• Highlights  
  • The MTV Video Music Awards are back for 2019 and the ballots are open! We’ll take a look at who’s up for what and from a data perspective, who might win!
• 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.
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• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, July 24th, 2019.
• VMAs
  • The 2019 MTV Video Music Awards take place in New Jersey’s Prudential Center on Aug 26th.
  • Started in 1984, the 36th installment of the annual ceremony will continue to draw together the music industry’s brightest stars, and their biggest fans, to celebrate the music video medium.
  • Voting for performer categories have been open to the public since 2006, and for 2019, the virtual ballots will be open until Aug. 15.
  • Looking at the artists with the most nominations, the data is very clear that the ceremony is about the biggest stars today:
    • Coming out with 10 nominations each are Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish with 9 and Lil Nas X with 8. This is for the performer categories, of which there are 14, while professional category voting (such as Best Art Direction) are closed off to qualified personnel.
    • All four of these artists have Spotify Popularity Indices higher than 92, Monthly Listener counts above 39M, and Chartmetric rankings of 20 or above.
    • Interestingly, their YouTube subscriber counts vary widely, with Grande and Swift with 36M and 34M each, Eilish at 16M and Lil Nas X around 4.5M.
    • Since subscriber count on YouTube reflects a long-term public interest in an artist, and to a certain degree, the seniority of any creator, it says something about how MTV nominates its artists, which seems to be a closed process.
    • By nominating Grande and Swift the most, who have both been active since 2008 and 2004 respectively, it’s nodding to the more veteran players in the industry.
    • But with Eilish and Lil Nas X, who have been active only since 2015 and 2018, it understandably shows the awards to also be a measurement who’s hot now.
  • But who will win what? What are your predictions, Chartmetric?
    • Well, we can’t say for sure, but what we can do is pretend certain metrics are the best predictors for each category.
    • For example, if Video of the Year came down to straight YouTube views, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road (Remix)” would leave everyone else in the dust at 551M views, several steps ahead of the #2 runner up, which would be Eilish’s “bad guy” at 406M.
    • If Song of the Year came down to Spotify Monthly Listeners, then it’d be (surprise, surprise) Lil Nas X again at 48M and then Drake as runner-up with 45M.
    • Finally, if Artist of the Year came down to Chartmetric’s Cross-Platform Performance ranking, then the winner would be Shawn Mendes, who’s ranked #3 in our systems, with Ariana coming in 2nd in the MTV category with an 11th Chartmetric CPP ranking.
  • But who knows which artists the people will vote for next month, we’ll just have to tune in and see!

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 24th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
• Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
• And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Wednesday, and we’ll see you Friday!