How Music Charts

• Highlights  
  • Are you a manager looking for a quick summary of a record label you’re talking to? Maybe you want to compare the label you work for with a competitor? We’ve got a solution for you in our new Labels Page!
• Mission   
  • Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
  • We’re on the socials at “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, July 31st, 2019.
• New Feature: Labels Page
  • Debuting this week is a new feature simply called the Labels Page! We’re still putting tweaks on how we’re visualizing and organizing the data, but we’re hoping you can get a good idea of what certain imprints have been up to lately.
  • First and foremost, it isn’t an exhaustive list of labels in our entire database, because that would equal long load times.
    • So we try to focus on more active labels with better known tracks.
    • Specifically, this translates to labels that have released at least one track on Spotify with a Popularity Index of 40 or higher, in the past three years.
    • The Labels List defaults to the highest number of such popular releases in the past 3 years...
      • ...with Sony Music Entertainment having the most with 747 as of today, Columbia Records in 2nd with 711 and then RCA Records in 3rd place with 432.
      • So notice that we are currently displaying both parent group labels as well as label imprints alongside each other, since this is how we receive tracks’ metadata, but we’ll keep optimizing this down the road.
  • Once you click on various labels, we display their artists who’ve released in the past 60 days, along with releases in the past three years and even each label’s social media followers over time!
    • For example, you can check out that Sony Music Latin’s top performer in the past 60 days is CNCO, the Latin boy band that we blogged about back in December 2017 (link in the show notes).
    • CNCO is at a 78 Spotify Popularity Index, with an impressive 5.7M followers on the platform and 9.3M monthly listeners.
    • Their latest release on the label was “De Cero” a little over a month ago on June 23rd, which is also on 43 Apple Music playlists, 25 Amazon Music playlists and 18 Deezer ones...which you can see quickly here in one page.
  • You will also be able to get quick personalities of labels via their release numbers…
    • ...for example, Armada Music, as an electronic label, doesn’t have many releases that got over 60 on the Spotify Popularity Index in the past three years, as electronic as a genre has never been the strongest type of music on Spotify (which we also blogged about in Jan 2018, link in show notes).
    • However, Armada has released 810 tracks in the past three years that we’re tracking, while similarly electronic genre labels do a similar pace like Monstercat at 785 and Ultra at 767.
    • You can compare this with the 442 that 300 Entertainment has put out in the same time period, which is still a fast pace at over 12 releases per month...to be expected for a rap label in a genre that is well-known for constantly dropping new music.
  • Get to know foreign labels like India’s T-Series or Brazil’s Som Livre via our Labels feature as well...we’ll surely include more label analysis down the road, but for now, check it out yourself with a free account at chartmetric.com

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 31st, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
• Article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Wednesday, see you on Friday!

