Shazam spread look like? Of the 25 Top Artists by Shazam Chart Occurrences in the past month, only three are Japanese.So recently, locals tend to prefer Japanese artists on Spotify and Instagram, at 72 and 60 percent respectively, but not at quite the same 85-90 percent distribution that Asatsuma suggests for physical.On Shazam, the preference for Japanese artists bottoms out at only 12% domestic.This suggests that Tokyo locals are more likely to listen to their fellow countrymen and women when they’re in a personal streaming mode and they’re simply curious about foreign music when they’re in a public environment.But YouTube, arguably the most “global” platform of this bunch and the 2nd most visited website in the world, seems to have more of a globalizing effect on Tokyo’s use of it. Looking at Top Artists by local YouTube Video Views, only eight of the top 25 are Japanese. Same story when it comes to Top Tracks by local YouTube Views, with just three of the top 10 originating in Japan. That’s a 32 and a 30 percent distribution, respectively, indicating international preference just might increase the more global the streaming platform gets.Granted, these streaming stats are from the last 28 days, so they’re more current, and also susceptible to fluctuation and recent releases...so if a few Japanese bangers make some great YouTube videos next month, then the numbers might be telling a different story.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, May 30th, 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 Thursday, see you tomorrow!

Highlights It’s Winner Wednesday, and we’re scanning the top of the SoundCloud and QQ Music charts to see what moods are winning out on two very different streaming platforms. Mission    Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.Date This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, May 29th, 2019.Winner Wednesday: Welcome back to this week’s Winner Wednesday, where we’re scanning the SoundCloud and QQ Music charts to see what song valences are winning out on those two very different streaming platforms.First, what the heck is valence? Think of it as the mood or emotional quality of a track. With high valence songs, there’s going to be more positive or cheerful energy, and low valence songs are going to sound a bit more negative, sad, or angry. In other words, 100 percent valence suggests a song might be the happiest you’ve ever heard. 0 percent valence suggests it’s going to be downright depressing.Note that we measure valence irrespective of lyrical content, so there’s plenty potential for a low valence song to have uplifting lyrics, but that’s not typically the case.  Looking at the top of the SoundCloud charts for May 18-24, there’s a clear and unsurprising frontrunner when it comes to genre: hip-hop. In fact, the genre overwhelms the Top 100 consistently, making the Swedish-founded streaming service almost exclusively important to the rap scene. Why does this matter for valence? SoundCloud was crucial for helping niche sub-genres like emo rap and trap — both of which tend to be characterized by melancholy — go mainstream. So much so, in fact, that dark and gritty “SoundCloud rap” has become a genre altogether.   So, is it borne out in the data? For the most part, yes. At No. 1, “Shotta Flow” by NLE Choppa has a 45 percent valence measurement; at No. 3, “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X is at 47 percent; and if we dip down to No. 4 and No. 5, “Pop Out” by Polo G featuring Lil TJay is only at 25 percent and Earfquake by Tyler, the Creator is only at 41 percent. The outlier here is “Suge” by DaBaby, which is at No. 2 with 85 percent valence.  And that brings us to Chinese streaming service and Tencent subsidiary, QQ Music. Looking at the platform’s Western Music Chart behavior during a similar timeframe, pop and dance are the genre frontrunners, with 50 of 96 songs tagged with those genre identifiers. Here, hip-hop only accounts for eight. With pop and dance frontloading QQ Music’s Western Music Chart, you’d probably expect high valence songs at the top. Would you be right?“Me!” by Taylor Swift featuring Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie, “Rescue Me” by One Republic, and “If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes hit the high notes here with 66, 64, and 82 percent valence measurements, respectively. But Carly Rae Jepsen and Lana Del Rey, at No. 4 and No. 5, bring out our sensitive side with 37 and 45 percent. Taking the average valence of the top five on each of these charts gives us a total score of 48.6 percent valence for SoundCloud. QQ Music, meanwhile, is a bit less moody at 58.8 percent valence. So, does SoundCloud have more edge? We can’t say that definitively across the board, but we can say that the top of the SoundCloud Chart is less positively valenced than the top of QQ’s Western Music Chart when it comes to mood — and it’s all in the genres each streaming service caters to, which might suggest something about audience geography. Does China have a bigger appetite for happy pop than Westerners with a palette more open to edgy rap?Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, May 29th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Have a winning Wednesday, see you tomorrow!

Highlights It’s Found on Friday, and we’re digging in with our A&R tool to find breaking artists based on YouTube Channel Views, and that’s important, because YouTube is technically the most popular streaming platform in the world.Mission    Good morning, it’s Rutger again at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.Date This is your Data Dump for Friday, May 24th 2019.Found on Friday: Momoiro Clover Z, Yella Beezy & Junip Welcome back to Found on Friday. We’re digging in with our A&R tool to find artists breaking through the surface in a global way. If we search according to highest growth percentage in YouTube Channel Views, we land on three artists with notable momentum on YouTube right now: Momoiro Clover Z, Yella Beezy, and Junip.First up, J-pop group, let's call them MCZ for short, the first to make theme music for Sailor Moon, Pokémon, AND Dragonball Z, in addition to being the fourth highest grossing artist in Japan in 2013, based on CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray sales — yes, physical is still VERY important in the Japanese music market — they've experienced a 14 percent growth in their YouTube channel views over the last 28-day period.Their Spotify monthly listeners have spiked almost 29 percent over the last 30 days as well. But the group is not new, so what shot them to the top of the breaking list? Well ... they did just come out with a new album on May 17th.…Just about tied with MCZ is Texas rapper Yella Beezy, whose growth percentage is up to 14.4 percent this period from the previous 30 days’ 9.5 percent. Yella Beezy, whose latest track features Gucci Mane and Quavo from Migos, also soared 16 spots from No. 50 to No. 34 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. Switching gears altogether now for Sweden’s folk rock duo Junip, composed of soft-spoken singer-songwriter Jose Gonzalez and Tobias Winterkorn, who experienced a 13 percent jump in the last 28 day-period. This correlates with a 10.2 percent increase in their YouTube channel subscribers over the last 30 days, which is surprising, as it doesn’t look like they’ve released anything recently…. Maybe fans of Rogue Wave and Ben Howard got turned on to them? We don’t know. What we do know is Junip’s monthly Spotify listeners dropped an estimated .2 percent in the last 30 days, but their Spotify followers increased .4 percent in the same period. So, no, not all streaming services are created equal.Check out these stats: YouTube is technically the biggest music streaming source in the world, with close to a billion users consuming music via user upload video streaming. Compare that with just over 200 million users consuming music via “traditional” streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, and the importance of YouTube stats as some indication of an artist’s digital presence worldwide becomes clear.So there you have it — a Japanese idol group, a Texas rapper, and a Swedish folk duo comprise an eclectic trio of international artists on a YouTube hot streak right now.Outro That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, May 24th 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Friday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsGrab your passports, it’s Excursion Thursday, and we’re headed to Mumbai, India’s largest city and Spotify’s largest potential market.