How Music Charts

By Chartmetric: Music Analytics for the New Music BusinessTechnology Music

How Music Charts episodes

April 26, 20192019-04-26 // Apple Music's Top 100 Album in the US...Beyoncé All Day
Highlights
Rap maintains its stronghold in Apple Music’s Top 100 Albums yesterday in the US storefront
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 April 26th 2019.
Apple Music: Top 100 Albums
Rap and Apple Music continue their close relationship on yesterday’s Top 100 Albums chart for the US.
Across All Genres, however, it was Beyoncé that was on top in the #1 slot with her album Lemonade released back in April 2016.
While her Coachella live performance album HOMECOMING was released only last week, that only took the #7 spot yesterday.
If you’re surprised Lemonade made such a strong debut on the chart three years after its release, it’s because it wasn’t even available!
Her acclaimed album was available only on Tidal prior to Tuesday, and so coinciding with the release of HOMECOMING, it made the Apple album chart very much a Queen B affair.
Past that, rap by far had the most genre tags present in the Top 100 album list, with 37 tags, while Pop was in second at 9 tags, and R&B/Soul was in third at 4 tags.
The #2 spot in the album chart was taken by Charlotte, North Carolina rapper DaBaby with his most recent album Baby on Baby released in February and spending 54 days so far on the chart.
The #3 position yesterday belonged to Billie Eilish, who’s month-old album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? continues its glorious run on the Apple Music platform.
The Apple Top 100 Albums chart is currently favoring older albums, as 46 of them are more than six months old.
In fact, only six of the 100 are new releases this week, Schoolboy Q’s Crash Talk being the highest ranking in the #6 position.
Once albums make it onto the Top 100, they mostly stay for about 1-6 months, as 47 of yesterday’s bunch spent that amount of time on the Top 100 so far.
Thomas Rhett, Morgan Wallen and Brooks and Dunn represent country in the #71, 91 and 92 positions, while Bad Bunny and Aventura are in the #27 and 34 spots for Latin.
And worry not, K-pop fans, BTS’ latest album did make the chart at #23 with MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday April 26th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Friday, have a great weekend!
3 min
April 25, 20192019-04-25 // Los Angeles: What's Hot in Hollywood?
Highlights
What’s Los Angeles listening to right now? We’ll dive into their Shazam, YouTube, radio, Songkick and Spotify preferences
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 Thursday April 25th 2019.
Cities: Los Angeles
Let’s play a game!
New feature: Cities
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday April 25th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!
5 min
April 24, 20192019-04-24 // Top 30 Trending Music Videos on YouTube
Highlights
It’s Winner Wednesday: Rap, Latin and K-pop rule the Top 30 Trending Music Videos on YouTube this week
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 April 24th 2019.
Winner Wednesday: YouTube Trending Music Videos
The 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.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday April 24th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Wednesday, see you tomorrow!
4 min
April 23, 20192019-04-23 // Technique Tuesday: Spotify Listener to Follower Ratio & Lizzo
Highlights
It’s Technique Tuesday! We’re diving into the Spotify listener to follower ratio with Coachella darling Lizzo
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 April 23rd 2019.
Technique Tuesday: Listener to Follower Ratio w/ Lizzo
Let’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.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday April 23rd 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!
4 min
April 22, 20192019-04-22 // New Music Friday Monday: Apple Music's "Best of the Week" playlist
Highlights
It’s New Music Friday Monday: Apple Music’s Best of the Week playlist showcases three different Latin & US artist collaborations
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 April 22nd 2019.
New Music Friday Monday
Welcome back to your work week.
On Friday April 19th, Apple Music updated its flagship Global Release Day playlist, Best of the Week, with 73 songs totalling just over 4 hours playtime for the US storefront.
Leading off the list is the lead single off the upcoming Game of Thrones soundtrack, “Power Is Power”, by SZA, The Weeknd and Travis Scott.
The HBO show’s album is set to release on this Friday April 26th, so you’ll be sure to hear more about them soon.
In the #2 position is none other than Ms. Beychella herself, Beyoncé’s cover of “Before I Let Go” by Maze and Frankie Beverly.
The track’s release on last Wednesday coincided with the Netflix release of “Homecoming”, the documentary revolving around Queen B’s epic 2018 Coachella performance.
Latin & US artist collaborations
In the #3, 4 and 5 positions of Apple’s Best of the Week playlist, we have several star-studded Spanish/English collaborations.
Kicking it off is America’s Madonna and Colombia’s Maluma on “Medellín”, a low-key reggaetón track that is leading off Madonna’s Madame X album that’s due in June.
