How Music Charts

• 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.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Friday, June 28th, 2019.
• Enter the World of Streaming Manipulation
  • Last 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.com
• And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!

• Highlights
  • Follow 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.
• Date
  • This 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.
• Outro
  • That’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.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
  • Happy Thursday, and see you tomorrow!

• Highlights
  • Soccer fans unite: the 2019 Women’s World Cup has been happening in France all month, but what are U.S. team’s biggest stars listening to as they head into the quarterfinals?
• 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.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, June 26, 2019.
• Playlisting the Women’s World Cup
  • The World Cup defending champions, the United States, are scheduled to play host nation France in the quarterfinals on Friday, June 28th.
  • The U.S. squad won the last World Cup in 2015 for the third consecutive time in Canada, and are favored to win this year as well, and that’s large in part due to a couple of the team’s biggest stars: two-time US Soccer Player of the Year Alex Morgan and two-time FIFA Player of the Year Carli Lloyd.
  • And guess what? They have playlists!
  • Hailing from Southern California, Co-Captain Alex Morgan has a co-branded “Alex Morgan | Workout Playlist” with Beats by Dr. Dre as the listed curator.
    • The American striker currently has 12 tracks on the list, with mostly mellow and moody pop selections including Maggie Rogers, Hozier, and José González.
    • The playlist’s sonic characteristics are not what you would expect: they are less energetic and more mid-tempo, acoustic jams.
      • The Energy ratings for the songs, which run from 0 to 100, are only moderately high, mostly lying in the 30 to 80 range with tracks from Lauren Daigle and George Ezra.
      • The Acousticness ratings are quite well-distributed from 10 to 90, meaning Morgan seems to appreciate acoustic guitars as much as electronic beats.
      • And dare we say that Morgan likes getting moody with her Beats earbuds on, with one-third of the playlist in the 20-30 Valence range, which measures positive emotional sentiment. Some of these darker vibes come from artists Vera Blue and Leon Bridges.
  • Now hailing from New Jersey, fellow Co-Captain Carli Lloyd’s “Metabolic Kick Mix playlist”, which is curated under the NikeWomen curator profile, is all about that high energy.
    • Currently an attacking midfielder on the US squad, her Spotify playlist has 12 tracks and over 800 followers, featuring amped-up pop and rock records from Maroon 5, Imagine Dragons, and Ellie Goulding.
    • Lloyd’s playlist tends towards the electronic side of things and with more emotionally uplifting sentiment:
      • Her tracks rate high on Energy and Beats Per Minute, with seven tracks in the 90-100 Energy range and eight tracks in the 130-140 BPM range, to include Hardwell and a OneRepublic remix.
      • As for Acousticness, Lloyd is not about it! She likes the electronic beats, most tracks in the low 10-20 acousticness range.
      • But for Valence, she likes getting into the darker vibes as well, with most tracks in the 40 to 60 range, including a Betty Who banger and the sole acoustic track from John Mayer, which is positioned last in the playlist, and likely great for a workout cool-down and stretch.
  • So, if you’re looking to sweat with some of America’s top athletes putting it all on the line this week, look no further.
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, June 26, 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, see you tomorrow!

• Highlights
  • Sunday’s BET Awards had winners, losers, and everything in between. Here’s the data behind the biggest moments. 
• 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 Tuesday, June 25, 2019.
• The Data Behind the BET Awards
  • Now that the dust has settled from Sunday’s BET Awards, let’s look at the data behind the ceremony’s bright spots.
  • One of the evening’s most special moments happened when the award for Best Male Hip-Hop Artist went to Nipsey Hussle, who died tragically on March 31 in Los Angeles. 
  • The rapper also received the Humanitarian Award, which his grandmother graciously accepted.
  • While Nipsey’s star was already on the rise before the tragedy, immediately following the news of his death, fans undeniably pushed his work onto the world stage, bumping him from an estimated 2.2 million monthly Spotify listeners to an April 26 peak of an estimated 11.8 million monthly Spotify listeners.
  • His posthumous feature with John Legend on DJ Khaled’s “Higher” continues to make its presence known on Apple Music’s African and Caribbean Top 100 playlists, in addition to Hip-Hop A-List playlists as well.
  • Speaking of, this year’s Best International Act Award went to Nigeria’s Burna Boy and the Best New International Act Award went to South Africa’s Sho Madjozi.
  • Burna Boy is currently on 21 Best of the Week Apple Music playlists around the world, and he also finds himself at the top of Spotify’s Hot Hits UK, African Heat, and Afro Hits playlists.
  • Sho Madjozi, meanwhile, only finds herself on four editorial playlists on Spotify but on six Best of the Week Apple Music playlists throughout Africa and a number of Top 100 Apple Music playlists in various African countries.
  • While she’s largely regional now, Madjozi’s BET recognition indicates a growing potential for overseas visibility.
  • Now, can we talk about how much Mary J. Blige and Lizzo owned the stage?
  • Blige is a living R&B/hip-hop legend, and her performance on and off that stage proved it.
  • Instead of losing followers and listeners as her music ages, she continues to gain them.
  • In 2016, Blige’s followers sat just under 500K, but today, she’s at an estimated 1.9 million on Spotify.
  • While the change hasn’t been quite as drastic for her monthly listenership, her shrinking listener to follower ratio and her growing follower conversion (she’s gaining at least 1K Spotify followers daily) indicates she’s still got it.
  • Her YouTube views bolster this point by sporting a strong “weekend bump” every Friday through Sunday, suggesting people still party down with the queen of hip-hop soul.
  • Lizzo meanwhile, can apparently twerk and play the flute all at once, but she’s got a ways to go when it comes to follower conversion.
  • Unlike Blige’s 3:1 listener to follower ratio, which makes sense given the longevity of her career, Lizzo’s is at 36:1, meaning 17.5 million people might be listening to her a month on Spotify, but if she wants Blige’s longevity, her 500K followers are going to have to start snowballing to catch up.
  • A high ratio for an emerging artist is usually a promising sign, however, so Lizzo has plenty to look forward to.
  • All numbers and names aside, the real winner here was the awards ceremony itself.  
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 25, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
  • Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
  • Happy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!