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 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019.Excursion Thursday: MumbaiOn today’s Excursion Thursday, we’re taking off to India’s most populated city, Mumbai, which has quickly become a testing ground for Spotify’s global expansion strategy. Until 1995, the “Hollywood of India” was also called Bombay, what many in India saw as a vestige of British colonialism, hence the name change. The city’s booming movie industry lends the city its other famous moniker, “Bollywood”.Mumbai is not only the wealthiest city in India, but it’s also arguably the financial, arts, and entertainment capital of the entire country with an estimated 22.5 million  Mumbaikars more than doubling the population of New York City!It’s clear why Spotify’s weathering its recent challenges in-country, as India’s population is currently at 1.4 billion and climbing — that’s almost 20 percent of everybody on earth, while North America comprises around 5 percent. So, if Spotify’s been able to acquire an estimated 50M monthly active users out of North America’s 366M people and an estimated 60M monthly active users out of Europe’s 743M people, that gives them a market penetration rate lying somewhere between 8 and 15 percent. Apply that to a population of 1.4B, and SPOT’s stock price will rise, for sure.So, based on the city’s listening profile….how’s it going? Unfortunately, it’s too early to tap into Spotify’s local monthly listeners, but we can at least look at other Western platforms that are operating there.Mumbai’s Shazam and YouTube charts definitely reflect the battle between domestic and foreign repertoire preferences.According to the Top 90 tracks by Shazam Chart Occurrences in the past month, a total of 22 bear Indian ISRC codes. That’s around 25% of total Shazam’d tracks we captured, while there are 38 US-based ISRCs present, about 40%.Moving to Shazam’s most charted artists in Mumbai over the last 30 days, American rappers Swae Lee and Lil Nas X come in 1st and 3rd with 52 and 47 chart appearances, respectively, and Puerto Rican singer Farruko in 2nd with 50. Fourth and 5th place go to film music composers Vishal-Shekhar and star singer Arijit Singh with 42 and 41 chart appearances each.Using Top Tracks by YouTube Views, we see a mixed bag at the top, with T. Swift and Brendon Urie’s “Me!” at 235K average daily views and Katy Perry and Migos’ “Bon Appétit” at 77K daily views in 1st and 3rd place respectively. Second place goes to “Aankh Mare” from Bollywood movie Simmba sitting pretty at 188K views. Genre-wise on the Shazam charts in the past month, it’s still a battle between local and foreign fare: with Hip-Hop at 11 genre tags from mostly American artists, Dance at 15 genre tags from an international artist roster, and Pop at 22 genre tags from both Western and Indian artists. Twelve of Pop genre tags are from domestic artists, suggesting there’s a slight skew in the past month  toward the local when it comes to the genre.While Spotify competes with the entrenched Indian streaming service JioSaavn, partly headquartered in Mumbai and specializing in Bollywood music , Mumbai’s demand for both Indian and Western music will prove to either be Spotify’s ace in the hole or rock in its shoe.OutroThat’s a wrap for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday, May 23nd, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Hope you’re not too jet-lagged from today’s Excursion Thursday, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

HighlightsIt’s Winner Wednesday again, and we’re looking at who’s hot on the Spotify and Deezer charts to examine just how global Europe’s biggest streaming services are?Mission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists, and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019.Winner Wednesday: Deezer & Spotify...who's more global?On today’s Winner Wednesday, we’re looking at who’s hot on Europe’s biggest streaming services, Spotify and Deezer, on their Top 200 Spotify and Top 100 Deezer track charts for May 20th. The #1 and #2 tracks are the same across both platforms, with “emerging artists” Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber taking the lead spot with “I Don’t Care”, tallying 58.4M streams on Spotify this week and having a 10/10 popularity score on Deezer. Holding strong for almost two months now, Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” occupies the #2 position on both apps, with 41.4M streams on Spotify this week and a 9.95/10 popularity score on Deezer currently. But starting from #3 down, the differences between Sweden’s Spotify and France’s Deezer are as wide as the North Sea in between them.For example, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road (Remix)” was 3rd on Spotify’s chart but only 9th on Deezer, where Daddy Yankee’s “Con Calma” took 3rd on Deezer but only 14th on Spotify.Shawn Mendes and the late Avicii both appear in each platform’s Top 10 in different places, but otherwise the tracks are completely different.Let’s look at the daily chart summaries: Billie Eilish has 13 songs on Spotify’s Top 200 chart, followed by Tyler, the Creator with 11, Post Malone with 8, with Cardi B and Khalid at 6 tracks each. On Deezer, a blast from the past: Neue Deutsche Härte (or German industrial metal) group Rammstein hold the top spot with 10 tracks in the Deezer Top 100 since their May 17th self-titled album release. For those that were of musical awareness in 1998, the German rockers managed to peak on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart at #20 and even appear on MTV’s Total Request Live, which was then the epicenter of US pop culture.Puerto Rico’s Ozuna followed Rammstein with 8 tracks in the Deezer Top 100, and fellow reggaeton kings Daddy Yankee, J Balvin and Anuel AA took the 3rd, 4th and 5th spot with 6 tracks each that day. Note that Spotify’s most placed artists this week are decidedly American, while Deezer’s winners are German, Colombian, and Puerto Rican. So, is Deezer the more global streaming service between the two?Well technically, yes: Deezer is operating in 187 countries compared to Spotify’s 79, though stateside, the now publicly-traded Spotify takes up most of our headlines.But remember: Deezer really just started expanding into the U.S. since 2016, and is privately owned by American conglomerate Access Industries, who also happens to own all of Warner Music Group. So keep your eyes peeled for different charts and each platform’s preferences, as it always helps to remember that no matter where your fans come from, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube, Apple Music, and Amazon listeners all buy the same concert ticket!OutroThat’s a wrap for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Have a winning Wednesday, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

HighlightsThis Technique Tuesday brings you a fresh way to take a bite out of your data by learning how to curate the curators, the streaming world’s sometimes mysterious movers and doers. Mission   No, this isn’t Jason with a cold; it’s Chartmetric’s newest voice, Rutger Rosenborg, and I’m happy to be here uploading 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, May 21st, 2019.Technique Tuesday: Curating the CuratorsOn today’s Technique Tuesday, we’re bringing you a fresh way to take a bite out of your data with a spoonful of meta-curation. Curators are the sometimes mysterious movers and doers of the streaming world determining what’s hot, what’s not, and what might have a shot — and all with a playlist. It might not be a surprise to anyone that Apple and Spotify are themselves the biggest curators in the streaming world — after all, they control their own DSPs. Let’s look at the green giant, Spotify,  which has a whopping 7,000-plus self-curated playlists to its name…. with a staggering 1.1 billion followers. How does that work, if its total user count is something like 200 million, counting both premium and ad-based users? Well, users must like Spotify playlists enough to subscribe to tons of them.On the other side of the ring, despite its lower worldwide subscriber count, as a curator, Apple boasts more than twice the number of playlists than Spotify at around 17,500, all said and done.C’est tout? Non, less is more for French streaming service Deezer, which  interestingly features official curators composed of a combination of geographic or genre based anonymous “editors” and face-forward “editors” like Fabio from Brazil, Emilia from Romania, and Stanislav from Russia. While Deezer’s playlist count is low, on the order of 1,500 or so dispersed amongst some 40-odd official Deezer editors, each editor ranges from thousands to multi-millions of followers.There’s also Amazon’s mysterious Music Experts, who dictate all 2,800 playlists in their ecosystem, from “All Hits” to “Country Heat,” and “Pop Culture” to “I Miss the ‘90s.” “Cleaning the House” is a good one too, by the way.But we’re talking macro level here. Let’s get into the weeds. As a curator, Spotify is clearly geared toward frontline pop hits, with its “Today’s Top Hits” playlist absolutely dominating the platform in terms of both listenership, at an estimated 5.7 million a month, and also follower count, at 23.2 million. Apple Music, on the other hand, is a bit more evenly dispersed, with its Hip-Hop, Alternative, and Pop sub-curators sitting at around 1,300 playlists each. Jazz, Rock, Indie, and Country hover between 800 and 1,000. Deezer is a bit more difficult to parse, numbers wise, because its curation focus is more geographic based. Suffice it to say, you’re probably not going to want to hit up Fabio for a Country Western pitch anytime soon.Still too macro? Then it’s microscope time. What about those other curators — you know, the ones who aren’t necessarily funded by billion-dollar corporations.On second thought … Fltr, Digster, and Topsify are three of the biggest third-party playlist curators, and they’re owned by Sony, Universal, and Warner, respectively. While it’s no secret where their curation interests lie, there are still the classic DJ tastemakers like Dmitri Vegas & Like Mike, who boast close to 2 million EDM-focused followers, or market-specific influencers like Hugo Gloss with 1.4 million Brazil-focused followers.What’s clear here is that Spotify and Deezer are somewhat more democratic and accessible platforms for individual tastemakers with some skin in the game. Aside from prominent artists, individual users have managed to rack up hundreds of thousands of followers and exert influence on the playlist game. Apple Music and Amazon Music, on the other hand, have a tighter grip on the curation wheel, making their platforms more difficult to penetrate for third-party tastemakers. OutroThat’s a wrap for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, May 21st, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.Have a good rest of your Tuesday, and long live King Bran the Broken!