“Medellín” is on 20 editorial Apple playlists including the #1 spot on Today’s Hits in Portugal, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Panama.
The track showcases Apple Music’s unique ability to pre-release albums, as when you navigate to the track’s album on the platform, you can see the entire album’s tracks and artists with an album description featuring album art, while on Spotify, it’s simply released as a standalone single.
The #4 position on Best of the Week is a remix of the wildly successful “Con Calma feat. Snow” by Puerto Rico’s Daddy Yankee.
American pop star Katy Perry has stepped in on a Spanish/English remix which Forbes compares to another attempt at a Justin Bieber-powered “Despacito” remix.
The data is showing only lukewarm support however, featuring on only 14 Apple Music editorial playlists and 16 Spotify editorial lists. While these include Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits and New Music Friday playlists, the track is only in the #24 and #11 positions respectively.
The track is getting slightly warmer coverage in Apple Music, featuring in the #3 position on Today’s Hits in 16 countries and Future Hits in 18 storefronts, but we’ll just have to see how the track performs in the days to come.
Lastly in the #5 position of Apple’s Best of the Week list, is the “Calma - Alicia Remix” by Puerto Rican artists Pedro Capó and Farruko with American star Alicia Keys.
The slow Latin grooves in the remix are the same as the original track by Capó, much like the Daddy Yankee and Katy Perry remix in which the production itself does not change besides the new English vocal.
“Calma” is also featured on Today’s Hits in 16 country storefronts in the #2 position and two top 5 spots on the US and Dominican Republic Best of the Week lists.
Most interestingly, none of these three Latin/US artist collaborations were picked up in any official Amazon Music playlists, but that’s something we’ll have to keep monitoring, as the trend of multi-lingual collaborations between Latin and American recording artists show no signs of slowing.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday April 22nd 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at a new website: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Monday, see you tomorrow!
4 min
April 19, 20192019-04-19 // The Gender Gap on the Music Charts
Highlights
Digging into the music charts Gender Gap with data scientist Joshua Hayes
Mission
Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we usually 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 April 19th 2019.
Gender Gap article
Today, we’re going to do something a little more in-depth.
A few days ago, Chartmetric released a blog article about the gender gap in the music charts, to include Billboard, Spotify and Apple Music charts and also across country boundaries and genres.
Check it out, article link is the show notes.
But first, let me introduce the author of the piece, data scientist and newest team member of Chartmetric, Josh Hayes.
Josh is a Data Science Doctoral Fellow, Sociology PhD from UC Davis with additional degrees at Stanford and Michigan State, and is neck deep in data science projects.
Gist of the article
The converging of Spotify, Apple Music and Billboard
Chartmetric Score - connection to revenue
Super high/low female track, baseline male track dynamic
Post-Grande era
Genres
Pop
Latin
Hip-Hop
Country
All Genres
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday April 19th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at a new website: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Friday, have a lovely weekend!
24 min
April 18, 20192019-04-18 // Amazon Music Top 100 Songs chart, Post Malone and Swae Lee's "Sunflower"
Highlights
Country tops yesterday’s Amazon Music Top 100 Songs chart
Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” continues to grow into everyone’s ears
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 Thursday April 18th 2019.
Chart Spotlight
Yesterday’s Amazon Music Top Songs chart was ruled by country, as the top 100 tracks on the Alexa-driven platform featured 26 country genre tags.
Pop came in 2nd place with 23 tags, and rap & hip-hop came in 3rd with 16.
Billie Eilish continues her chart domination with having the most tracks with a total of eight, ranging from positions #12-90.
Seven of them are from her latest album, released on April 1st.
As for the top 100 songs and how long they’ve spent on the chart, it’s starting to reflect a nature similar to the Spotify Top 200, in that the majority of the tracks linger on for at least 1-6 months, though not more than 6 months like the Swedish platform this week.
Only 10 of the Amazon chart tracks are within a week old, with the newest entry only being 2 days old, and that’s from American singer-songwriter Khalid and his chilled out track “Talk” off his album Free Spirit, released on April 5th.
Tracking back to country’s run on yesterday’s chart, leading in the #1 and #3 position is Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”, with the original version leading the remix with Billy Ray Cyrus. Amazon categorizes these tracks as country, differing from Billboard’s initial opinion of the track.
Brett Young and Maren Morris are in the #13 and #14 spots, while HARDY and Brett Young (with another track this time) bring up the rear in the #99 and #100 positions.
Track Spotlight
Now in the #2 spot yesterday, is a track that just won’t go away: “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee.