• Highlights  
  • What’s in a name? For the subgenre game on Spotify, Apple, Deezer, and Amazon’s top playlists … a lot.
• Mission   
  • Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
  • We’re on the socials at “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Friday, July 26th, 2019.
• Odd Subgenres Gaining Ground on Streaming’s Top Playlists
  • Ever heard of Brostep, Lilith, Etherpop, Crunk, Redneck, Metropopolis, or Pagode?
  • No? Well, chances are, you’ve listened to examples of some of these subgenres, because they now comprise a small but significant portion of the top playlists on Spotify, Apple, Deezer, and Amazon.
  • Thanks to the new subgenre feature on our Artists tab, where we've categorized the more than 7,000 Spotify genre tags into a handful of parent genres, finding artists that fit these niche descriptors is easy.
  • Just select the main genre and then scroll through the subgenres to filter to your heart’s content.
  • If we apply this taxonomy to Spotify’s Hot Country playlist, which boasts around 5.5M followers, Redneck and Brostep account for 5.7 and 2.9 percent of that playlist’s track distribution when it comes to genre market share.
  • What exactly do those subgenres sound like? Well, let’s just say that Redneck is REALLY country and Brostep is in-your-face Dubstep. 
  • On Get Turnt, which also has around 5.5M followers, Crunk has 1.6 percent of the playlist’s genre makeup.
  • The Subgenre is also featured on Apple Music’s Rap Life, #OnRepeat, It’s Lit!!!, and Gymflow playlists, and on Amazon’s Rap Rotation playlist, finding its low at 0.8 percent and its high at 2.9 percent.
  • Crunk actually emerged as a subgenre of Hip-Hop during the ‘90s in the American South.
  • Crank it up.
  • Deezer’s Brand New UK and Neue Hits playlists, meanwhile, feature something called Metropopolis, which is apparently a neologism of Spotify’s and includes artists like Charli XCX, Bleachers, and St. Vincent.
  • That portmanteau — think urban pop — sits at 5.6 percent on Brand New UK (tied with House) and at 5.1 percent on Neue Hits (tied with Rap).
  • Apple’s The A-List: Pop playlist and Amazon’s Pop Hits playlist share a subgenre called Etherpop, which sounds pretty self-explanatory as a combination of ethereal and pop.
  • It wins out on Amazon, where it has 2.9 percent share of the playlist (tied with Emo and R&B) vs. 1.2 on Apple, where it’s tied with Rap, House, K-Pop, and yup, Metropopolis.
  • And that brings us to two subgenres exclusive to Deezer and Amazon’s top playlists, respectively.
  • On Deezer, the Pagode subgenre is seeing success on its Top Brazil and Explosão Brasil playlists, which makes total sense, considering it’s a form of Samba.
  • Brazilians love it, too, as it dominates Explosão Brasil with a 20.8 percent share and comes in third on Top Brazil with 13.3 percent.
  • Lilith, which claims 2.1 percent on Amazon’s Fresh Country and 5.8 percent on Amazon’s I Miss the ‘90s, seems to also be a geo-specific subgenre, with its roots in the Canadian-American traveling music festival, Lilith Fair, which featured an inspiring number of female-fronted folk and rock acts in the ‘90s.
  • If you’re curious about what artists might fall into each of these subgenres — Brostep to Lilith, Etherpop to Crunk, Redneck to Metropopolis, or Pagode to … C86? — you’re in luck with our subgenre filter. Nerd out for free with a Chartmetric account!

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 26th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
• Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
• And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

• 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.
  • We’re on the socials at “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.
• 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!

• Highlights  
  • Is there any relation between follower counts on streaming services and follower counts on social media? Here’s a sneak peek at the trends we’re tracking for some of the biggest artists in the world.
• Mission   
  • Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
  • Don’t forget to reach out to us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn! We’d love to hear from you.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Friday, July 19th, 2019.
• What Follower Counts Say About Social and Streaming Trends
  • In the old days, customers became fans if they not only bought CDs but also concert tickets — consistently and repeatedly.
  • In the digital era, the live space is still important, but streaming platform followers and social media followers are the new metrics for measuring fandom. 
  • But does streaming popularity correlate with social media popularity?
  • Is it consistent across the board, or does each streaming platform relate differently to each social platform?
  • To test out these queries, we pulled follower data for artists topping the charts from January through June, and then determined the correlation coefficients for Spotify and Instagram, Spotify and Twitter, and Spotify and Facebook, repeating this process for YouTube, SoundCloud, and Deezer.
  • What panned out from all of our calculations and pretty charts? 
  • For the whole story, you’ll have to stay tuned for something special we have in the works for the near future.
  • In the meantime, here’s a teaser: One thing that pops out immediately is how poorly Facebook is correlated with streaming services across the board.
  • If we take the average correlation across eight of the top artists for the past six months, Facebook turns up negligible negative correlation coefficients for Spotify and YouTube and negligible positive correlation coefficients for SoundCloud and Deezer.
  • Instagram, on the other hand, turns up near one-to-one correlations with Spotify and YouTube.
  • Twitter correlates pretty well with each streaming service — but nowhere near the Instagram correlation.
  • In the words of our resident Data Scientist Josh Hayes, “Seems like many of the platforms are moving in similar directions together … except for Facebook.”
  • While Facebook owns both platforms, it’s apparent, at least for the top performing artists, that Facebook Fan growth has either stopped, declined, or failed to keep pace with follower growth on four streaming services.
  • Naturally, the story gets a bit more complicated as we begin to look at trends for particular artists, genres, and more, but hang in there — the full story is coming soon!
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 19th 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
  • Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
  • Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

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

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 17th 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
• Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
• And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Wednesday, and we’ll see you Friday! 