HighlightsIt’s Found on Friday: we dig up an American rapper, a Dutch DJ and Albanian pop star spiking in their Spotify Popularity Index.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 May 17th 2019.Found on Friday: MAJ, Adam Brown & XhensilaIt’s Found on Friday where we dip into our A&R tool to find emerging artists making their way into the public eye.If we search by the biggest change in Spotify Popularity Index (or SPI) in the past 28 days, we uncover three artists with very different backgrounds: Amercian rapper MAJ, Dutch DJ/producer Adam Brown and Albanian pop star Xhensila.I hope I’m saying these artists’ names correctly, here we go.Going from 1 to 39 SPI in the past month is MAJ, currently based out of Dallas, Texas, featuring “grunge-inflected production, soulful delivery, and nocturnal hip-hop with stark vulnerability and confessional storytelling.”With 155K Spotify monthly listeners and only 3K followers, this gives him a listeners to followers ratio of 51, which for a strong signal for him.From April 26th to May 3rd, he enjoyed a #47 slot on the 100-track New Music Friday playlist, which has 3.2M followers currently.MAJ is still enjoying a Spotify editorial playlist placement on the Shisha Lounge playlist at 375K followers, but more interestingly, he’s on 27 playlists with more than 10K followers that seem to be focused on sub-culture categories such as “sad” or “emo rap” or gaming culture playlists like EA Sports’ NHL franchise. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that these lower-tier playlists are likely playing a big part in MAJ’s strong rise on the platform.Adam Brown in the Netherlands currently has 11 dance music tracks on Spotify, with his latest track “Your Body” being what seems to be driving his SPI rise in the past month from 1 to 31.This increase isn’t from Spotify playlisting, as he’s on no editorial playlists, and his biggest one is currently “Dance Hits” by curator globalmusicx with only 6.5K followers.The reasons for his jump in SPI in late April is not clear, but by checking his Twitter, it may be from a more organic off-platform source via his own hosted local dance radio show or possibly from club play, given the very electronic music-oriented region and that his #2 and #3 top Spotify monthly listener cities are very locally Dutch: Ermelo and Harderwijk. Definitely butchered those names.Last but not least is pop star Xhensila from Albania, who represents the kind of “emerging artist” that is only emerging to the Spotify market, as Xhensila is already a big deal in her part of the world.In the past month, she jumped from an SPI of 2 to 56 despite having only 100 monthly listeners with 449 followers for a ratio under 1.Her most followed playlist, “Albanian Hits 2019” has 20K followers, but her six total tracks don’t seem to be generating that much attention playlisting wise.More than likely, Xhensila’s Spotify popularity is being generated by her 1.3M followers on Instagram, where her streaming link in her IG bio leads to Spotify. One of the lessons that can be gleaned here is that Spotify statistics are just Spotify statistics...Xhensila obviously is quite the star in Albania, further proven by her 154K YouTube followers and her nine very popular music videos there, the biggest one hitting 39M views to date.So we’ll leave you for the weekend with an American rapper, Dutch DJ and Albanian pop queen to explore...three different paths, three different vibes.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday May 17th 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 Friday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsIt’s Excursion Thursday and we’ll be exploring the music tastes of not London, not New York, not LA….but Quezon City. Don’t know where that is? Well, pack your bags.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 Thursday May 16th 2019.Excursion Thursday: Quezon CityWe’re trying out a new segment called Excursion Thursday where we explore the music profile of a city or region and see what’s good.And for kicks, let’s start out with a city you may frequently see in your own streaming platform data but may not be that familiar with: Quezon City in the Philippines.If you’re not familiar with the Philippines, it’s a country in SE Asia. South of Taiwan, east of Vietnam, and north of Indonesia.It’s really thousands of islands that also feature two official languages: Tagalog and English. This is obviously important for the Western music market and definitely a factor in why the Philippines can play a huge part in how English language artists fare in the region.For example, American singer Khalid currently has the most Spotify monthly listeners on the entire Swedish platform at 49.6M.While his most popular Spotify cities are LA and London at 1M monthly listeners, and Chicago, Dallas and NYC between 800K to 1M...Quezon City silently pulls up in the #6 spot with a whopping 769K monthly listeners. Not bad for a city you might have not known about.Examples in other genres include rapper Travis Scott pulling 202K local monthly listeners and English pop rockers the 1975 featuring 126K themselves.Now, Quezon City sits adjacent to Manila, the country’s capital, and loosely speaking, is what Orange County is to Los Angeles, or what Brooklyn is to Manhattan: a bigger, heavily populated extension of its more popular sister city.Besides the language connection, part of what is likely driving such strong streaming activity specific to Quezon City is the fact that two of the country’s most popular universities- the University of the Philippines Diliman and Ateneo de Manila- are also located here.Some of the top artists by YouTube video daily views show more of a regional focus: K-pop supergroup BLACKPINK currently has 496K local daily views, BTS 215K and Korea/Japan-focused girl group TWICE at 136K.However Western artists still stand toe to toe, with Taylor Swift at 253K local daily views, Post Malone coming in at 127K and Brad Kane at 241K.Wait what? Who’s Brad Kane, you say? Well, if you were around for the original Disney animated movie Aladdin in 1992, he was the original singing voice for main character on the soundtrack.And how does this make sense in Quezon City? Well, if you don’t have any Filipino friends, suffice it to say that karaoke is a national pastime, and well, practicing the Disney hits are probably a part of what’s going on here.Now when it comes to Instagram, this is a whole other world. While in the States, Instagram is the natural social media backdrop to the music industry, Western artists just aren’t that popular for Quezon City citizens.As a matter of fact, the first Western music artist that shows up on our top followed IG artists is Hailee Steinfeld in 58th place at 62K. And before her are a legion of Filipino artists who, like Steinfeld, either bounce between the worlds of music/TV/film or make OPM.Now if you don’t know what OPM is, that stands for Original Pilipino Music, which stands next to the country’s love for Western music, as a matter of pride in their domestic artistry. It’s so popular that Spotify made an OPM hub that Music Ally wrote