• Highlights
  • In just over a year, King Princess has gone from 10 Spotify playlists to more than 1,000 and 5,000 Twitter followers to more than 100,000. Now, they’re on Mark Ronson’s new track, “Pieces of Us.”
• Mission   
  • Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Monday, June 24, 2019.
• New Music Friday Monday: the Royal Rise of King Princess
  • In just a year, King Princess has gone from a humble 10 Spotify playlists to a star-powered 1K, and 5K Twitter followers to 100K+. 
  • The 20-year-old, New York City-born singer-songwriter/producer now finds themselves on Mark Ronson’s June 17 release, “Pieces of Us,” which currently sits at the No. 5 spot on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist. 
  • How’d they get there so quickly?
  • Using the Analyze function on their artist page to compare their Spotify playlist evolution with their social follows, we can chart it.
  • On March 9, 2018, King Princess had just under 5K Twitter followers and was only on 10 Spotify playlists.
  • That’s great for a young indie artist, but clearly not on par with the metrics typical Mark Ronson collaborators (who include Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Adele, Miley Cyrus, and Amy Winehouse) usually boast. 
  • By June 21, 2018, King Princess got closer with almost 30K Twitter followers and 237 Spotify playlists.
  • Mind you, that exponential jump was in a matter of just three measly months.
  • Fast forward to March 9, 2019, and King Princess hit just a bit more than 92K Twitter followers, 374K Instagram followers, and was on 1,000 Spotify playlists.
  • By then, they had also been booked to play this year’s Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Governors Ball festivals.                                                                                   
  • Today, the alternative pop star has some 111K Twitter followers, 450K+ Instagram followers, about 25K Facebook fans, and sits on more than 1K Spotify playlists.
  • In less than a year and a half, King Princess’ Spotify Popularity Index went from 0 to 75 out of 100.
  • But it’s not all out of thin air.
  • In February 2017, they became the first artist to sign to Mark Ronson’s Zelig Recordings, which is a Columbia Records imprint ultimately owned by Sony.
  • It’s only natural for them to be featured on Mark Ronson’s “Pieces of Us,” which was released on June 17, and currently sits in the No. 5 spot on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist.
  • You might say, with a little help from Ronson, King Princess’ royal rise was written in the stars all along.
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 24, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
  • Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
  • Happy Monday, see you tomorrow!

• Highlights
  • Following 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.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Friday, June 21, 2019.
• A2IM Indie Week, Day 4
  • Several 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.
• Outro
  • That’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.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
  • Happy Friday, and have a great weekend!

2019-06-20 // A2IM Indie Week, Day 3: Reeperbahn Festival

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

2019-06-19 // A2IM Indie Week, Day 2: Spotify’s Indie Curators

• Highlights
  • Spotify 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.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, June 19, 2019.
• A2IM Indie Week, Day 2
  • With 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.
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, June 19, 2019. This is Rutger 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 tomorrow from Indie Week!

• Highlights
  • We’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.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Tuesday, June 18, 2019.
• A2IM Indie Week, Day 1
  • Hi 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!
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, June 18, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
  • Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
  • Happy Tuesday, we’ll see you tomorrow from Indie Week! Peace.

• Highlights
  • We’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.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Monday, June 17, 2019.
• New Music Friday Monday: Fresh Indie on Amazon
  • Hopping 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!
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, June 17, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
  • Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
  • Happy Monday, we’ll see you tomorrow from NYC’s Indie Week floor! Bye.