• Highlights  
  • Who says music is all about young people and streaming? Amazon Music and American radio would beg to differ, and we’ll check out a couple of Australian artists who are doing well on them.
• Mission   
  • Good morning, it’s Jason here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
  • We’re on the socials at “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and talk to us! We’d love to hear from you.
  • FYI, we’re scaling back to 2 episodes per week, why? Because we’re working on some special projects that we will certainly tell you about over the next few months, but we need to make the time to do them! So don’t worry, your phone isn’t playing games with your heart….it’s just us and the Backstreet Boys.
  • Having said all that….
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Friday, July 12th, 2019.
• Vance Joy and AC/DC on Amazon Music and US Radio
  • The Financial Times reported yesterday on the rise of Amazon Music, and how it has experienced a 70 percent growth in subscribers in the past year.
  • The head of Amazon Music- Steve Boom (that’s a great name for a music guy)-  noted that all the other platforms were playing for the younger crowds, but not older consumers. 
    • Apparently 14 percent of subscribers to Amazon Music are aged 55 or older, compared with just 5 percent of Spotify’s customers, according to Midia Research’s Mark Mulligan.
  • Now on the radio side of things, Music Business Worldwide reported that AM/FM US radio consumption is growing! Take that, streaming.
    • Radio reached more folks than any other entertainment platform in 2019, according to Nielsen’s Audio Today 2019 report.
    • 272M Americans fire up their radios each week, that is 7M more listeners than 2016...and why? Because Americans love their cars, and radios are just there.
  • Now to help illustrate that with actual artists, we’ll turn to two of Australia’s biggest ones, relative newcomer Vance Joy and classic rock gods AC/DC.
  • Vance Joy, the pop/folk singer-songwriter from Melbourne is currently on
    • 19 Amazon editorial playlists, including the contextual playlists Rise and Shine, Road Trip: Folk and a chart-like playlist: Best Folk Songs of 2017.
    • His massive hit “Riptide” is actually NOT the most playlisted on the platform, it’s actually another one of his records, “Lay It On Me”, placing in 9 of those 19 Amazon Music playlists.
    • On the 300 influential American radio stations we cover, Joy had as many as 506 spins in the week of Sept 24th 2018, and the week of July 1st, it was down to 91.
    • But it’s all good because the state of Wisconsin LOVES Vance Joy, as his songs have been 1% of all the tracks that state’s radio stations have played since September. Pretty impressive.
  • Now for all-time rock greats AC/DC, straight out of Sydney:
    • They are on 14 Amazon editorial playlists, including the #2 slot on Classic Rock for Lifting, the #5 spot for Pre-Game Grilling, and the #1 spot for 80s Hard Rock Workout...who’s feeling some testosterone?
    • AC/DC hits like “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “Back in Black” seem to resonate most in Boston, Massachusetts and Gainesville, Florida…
  • ...but what’s really good to remember is that in case your phone runs out of battery, you can find either of these artists or others by flicking on the old car radio, or simply asking Alexa to do it for you.

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, July 12th, 2019. This is Jason from Chartmetric.
• Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
• And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Friday, and we’ll see you next week! 