about back in February. The star playlist is called Tatak Pinoy, featuring OPM music and over 1M followers to date...check it out!So next time you see Quezon City in your streaming data, hopefully this will put some context to it...and while you’re at it, might as well license your tunes to Filipino karaoke bars posthaste!OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday May 16th 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 Thursday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsIt’s Winner Wednesday: Rap, Latin and K-pop rule the Top 30 Trending Music Videos on YouTube this weekMission   Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday April 24th 2019.Winner Wednesday: YouTube Trending Music VideosThe Top Songs on YouTube in the US this week aren’t too surprising, with Lil Nas X continuing to dominate the video streaming platform with an additional 48.2M views for “Old Town Road” feat. Billy Ray Cyrus.But if you switch over to the Trending Music Videos, things get a little more interesting: rapper Lil Dicky’s “Earth” takes the #1 Trending YouTube Music Video spot.The Philadelphia rapper who frequently releases comedic rap songs with high-profile collaborations does it again, this time for Mother Earth.Released on April 18th before Earth Day, the video addressing climate change had 34M views as of yesterday.Rap power couple Offset and Cardi B took the #2 spot with “Clout”, while K-pop’s BTS takes the #3 position with their still-hot single featuring Halsey, “Boy With Luv”.Latin music took 5 of the top 30 spots, including singles from Becky G & Maluma, Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee, but the highlight is probably the reunion of New York City’s bachata legends Aventura, releasing their first new music in almost a decade with the video “Immortal” in the #20 spot.Four of the top 30 videos were taken by K-pop, with TWICE and the fresh-off-Coachella group BLACKPINK placing in the late 20 ranks.But it’s BTS that pulled off two of the top videos with the same track: “Boy With Luv” in the #3 spot, and also appearing in the #15 position, but this time, with the official choreography video.This is a common practice in the K-pop world, where the official video drops first, then the choreography rehearsal video more than a week later. This maximizes the official video’s view count, while still giving fan service while the track is fresh.BTS goes the extra mile in their case, as in their choreography videos, they don’t even use the actual audio on the video besides the low-quality track playing in the dance studio, presumably to drive viewers to the official music video.Another case of a track making a double appearance on the trending video list is Florida rapper Kodak Black, in a diss track called “Expeditiously” against Atlanta rapper T.I.The original video, which is just a static image with the song is in the #5 spot with the official video coming out four days later in the #8 spot this week.It’s worth noting that just like Spotify’s Viral 50 chart or SoundCloud’s New & Hot chart, YouTube’s trending music video chart is filtered not by total views, but the ones showing the most virality. For example, Kodak Black’s #5 position video has 5.6M views while BLACKPINK’s video ranked 29th has 43x more views at 243M. Since YouTube updates this chart weekly, likely we’re looking at an algorithm that prioritizes the most views in the past seven days, which makes sense given the recent nature of the top charting video release dates.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday April 24th 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 Wednesday, see you tomorrow! 

HighlightsIt’s Technique Tuesday! We’re diving into the Spotify listener to follower ratio with Coachella darling LizzoMissionGood 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 April 23rd 2019.Technique Tuesday: Listener to Follower Ratio w/ LizzoLet’s try a new segment called Technique Tuesday, where we take a deep dive into music data concepts.What better artist to start the segment with than Houston-born, Minneapolis-based artist Lizzo?Playing both weekends at this year’s Coachella, Lizzo has stood out as a beloved figure for her candid nature, body positivity, and hot music.On Spotify, Lizzo’s data is showing signs of a promising emerging artist. At 243K followers and 5.4M monthly listeners, this gives her a great listener to follower ratio of 23.1.The reason a higher listener to follower ratio is a noteworthy vital sign for an artist is it attempts to measure the streaming equivalents of reach and engagement.If you’re not familiar with reach or engagement, they are advertising terms that came up with the rise of online or social media ads. Digital advertising is largely responsible for the rise of countless tech giants such as Google and Facebook.In a nutshell, reach is simply about recognition and getting your name out there, where as engagement is when people care enough to actively comment, share a post, or even buy tickets or merch.Now let’s apply this to music streaming, which is not necessarily a social media-like environment, but the concepts can still be applied. If an artist hasn’t yet been promoted in top-tier playlist spots or other promotional campaigns in streaming app front pages, this will lessen the chance for users to be led to their artist profile to follow them and subsequently raise the artist’s follower count. In this case, this lower follower count would indicate lower reach.But if that same artist has a relatively outsized monthly listener count, it’s as if despite the short amount of reach, they are still getting lots of plays across unique listeners. This can be due to listing on user-generated tastemaker playlists or strong sharing of a favorite track via messaging between friends, for example. This higher listener count, in this case, would signify higher engagement.It’s not a perfect analogy, but dividing the amount of monthly listeners by their followers is like comparing their engagement with their reach. If you have 10 followers but 1 monthly listener, you simply advertise yourself well. However, if you have 1 follower but 10 monthly listeners, you must make awesome music. And this is exactly what the ratio tries to take into account.So to bring it back to Lizzo, her music, in this way, is currently 23 times more popular than her reputation as a public figure.Her ratio of 23.1 for example, puts her in the same realm as Lauv at 23.2 and Noah Cyrus at 23.6.Even though Lauv has around 5x more followers and Noah Cyrus has almost twice as many monthly listeners, both artists’ careers on the rise like Lizzo’s. The benefit of the ratio then is being able to compare the current trajectory of an artist’s streaming presence with other artists, even if those artists are at different stages of their careers.So congrats to Lizzo on her stellar Coachella performances, and here’s to checking out more listener to follower ratios in your daily work.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday April 23rd 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 Tuesday, see you tomorrow! 