The dreamy, 2.5-minute track juxtaposing a strained relationship with a sunflower has over 671M spins on Spotify, with a track popularity score of 98 out of 100.
It’s also the most played song off the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse original soundtrack on Spotify, the track releasing in October of last year, two months before the entire album and animated film released in December.
It’s no secret that a killer track combined with a hugely popular movie is a magic formula. One only has to point to Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s “See You Again” off the Fast & Furious 7 OST to remember how viral a movie track can get.
With a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score, $375M worldwide gross box office, and endless of positive comments across social media, Post Malone and Swae Lee seem to have really struck gold.
The soundtrack itself was reportedly curated to sound like what the film’s teen Spiderman, Miles Morales, listens to.
“Sunflower” is currently on 93 Spotify editorial playlists and 38 Apple Music editorial lists, but interestingly, the track isn’t on many high profile ones.
While it is on Spotify’s Global Top 50, the next most followed playlist is the personalized Mood Booster with 3.2M followers, which due to the playlist’s track randomization, the track itself might not even show up.
As for Apple Music, it’s only on one Today’s Hits playlist in China and two A-List playlists in Norway and Canada, also not much of a promotional push.
Not to discount the track itself, but the fact that the track is enjoying its sixth month of popularity without the support of editorial playlists suggests the importance of listeners associating a song with another piece of pop culture outside of the music industry.
As Post Malone is certainly no stranger to massively successful hits, the fact that “Sunflower” is his fifth most popular music video with 500M YouTube views says that a killer track + a killer movie = a winning combination.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Thursday April 18th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at app.chartmetric.com/signup
And article links and show notes are at a new website: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!
4 min
April 17, 20192019-04-17 // *NSYNC at Coachella and Michael Jackson's legacy in Leaving Neverland
Highlights
*NSync performs at Coachella w/ Ariana Grande and Michael Jackson’s legacy deals with Leaving Neverland...but does this affect their music 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 Wednesday April 17th 2019.
Legacy acts in the spotlight
Most 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.”
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday April 17th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at chartmetric.io/signup
And article links and show notes are at a new website: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Wednesday, see you tomorrow!
5 min
April 16, 20192019-04-16 // Coachella Weekend 1 and Game of Thrones playlists
Highlights
Coachella Weekend 1 and the Game of Thrones Season 8 opener just dropped...so what does this mean for their playlists?
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 April 16th 2019.
Coachella & Game of Thrones spotlight
What should we think of event-based playlists? Are they important components of branding strategy? A fun extra for superfans? Or just a marketing afterthought that captures a few of curious bypassers?
Most people involved in Western pop culture were tuned into either one of two things this past weekend: Coachella Week 1 happening in the deserts of California, or the Game of Thrones season 8 opener in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
Let’s take a moment to examine both pop culture behemoths in the context of this larger question at hand. (I’ll consider the TV series Game of Thrones an “event” due to its recent season opener.)
Both events maintain a curator profile on both Spotify and Apple Music. User “Coachella” is the obvious one for the music festival, while the show’s user profile is named “Game of Thrones” on Spotify, but on Apple Music, it is “Music from Game of Thrones”.
Coachella on Spotify currently has six public playlists, with five of them focused on different parts of the day. For example, the “Made in the Shade” playlist is for chilling out in the morning, and “Nights and Lights” is for turning up at night.
But most of Coachella’s 214K followers are for their “2019 Lineup” playlist, which is 161 songs long and runs for 10.5 hours. It’s mostly a one song per artist list, and frontline oriented.
Childish Gambino currently sits in the #1 position on this playlist with the breezy “Feels Like Summer” track, and as of Sunday, had 38K unique monthly listeners coming from this playlist specifically, which is a pretty neat.
Janelle Monae in the #5 spot got 26K monthly listeners from it and Smino, in the last #161 position got about 6.5K listeners. So if we assumed your average user played from beginning to end for a 10.5-hour playlist, still having 25% of your audience is not bad.
However, it wouldn’t be surprising if for such a long list, users also shuffled and searched within it to find some sounds they liked...for the artist involved, it’s a decent way to get a few new followers as a side benefit of playing at the highly-coveted event.
For Game of Thrones, it’s a different kind of involvement for the fan, though: the main draw is not the music, but the TV show, so playlists are like an extension of the brand.
The Game of Thrones presence on Apple Music is rather straightforward: 50 tracks of Ramin Djawadi doing what the Emmy Award-winning score composer does.
But for Spotify, the show takes a more creative tack: they have featured 30 different playlists based on characters in the show, featuring a picture of them and simply titled after their name.