• Highlights  
  • Brazilian Bossa Nova legend João Gilberto died over the weekend at the age of 88. We remember “O Mito” and just how timeless he is.
• 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.
  • Our social media handle is “chartmetric”, that’s Chartmetric, no “S ”- follow us on all your favorite platforms at Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and let us know what you think about this or any episode, get the latest and greatest from us daily...we’d also love to get your feedback!
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Wednesday, July 10th, 2019.
• Remembering Bossa Nova Great João Gilberto
  • João Gilberto, the father of Bossa Nova, died in Rio De Janeiro over the weekend, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t honor his monumental legacy.
  • Gilberto was born in 1931 in the Brazilian state of Bahia, received his first guitar when he was 14, and you might say the rest is history.
  • In 1965, he and American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz won three Grammy Awards for their album Getz/Gilberto, which features their famous recording of “The Girl From Ipanema.”
  • With any legacy artist like Gilberto, whose catalog consists of, well, catalog (as opposed to frontline) recordings, numbers tend to flatline without those big new release marketing drivers.
  • Gilberto’s repertoire has seen a significant uptick in interest across platforms not only in the last week, which is to be expected anytime a music great passes into the next frontier — but within the last two months as well.
  • On Spotify, Gilberto’s follower increase has hovered steadily around a 100 since January, but since May 25, it’s shot up to around 600.
  • While his monthly listeners fell some 5 or 600,000 from early April to early May, by the end of May, they had increased some 3 or 400,000.
  • His Spotify Popularity Index, as a result, lifted some five points from 65 to 70 between May 23 and July 8.
  • On every social platform, save for the Facebook wildcard, interest spikes are understandably, if unfortunately, localized around the news of his death.
  • His Wikipedia views, for example, jumped from around 300 to nearly 70,000.
  • There’s a similar increase on YouTube, where daily views leapt from around 66,000 to 1.2 million.
  • Given his holy status in his home country of Brazil, Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro are his top cities by Spotify monthly listeners at 13.6 and 7.3 percent, respectively.
  • On YouTube, however, Paris, France, and Santiago, Chile, are his top cities, both at around 8 percent.
  • As far as countries go, USA, at 15 percent, is his biggest fan behind Brazil, at 17 percent of daily YouTube views.
  • So, while Gilberto is definitely a Brazilian deity in the music world, it’s clear his impact has been global and that it will remain so for many, many years to come.

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 10th, 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 on Friday!

• Highlights  
  • Spotify and Apple Music are grilling up your soundtrack to one of America’s biggest holidays. So, what tracks are sparking the fireworks?
• 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, July 3rd, 2019.
• Barbecue the Music: Playlisting USA’s Independence Day
  • With their own Fourth of July playlists soundtracking barbecues across America, who have Apple Music and Spotify tapped to celebrate USA’s independence from Great Britain?
  • On Apple Music’s 16-song Pop for the Fourth playlist, Rihanna’s “American Oxygen,” first released four years ago, is the latest add.
  • Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” first released some 43 years ago, is the next most recent add, followed by Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA,” released 10 years ago now.
  • Noticing a pattern here?
  • Well, besides the not-so-subtle American themes, it’s a great platform for boosting those catalog numbers.
    • Apple Music’s Pop for the Fourth playlist has five of 16 tracks at a 50-59 valence range, but seven at a 70-79 energy range. 
  • Apple Music’s 25-song Independence Day: Hip-Hop playlist follows suit, at least with the catalog trend.
  • E-40’s “Function (featuring YG, Iamsu!, and Problem),” Raekwon’s “Soundboy Kill It (featuring Melanie Fiona and Assassin),” and Fat Joe’s “Another Day (featuring Rick Ross, French Montana, and Tiara Thomas)” comprise the most recent adds there.
  • All of those songs were released four and five years ago, but most noteworthy here are thematics.
  • This playlist is less about holding the banner for American exceptionalism and more about championing an independent, and even rebellious, spirit.
    • Apple Music’s Independence Day: Hip-Hop playlist has nine of 25 tracks at a 30-39 valence range, but seven out of 25 at a 60-69 energy range.
  • Spotify has consolidated a little of everything into a single 103-song Independence Day playlist.
  • The latest three adds include Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” which was first released in 1964 ...
  • Joey and Rory’s “This Song’s for You (featuring Zac Brown Band),” released nine years ago …
  • And Simon and Garfunkel’s “America,” released in 1968.
  • Talk about eclectic, with both catalog classics and country anthems mixed in with blues-rock, folk, and even the occasional Top 40 hit. 
  • Perhaps an attempt at a playlist snapshot of the American musical identity?
    • Whatever the case, Spotify’s Independence Day playlist has 16 of 103 tracks at a 30-39 valence range, but the distribution is noticeably more equalized than with Apple Music.
    • The most tracks, at 23, are featured in the 90-99 energy range.
  • So, if you’re looking for high energy with a wide spread of moods, go Spotify, but if you’re looking for moderate energy and mood go Apple pop, and if you’re feeling extra independent, go Apple hip-hop -- at least just for your Fourth of July vibe.