HighlightsNSync performs at Coachella w/ Ariana Grande and Michael Jackson’s legacy deals with Leaving Neverland...but does this affect their music data?MissionGood morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday April 17th 2019.Legacy acts in the spotlightMost of the time, music data is all about the frontline releases, the next emerging artists and global superstars...but what about legacy acts?Loosely defined, legacy acts are any artists that have had a successful career and have since left their glory days, yet still hold sway over the general public.In this sense, late 90s/early 2000s American boy band NSYNC and the late Michael Jackson fit this definition.But sometimes, the work of such acts bubble up again for one reason or another, and sometimes they are good, and sometimes not so much.Exhibit 1: Just this past Sunday, reigning American pop queen Ariana Grande invited NSYNC on stage (minus Justin Timberlake) to perform a few of their hits as part of her headlining set. The various teasers leading up to the event have given way to performance reviews on all the music outlets, and while the effect is diluted on Ms. Grande’s red-hot career, how does this affect the former group that haven’t released original material since 2001?Legacy acts on streaming services are an odd juxtaposition of the old and the new, but for NSYNC, they are enjoying streaming metrics that would otherwise be great for an up and coming act.At 6.1M Spotify monthly listeners and 914K followers, this gives them listener to follower ratio of 6.7, putting them ahead of Charli XCX and even Billie Eilish. This actually makes a lot of sense for the group, because a high ratio is usually the result of a highly loyal but small following with little to no marketing reach…and a now-defunct yet hugely famous 2000s boy band pretty much fits that bill to a T.In terms of immediate effects observed, they’re pretty much nil: no major editorial playlists on either Spotify, Apple, Amazon or Deezer added NSYNC records, and while their Spotify daily follower count jumped roughly 50%, it was only an additional 600 or so followers from their norm.If anything, their Twitter daily followers jumped 10x after Sunday and their Instagram daily followers popped 15x their norm, which makes sense given the very Instagrammable nature of Coachella, but already there seems to be no long-term effects.Now while there was a fun, no strings attached nature to the one-time Coachella performance, Michael Jackson’s legacy has recently taken a turn for the not-so-flattering.At the beginning of March, HBO released a documentary called Finding Neverland directed by British filmmaker Dan Reed, which focuses on the testimonials of two now-grown men that were allegedly sexually abused as children by the former King of Pop.Both traditional and social media were not quiet about the exposé, but  nevertheless, Michael Jackson’s music data profile doesn’t seem to have really experienced much of any difference: his Spotify daily follower patterns show no real changes  since March and his monthly listener count slowed slightly from 22.3M at the beginning of the month to 21.5M currently. This metric is largely buoyed by Drake’s sampling of Jackson in the track “Don’t Matter to Me” on Drake’s juggernaut album Scorpion.After Finding Neverland’s release, Jackson’s YouTube daily channel subscribers only briefly fluctuated to twice his average then cut in half from his average before returning back to normal, and his Wikipedia page views peaked at 6x his daily norm until returning back his average of about 30K views a few weeks after.What may be most interesting is how radio airplay has reacted: among 300 of the most influential US radio stations, they collectively went from spinning Jackson’s music roughly 100-150 times a day during the holiday months of Nov/Dec last year, and now trickling down to just 10 spins a day as of early April.Due to the limited airtime stations have and the more localized connection they have to their listeners, this might create more accountability and the need to insulate themselves from angry listeners revolted by the documentary.All in all, some say that in the show business, “any publicity is good publicity”, but from a music data perspective, at least for these artists, maybe it should be “any publicity doesn’t affect our legacy much.”OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday April 17th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Free accounts are at chartmetric.io/signupAnd article links and show notes are at a new website: podcast.chartmetric.com.Happy Wednesday, see you tomorrow! 

HighlightsToday’s Top Hits at almost 23M followers remains Spotify’s crown jewelBillboard Emerging Artist Kiana Ledé begins to spread her wings MissionGood morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.DateThis is your Data Dump for Wednesday April 10th 2019.Playlist Highlight With 9M more followers than the #2 Spotify playlist, Today’s Top Hits remains playlist supreme on the Swedish streaming platform.Growing at 1% (or ~170K) followers in the past month, the list is at 22.9M of them and is due to break the 23M mark within a month.For the past 2.5 years, it’s been disciplined at keeping only 50 tracks, though this week, it’s added a few more to total 53.Leading that list is Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus with the “Old Town Road - Remix”, and American singer-songwriter Alec Benjamin in the #2 spot with the sad breakup song “Let Me Down Slowly”.The inescapable Billie Eilish holds down the bronze medal at #3 with the kick-drum-driven “bad guy” off her hot new album.55% of Today’s Top Hits this week comes from American artists, while 10% of the list comes from the United Kingdom, including Glasgow’s indietronica CHVURCHES and London-based Rita Ora in a collaboration with Brazil’s Anitta.Puerto Rico contributes to about 5% of the list with tracks from reggaetón kings Daddy Yankee, Ozuna and Farruko.In terms of track adds and removals, most of the frontline playlist gets added on Global Release Friday, but Today’s Top Hits tends to remove tracks more loosely across Thursday, Friday and Saturday.In the past month, 58% of the tracklist got refreshed, and the adds are typically new releases. This week for example, 31 of the 53 tracks are brand new.Despite Today’s Top Hits reputation as a place for new records, it’s good to remember that once a track gets put on, it tends to live there: over 75% of the historical tracks they’ve placed stay on for 1-6 months.For a deeper dive, check out our Today’s Top Hits blog post in the show notes.Artist Highlight“I don't gotta be in love with you to love you”. That is a lyric from Phoenix-born, LA-based artist Kiana Ledé, who is hiding down in the #46 spot of Today’s Top Hits with the sultry and bittersweet breakup track “EX”.The R&B singer who moonlighted as an actor on MTV’s Scream and Netflix’s All About the Washingtons, her music career has been on a major marketing push since last month.With 5.2M Spotify monthly listeners and 213K followers, this puts her at an excellent listener to follower ratio of 25. For context, AWAL superstar Lauv is at 24.1 and young American pop star MAX at 25.3.Ledé’s playlist situation completely blew up in March, adding the 4.9M follower Are & Be Spotify playlist and 1.8M follower Hot Rhythmic playlist, as well as being added to the sexual contextual playlists Love, Sex and Water at 1.6M and Bedroom Jams just under 1M.She’s in the #33 position on the 65-track Today’s Hits Apple playlist in the US, and virtually all of the storefronts for the A-List: R&B playlist, ranging from position #16-33 depending on the country.On Amazon Music, she’s on six editorial playlists, including the genre-focused Introducing: / Fresh / and Chill R&B playlists.Not limited to digital, her radio play in the South is strong with over 430 radio spins in Florida, 374 spins in Lousiana and 343 spins in Texas since the beginning of the year.With her smooth sound, Hollywood connections and her recent publicity push on Billboard, we’re sure to see more of Ms. Ledé in the months to come.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday April 10th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Feel free to sign up for a free account at chartmetric.io/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: chartmetric.transistor.fm/episodes.Happy Wednesday, see you tomorrow. 