For example, hardcore warrior Khal Drogo at 3.2K followers features 25 songs of pure metal and the playlist for scheming queen Cersei Lannister starts off with Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman”.
The most popular playlist is for the righteous Jon Snow at 21.7K followers, so it’s not like these musical extensions of the characters are pulling major attention for the show or the music artists contained within them, but what does help is when Spotify officially backs you:
The official Spotify-curated “Game of Thrones: The End is Coming” playlist sits at 155K followers, and features 3.5 hours of varied music, including Rage Against the Machine’s “Sleep Now in the Fire”.
The rap-rock track, sitting in the #1 playlist spot, has drawn 128K unique monthly listeners to the band, for a track that was released back in 1999, which is great for them.
So what does it all mean for events or brands? I guess it depends on how creative you are with it, and while it doesn’t draw major listening power, it provides a fun diversion for your true fans.
And for artists? Why not get on them? Any attachment to a major cultural force can only be good for audience reach, and it’s virtually no additional work. And if that playlist is officially curated by Spotify, all the better.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday April 16th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at chartmetric.io/signup
And article links and show notes are at a new website: podcast.chartmetric.com.
Happy Tuesday, see you tomorrow!
5 min
April 15, 20192019-04-15 // New Music Friday Monday: BTS & Halsey
Highlights
K-pop group BTS features American star Halsey on Spotify’s New Music Friday in the #4 slot for another global smash for both acts
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 April 15th 2019.
New Music Friday Monday
Let’s try out a new segment called New Music Friday Monday, where we dip into the data and artists behind a new release that came out over the weekend.
On Friday April 12th, Korean boy band BTS continued their long-term strategy for the American market by enlisting the help of Jersey-born, LA-based singer Halsey in the new record “Boy With Luv”, who sings background vocals for the track.
“Boy With Luv” is the key of B minor, with a speed of 120 beats per minute, which means that its upbeat tempo turns what’s normally a sad-sounding chord progression into a danceable, driving kind of tension.
The Echo Nest score of 80 out of 100 in the Valence scale confirms that the song’s emotional sentiment is mostly positive, with a bit of sadness to it for good measure.
The 3-minute and 49-second track is currently on 74 Spotify editorial playlists and 19 Apple Music editorial playlists, including the #6 spot on Today’s Top Hits and the #4 position on the Today’s Hits in US Apple storefront.
You might guess that both superstar names have similar playlist footprints on either platform, but they are markedly different: for example on Spotify, about 3% of BTS’ total playlists they’re on are editorial, and Halsey’s portion of editorial playlists is about the same. However, Halsey’s total playlist reach is 208M followers, while BTS’ is 113M at the moment.
Also, Halsey’s monthly listeners to follower ratio is at 5.9, which puts her in the viral realm of Billie Eilish and DJ Snake. BTS’s ratio is a somewhat unflattering 0.8, which puts them in the company of Justin Bieber and another K-pop boy band called BIGBANG, who both experienced public opinion issues as of late.
One way to interpret these signals is that following an artist is a one-time action, whereas monthly listeners is an ongoing signal measured in a 28-day window.
So for Bieber and BIGBANG, despite their popularity earning them high follower counts at their highest peak, their respective PR issues have cost them somewhat in recent listeners.
However, why would this put the squeaky clean, up-and-coming BTS in the same ballpark? It’s hard to say, but one reason may actually be the strength of their marketing strategies: they’ve done such a good job at putting BTS in the spotlight via Western late night shows, talk radio, magazine interviews and awards appearances, that it’s earned them a lot of reach, but not enough engagement to keep up.
For example, Chartmetric users, who are most strongly represented in Western countries, follow BTS the most on our tool, while superstars Drake and Ariana Grande are the #2 and #3 most followed, but only by a significant gap.
Or to put it all of this simply, the curiosity is high, but the follow-through is still catching up.
However, BTS also brings something to the table for Halsey, who not only makes an on-camera appearance in the “Boy With Luv” music video, but also dances choreography with them.
BTS’ 16.6M Instagram followers are mostly based in Asia while over 40% of Halsey’s 12.4M followers are in the US and Brazil. Despite playing shows across the Pacific, this BTS collaboration brings Halsey front and center to a whole new demographic.
And now that the video’s become the most viewed debut in the first 24 hours in YouTube history, Halsey has now cemented her place in the ever-evolving story of BTS, all around the world.
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday April 15th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
Free accounts are at chartmetric.io/signup
And article links and show notes are at: chartmetric.transistor.fm/episodes.
Happy Monday, see you tomorrow!
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