HighlightsSpotify’s Viral 50 chart highlights music from around the worldRussian trap duo Rauf & Faik take off in the Caucasus regionMissionGood 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 April 9th 2019.Chart Highlight On Friday April 5th, the Spotify Viral 50 highlighted the global nature of streaming by featuring a Philadelphia-born Puerto Rican artist remix, an Indonesian R&B collaboration, and a Russian hip-hop duo all in the top 10.The #1 spot is occupied by Philadelphia-born, Puerto Rico-raised artist Dalex along with six collaborators in the vibey rap track “Pa Mí - Remix”.The original track was 3:30 long, but the new version is a full 6:00, making room for other Latin artists such as Argentina’s Cazzu and Panama’s Sech.It’s released by the indie label Rich Music, who signed a distribution deal with Warner Music Latina back in 2017, and the remix itself was released on Feb 6th, spending 33 days so far on the Viral 50.The #2 track is slightly newer, released on Feb 21st, and that’s the Indonesian R&B collaboration “Adu Rayu” by Yovie Widianto, Tulus and Glenn Fredly.Google translated as “Flirtation”, the easy-listening ballad is also featured on Top Hits Indonesia at 682K followers and on Apple Music’s The A-List: Indonesian Music.The #10 track in last Friday’s Viral 50 is Russian hip-hop duo Rauf & Faik with the track “Детство” (dee-YEHTS-vha), or “Childhood”.It’s currently at its peak position on the chart, still fresh-faced at only 3 days there, even though it was released half a year ago in Sept 2018.The dark, melodic trap song is part of Friday’s genre tag trend, as the tag “trap music” showed up the most at 15 times with “pop rap” showing up 10 times.Interestingly, the Viral 50 chart brings in the old and makes them new: 96% of the chart’s tracks are older than one month yet none of them have been on there for more than two, showing a tendency to take what’s already been released and giving them new life.Artist Highlight in the NewsThe occupants of the #10 spot, Russian trap duo Rauf & Faik, are performing well stream-wise with 804K Spotify monthly listeners and 30K followers for a listener to follower ratio of 26, putting them in the realm of Dutch DJ/producer Sam Feldt at 26.2 and Grammy-nominated American artist Tierra Whack at 26.1.Rauf & Faik seem to be making lots of waves in Turkey as they are currently featured in the #1 position on the 50-track Hot Hits Türkiye playlist at 354K followers and the Turkey Top 50 with 523K follows in the #7 position.On Apple Music, they are on four different Daily Top 100 charts in Turkey, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan, the last of which is their country of origin, though according to our Instagram data, they are currently based in Moscow.Their 463K IG followers skew very young and female, with nearly 40% of their followers falling in the 13-17 female demographic.With 3/4 of their IG fanbase from Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine alone and 80% of them speaking primarily Russian, the hopes of an overseas crossover seems unlikely.But since their dark, spacious trap vibes are undoubtedly taking a page out of Post Malone’s sonic playbook, you just never know.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday April 9th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.Feel free to sign up for a free account at chartmetric.io/signupAnd article links and show notes are at: chartmetric.transistor.fm/episodes.Happy Tuesday, see you tomorrow. 

HighlightsSpotify’s Fresh Finds celebrate indie music in our aggregate chartAmerican producer Marshmello sees a 375% increase in Indian YouTube views for his cross-border collaborationAmazon Music’s “All Hits” assumes its place as the tech giant’s flagship playlistMissionGood 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 April 1st 2020. Just joking, it’s still 2019. Happy April Fool’s Day.ChartsOnce a week, our Spotify Fresh Finds chart aggregates the platform’s eight discovery-oriented playlists. For the chart ending on March 28th, there are 402 tracks total with the dance track “Your Love” by French DJ Mercer being the most playlisted of the bunch at 42.According to Quartz, Spotify’s non-personalized, human-curated playlist series focuses on a designated set of tastemakers that have proven to show high listening activity on unknown tracks before they become popular.For the previous week, Mercer’s dance track appeared on two Fresh Finds playlists: the main one and also the Fresh Finds: Basement playlist, which caters to electronic and dance music fans.The main Fresh Finds playlist features 659K followers and the Basement version features 42K, but with its focus on independent artists/labels, the Fresh Finds series is more about taste-making: the few forecasting tomorrow’s sounds for the many.114 of the 402 aggregate tracks have 4+ minute durations, no genre tag appears more than 3 times, and labels/distributors such as DistroKid, !K7, Empire and Platoon led the chart with a total of 16 tracks, companies made their reputations as being fiercely indie….so if you’re lacking in the hipster friend department, check out Fresh Finds to fill in the void.Artist Highlight in the NewsOn February 1st, American DJ/producer Marshmello released an India-US collaboration with Mumbai-based composer Pritam entitled “BIBA”, which currently has a Spotify Popularity Index of 72 out of 100, and over 32M views on YouTube.Marshmello’s penchant for innovation has become very clear this year after DJ-ing a live set on the gaming juggernaut that is Fortnite while releasing BIBA at the same time.His 1-2 punch of the Fortnite stream on Feb 2nd directly after the Feb 1st BIBA release caused quite a spike of interest in him, with both his daily Wikipedia views and Instagram followers increasing ten-fold. However, the strength of BIBA became clear when the official YouTube video released two weeks later on Feb 14th, triggering a 375% increase in daily views in India to 2.1M, and making Indian Instagram followers his second most loyal geographic demo at 9.5%, with his first being the US at 19%.At 10.4M Spotify followers and four times as many monthly listeners at 44.7M, Marshmello’s dynamic career moves are obviously paying off.Playlist Round-Up “All Hits” seems to be Amazon Music’s #1 playlist, even though there is no follower count publicly displayed. Both within the app and on the browser, it is consistently one of the first playlists you see in the interface.Likely the tech giant’s equivalent to Spotify’s “Today’s Top Hits” or Apple’s “Today’s Hits”, it has 50 tracks currently and total running time of 2 hours and 45 minutes.In the past month, tracks have been changed out on Wednesday and Thursday by the default platform curator named “Amazon’s Music Experts”, and roughly half the track tags are “pop” naturally with a strong US focus at 77% American artists.“Without Me” from Jersey-born, LA-based singer Halsey occupies the current top spot, the only track of 50 not replaced last week.We’ve got limited data on “All Hits” since Amazon Music is a new data source, but stay tuned for later updates as the Alexa-driven platform will only continue to grow the #3 most subscribed to streaming platform in the world.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday April 1st 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric, if you’re enjoying the podcast, share it with a colleague.If you missed a detail, you can always get full show notes at: chartmetric.transistor.fm/episodes.Happy Monday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsBeatport’s Top 100 chart keeps highlighting the latest music in the club world, and today, we’re doing aSpecial artist deep-dive into a Norwegian producer who found streaming success in a far-off land called...SeattleMissionGood 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 March 29th 2019.ChartsBeatport.com is the go-to electronic music marketplace for professional DJs around the world so they can make people dance. With over 60K suppliers and labels, 450K customers and 35M unique annual visitors, Beatport is a B2B business at its core: providing high quality downloads so DJs can fill their sonic arsenal.It also provides a weekly Top 100 chart that essentially becomes an up-to-date soundtrack to what clubbers are getting down to globally.For the week ending March 22nd, “Inside My Head” by UK-based duo Audiojack took the #1 most purchased download for the second week in a row spending 10 days on the chart. Spinnin’ Records had the most tracks with 4, including a David Guetta and Tom Staar track, while legendary London-based Ministry of Sound Recordings had 2.While you may see some familiar Top 40 names such as Childish Gambino in the #3 spot or Calvin Harris & Rag’n’Bone Man at #5, the Beatport Top 100 is really an anti-pop serum: nearly half the chart’s tracks have 4-minute-plus run times, zero tracks directly releasing into the chart and nearly ⅔ of the list spending less than a week on the chart themselves...meaning lots of track turnover, and lots of opportunities for emerging artists with great dance music.Artist Highlight in the NewsHere’s an interesting case of streaming’s global nature at its finest: Norway-based house producer Simon Field found unexpected attention in Seattle upon the release of his track “Shake the Tree” on January 25th.Field, who sports a 53 Spotify Popularity Index score and 385K monthly listeners despite having only 10K followers, is an example of an emerging artist that organically over-indexes their stream count in a particular city for an unknown reason.Upon “Shake the Tree”’s release, it found a snug spot in the #62 position of the 90-track New Music Friday playlist for that week, which then seemed to feed playlist adds within 24 hours on no less than 20 mid-tier playlists ranging from 10 to 80K followers.While Sony-owned playlist curator Filtr UK’s “Dance All Night” was among these lists, Field had no major label support in the release, and yet from Feb 21st to March 20th saw a 455% increase in monthly listeners in Seattle, peaking at 7.4K.Virtually mirroring Field’s rise in Seattle however, a certain mid-tier playlist called “CloudKid” by the curator of the same name added “Shake the Tree” with 98K followers…..adding the track on Feb 16th, and removing it on March 21st, after which day Field saw an immediate decrease in Spotify listener growth in Seattle after a month long increase.Coincidence? Possibly, except for the fact that CloudKid is an influential electronic music label & curator who came up on YouTube, with a channel influencing 2.9M subscribers with over 906M total views.While the connection between Seattle and CloudKid’s audience is still unclear, the data suggests at the minimum an appreciation of mid-tier, five-digit follower count playlists helping propagate new music.And at its best, Field may have a unique case of cross-platform success where a veteran YouTube curator’s side hustle (or here, a Spotify playlist) gave an unknowing artist streaming success thousands of miles away.Playlist Round-Up (none)OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday March 29th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric, if you’re enjoying the podcast, hit that subscribe button so you get the latest episodes at the earliest time.And if you feel like you missed something, you can get full show notes at: chartmetric.transistor.fm/episodes.Have a great weekend, see you Monday!

HighlightsJ Balvin and French rapper Ninho takeover Deezer’s Top Worldwide chartAtlanta artist Lil Nas X embodies a viral artist on the rise, and“Selección Editorial” is Deezer’s #2 most followed playlist MissionGood 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 Thursday March 28th 2019.ChartsParis-based streaming platform Deezer updated its most-listened-to chart yesterday called Top Worldwide. It functions similar to a playlist, with 367K fans following the top tracks chart.Collecting streams from the 187 countries Deezer operates in, Top Worldwide has 100 tracks with French rap duo PNL in the #1 spot with “Au DD”, whose YouTube video released less than a week ago and has 21M views as of yesterday.Besides PNL, the rest of the top tracks looks quite familiar with Post Malone, Ariana Grande and Daddy Yankee all showing up in the top 10.Leading the Deezer chart with the most entries however, were two artists tied at six tracks each: Colombia’s J Balvin and France’s Ninho.Interestingly enough, both rappers’ got there in very different ways: J Balvin’s tracks were all multi-artist collaboration tracks either on someone else’s album or one-off singles, while the Congolese-French Ninho has six of 18 tracks off his new album release “Destin” (des-TAHN) getting its fair share of attention on Deezer.Artist Highlight in the NewsThe viral, genre-defying track “Old Town Road” by emerging Atlanta rapper Lil Nas X made news on Tuesday when Rolling Stone reported that Billboard removed the country-themed trap song from its Hot Country Songs chart.Loaded social issues aside, Lil Nas X’s music data profile at this moment is a fascinating study in what viral status looks like.With only 19K Spotify followers, he has managed to pull 5.7M monthly listeners, giving him an unworldly 300 listener to follower ratio.Currently on Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits playlist in the #12 spot and Apple Music’s Top 100: Global playlist in the #1 spot, Lil Nas X has managed grow a total playlist follower reach of 314K just one month ago, to a playlist follower reach over 55M.In only the past ten days, he’s more than doubled his Instagram follower count to 92K, so Billboard Country chart or not, this cowboy sure won’t be by his lonesome.Playlist Round-Up “Selección Editorial” is currently the #2 Deezer playlist on the platform at 6.6M fans. It’s ran by their editorial team in México, who typically change the tracks on Saturday.This week, there’s 149 tracks with “pop”, “Latin”, “tropical”, “reggaetón” and “edm” being the most common genre tags.The current artist roster surprisingly is 43% from the US and UK, with 29% of them from México, Puerto Rico, Spain and Colombia.Selección Editorial caters to frontline material, as ⅔ of the tracks were released within a week of its release, however it changes at a glacial pace: it’s 28-day add ratio is only 5%, meaning that in the last month only 5% of the playlist got refreshed with new tracks.Additionally, over 87% of its historical tracks lived there from one to six months, so while your new release has little chance of getting on Selección Editorial, the chosen few do get to spend quite some time on it.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday March 28th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric, if you want to dig into más data, visit chartmetric.io/signup. That’s chartmetric (no s) dot IO slash signup.Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsCountry rules the US iTunes charts yesterday with 38 track tagsDiana Ross celebrates her 75th birthday with over 102M YouTube viewsSouth Asia gets down with the leading Desi playlist, “Desi Hits” at 241K followersMissionGood 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 March 26th 2019.ChartsCountry fans love their downloads, or at least they did yesterday.On Monday for the United States storefront in the iTunes download marketplace, there were 38 tracks in the Top 200 list with the genre tag “country”.These genre tags are non-exclusive, meaning that a track can be tagged with multiple genres by Apple internally, but it makes quite the impression when the genre “pop” came in with 36 and “hip-hop/rap” at 32.The 38 country tracks are well-distributed across the 200, with the romantic ballad “Beautiful Crazy” by Luke Combs at the #13 spot.What’s interesting is despite the genre’s track influence on the iTunes chart, there are no country artists in the top 10 most frequently occuring artists. For example, Motley Crue had the most tracks on yesterday’s iTunes chart with 11, due to their Netflix biopic “The Dirt” releasing on Friday sparking nostalgia for some and curiosity for others.Or Queen continues to benefit from their five-month-old “Bohemian Rhapsody” biopic with 10 tracks still on the iTunes chart.But fear not, the #1 iTunes track yesterday actually was country: “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper from yet another music film, A Star Is Born….it just got coded by Apple as “soundtrack”, and is just another quirk in the music data world.Artist Highlight in the NewsHappy birthday to American legend Diana Ross, who turns 75 years young today!Yesterday, Rolling Stone published news of her live concert film “Diana Ross: Her Life, Love and Legacy” releasing for only two days today and Thursday, showcasing her epic 1983 NYC Central Park show.Ross has healthy numbers in the streaming world, with a 68 Spotify Popularity Index rating, 792K followers and a steadily growing monthly listeners count at 4.2M, growing from 2.9M only a year ago.The ex-Supremes member is still rocking her Instagram account at 319K followers, posting lots of throwback footage and glamorous shots of own career, and mostly to fans her junior: over 126K IG followers are 18-24 and 97K are 25-34.Though Ms. Ross only sports 6K subscribers on YouTube, her long career of epic music has earned over 102M YouTube views, which, given her low amount of subscribers, shows how much active search and recommended video algorithms keep her music alive. Happy birthday, Miss Ross.Playlist Round-Up With Spotify’s recent launch in India about one month ago, attention is likely turning to the playlist “Desi Hits”, which is Spotify’s leading South Asian playlist at 241K followers.Growing followers at 6% over the past month, and changing about a quarter of its tracks every month, “Desi Hits” is the closest thing the platform has to the region’s version of “Today’s Top Hits”, which is at 22M followers.While “Desi Hits” obviously has some ground to make up for, keep in mind that India alone is home to over 374M smartphone users, and 1.3B people overall. For comparison, the US market has 251M out of 326M. Or better put, a market penetration rate of only 27% compared to the US’ 77%, showing lots of potential for growth in India.The playlist “Desi Hits” is dominated by the giant music and film company T-Series, with 35 of its tracks in the 86-track list coming underneath its banner. You may have heard of the company through its on-going YouTube subscriber battle with YouTuber PewDiePie, as T-Series is now within only 4K subscribers at 91,317,xxx subs.“Desi Hits” has virtually all of its tracks in the upper half of the Echo Nest Energy chart, promising lots of danceable beats coming from a set of artists who are 52% from India, but 20% from the UK due to the Indian diaspora.Whether looking for bhangra beats or Bollywood mega hits, “Desi Hits” likely has a lot of followers coming its way.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday March 26th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric, a free account is waiting for you at chartmetric.io/signup. That’s chartmetric (no s) dot IO slash signup.Happy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!  

HighlightsGreyson Chance places 10 tracks on the QQ Music Western charts last weekBillie Eilish gets over 800K “pre-adds” on Apple Music, likely with American females under 25 according to InstagramDeezer’s #1 playlist “Les titres du moment” continues to dominate the platform’s playlist ecosystemMissionGood 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 March 25th 2019.ChartsTexas-born, Oklahoma-bred Greyson Chance takes up 10% of the QQ Music Western charts for the week of March 14th to the 20th.QQ Music, according to TechCrunch, is one of the largest music streaming platforms in China, with a reported 800M+ monthly active user base when grouped under the Tencent Music Entertainment umbrella. The Chinese tech conglomerate leverages QQ with its social network WeChat (which has over 1B users- that’s billion with a “b”) to provide the majority of its revenue in social media advertising, live-streaming virtual gifts and premium memberships along with traditional song sales and subscription-based revenue.QQ updates a 100-song Western music chart every week with their listeners’ most-streamed tunes, and Greyson Chance got 10 tracks off his newly-released 12-track album “portraits” on the list.The AWAL-backed crooner’s top 4 Spotify cities by monthly listeners are all in Asia, specifically Singapore, Quezon City in the Philippines, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.Not the only Westerner with an Asia-conscious strategy, the #1 spot on the same week’s QQ chart went to Bulgarian-Russian singer Kristian Kostov, who is currently competing in the Chinese TV singing competition series, 我是歌手, or translated, “I Am A Singer”. Artist Highlight in the NewsMusic Business Worldwide reported on Thursday last week that LA-based Billie Eilish racked up 800K plus album pre-adds on the Apple Music platform, showing a strong engagement with her audience looking forward to the March 29th release date.Looking at the phenom’s Instagram follower demographics as of last month, the majority of those pre-adds are likely are coming from American females under 25.Her IG handle, @wherearetheavocados, has likely racked up over 15M followers by the time you hear this, and has earned an average of 2.4M likes and 33K comments per post.A little over 73% of those followers are female, with 64% of them under the age of 25. 3.1M of the female followers fall into the 13-17 year old age range, while 5.3M of them are in the 18-24 range.Just over a third are based in the US, with New York City and LA being the two most popular, but São Paulo pulls into the #3 spot.Some of her notable IG followers are Kendall Jenner at 107M followers and Katy Perry at 77M, and maybe they’re among Eilish’s Apple album pre-adds as well!Playlist Round-Up “Les titres du moment” is the most followed playlist on Deezer, with 9.8M fans following the platform’s version of Today’s Top Hits on Spotify or Today’s Hits on Apple Music.The #2 Deezer playlist is “Selección Editorial” focusing on Latin content, but it’s far behind at 6.6M fans, leaving the top playlist lots of room to enjoy its leading status.“Les titres du moment”, or literally “Titles of the Moment”, currently sports 70 tracks that are mostly frontline-focused and featuring a 37% track add-ratio in the past month.Unlike other top playlists on other platforms, this playlist regularly adds and removes tracks throughout the week, mostly from Tuesday to Saturday.Almost ¾ of its historical tracks have remained on the list for one to six months, showing that it’s willing to host its more successful records for longer periods.Currently, the #1 spot goes to electronic-tinged Belgian singer-songwriter Angéle, the #2 spot to the UK’s Sam Smith & American Normani, and the #13 spot goes to Puerto Rico’s Daddy Yankee...so if you’re looking for an internationally-focused, multi-lingual top hits playlist to mix things up, look no further.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday March 25th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric, a free account is waiting for you at chartmetric.io/signup. That’s chartmetric (no s) dot IO slash signup.Happy Monday, see you tomorrow!

HighlightsMaluma and Metallica lead in Shazam chart presence in Mexico City yesterdayJay-Z’s album “The Blueprint” is missing from Spotify and Apple Music, but gets added to the US National Recording RegistryApple Music’s “This Week on the Voice” continues to refresh its catalog-focused playlistMissionGood 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 March 22nd 2019.ChartsColombian reggaeton artist Maluma and iconic American metal band Metallica find themselves in the same sentence for probably the first time in history, as both had two tracks in the Shazam Top Tracks chart for Mexico City yesterday.Shazam updates a 50-track chart daily for each city the music recognition app operates in, and the two artists led in having the most tracks in the short list.Maluma’s record “HP” which released last month on Feb 28th is accompanied by his collaboration with fellow Colombian Karol G on the romantic song “Creéme”, which released back in Nov 2018.However, that’s not quite as throwback as Metallica’s two tracks “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Orion”, which respectively released in 1984 and 1986.Seeing such different tracks being Shazamed so much in various bars and clubs across Mexico City may come as a surprise, but then again, maybe to be expected from a cosmopolitan city that Spotify called last November the “World’s Music Streaming Mecca”.Artist Highlight in the NewsOn Wednesday, Brooklyn’s legendary rapper Jay-Z put another notch in his Yankee cap when his 2001 album “The Blueprint” got added to the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry, which designates "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" recordings in America.Despite the accolade, the classic album is missing from two of America’s biggest streaming platforms, Spotify and Apple Music, presumably due to Jay-Z’s involvement with the Tidal streaming service and its focus on exclusivity.So how does one track the Hov in the music data world? YouTube and terrestrial radio might work: Mr. Carter has 1.9M YouTube subscribers and over 678M total views on the platform, which for the past two years has shown a very consistent “weekend bump” pattern, and revealing one way in which his fans still consume his material. In the past month, his work week views would bottom out to about 1M daily views, while his weekend views would spring up to 1.3M. Terrestrial radio is another place, though Jiggaman might be surprised that his beloved New York City doesn’t play him the most in all of America. In the past six months, Detroit and Milwaukee have given Hov an average of 1435 radio spins, while NYC comes out to 1,056.Playlist Round-Up The American singing competition series “The Voice” is currently in its 16th TV season, and you might not know that the producers also maintain an Apple Music curator account aptly titled, “The Voice”.With it, they currently maintain 96 series-related playlists, with “This Week on the Voice” being its most long-running and maintained one.In the US Apple Music storefront, the playlist runs parallel with that week’s music performances. The curators usually add tracks over the weekend on Saturday, while the episodes this season have aired on Monday and Tuesday nights in America.A mostly catalog-focused playlist, it is that rare breed that also features a 100% track add ratio in the past month, due to its unique synchronicity with an ongoing TV series whose songs completely change on a weekly basis.The current track list runs as far back as 1967 with the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody”, and as recent as last year with Luke Combs’ “Beautiful Crazy”.A mishmash of karaoke-worthy hits, be sure to add it to your Apple Music app if you want to re-live the episode all the way through to the weekend.OutroThat’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday March 22nd 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric, virtually all this data is available at your fingertips, feel free to sign up for a free account at chartmetric.io/signup. That’s chartmetric (no s) dot IO slash signup.Bye for now, have a great weekend!