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
• Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
• And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• We’ll be off air for the holiday weekend, so happy Wednesday, happy Fourth of July, and we’ll see you on Monday!

• Highlights  
  • “Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings Acquires Scott Borchetta's Big Machine Label Group” is what Sunday’s official press release reads, we’ll take a look at a sample of Swift’s data while on Big Machine and on Republic Records
• 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, July 2nd, 2019.
• Taylor Swift: Before and After Big Machine
  • The music business’ latest media frenzy revolves around a music mogul acquiring a top music star’s catalog.
    • This is reminiscent of how in 1985, the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, acquired the Beatles’ catalog of song copyrights, after receiving advice from Paul McCartney himself that music publishing was a great business to get into.
  • Current music executive Scooter Braun and his Ithaca Holdings media company purchased Nashville-based Big Machine Label Group, Taylor Swift’s former label,  for lots of money. This was announced over the weekend.
    • Big Machine’s assets include Swift’s catalog up through 2017’s “Reputation”.
    • She signed to UMG’s Republic Records in 2018, and now owns her own future masters starting with the album “Lover”.
  • While we don’t have data on the controversy, we can look at two tracks: one from Swift’s Big Machine era, and one from her Republic Records era.
  • The former is “Look What You Made Me Do” from 2017’s “Reputation” album while the latter is the first single from the 2019 album “Lover,” “You Need to Calm Down”.
  • Big Machine-owned “Look What You Made Me Do”
    • ...was released almost two years ago in August 2017.
    • Currently at a 75 out of 100 Spotify Popularity Index (or SPI), it was at 91 SPI in Nov 2018.
    • The track is on 1.6K Spotify playlists, 17 of them editorial including the This Is: Taylor Swift playlist....
    • ...while it also has a current spot on 77 Apple Music playlists and 27 Amazon playlists, all editorial for the latter case.
  • In her Republic-era, “You Need to Calm Down”
    • ...was released just two weeks ago in June 2019.
    • Currently at 92 SPI, it’s on less total Spotify playlists at 1.1K, but is on more editorial at 94, which makes sense since it’s relatively a brand new release.
    • It’s on almost three times as many Apple Music playlists at 202, and 3.5x as many Amazon playlists at 98.
  • So is it fair to say that the Republic era is “better”? Not necessarily- again, it’s just a newer track and her Big Machine track was in the middle of her 2014-2018 Spotify absence, limiting a big part of her data profile.
    • But what this kind of side-by-side track comparison CAN do is help you evaluate how well tracks do under different promotional strategies, label teams or simply with different types of music.
    • Hope it’s useful.

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Tuesday, July 2nd, 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, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

• Highlights  
  • On Part 1 of our streaming manipulation series, we took you on a wild ride into depths of playlist fixing. Today, on Part 2, we’re zeroing in on fake artists.
• Mission   
  • Good morning, it’s Rutger here at Chartmetric with your 3-minute Data Dump where we upload charts, artists and playlists into your brain so you can stay up on the latest in the music data world.
• Date
  • This is your Data Dump for Monday, July 1st, 2019.
• Enter the World of Streaming Manipulation, Part 2 - Fake Artists
  • For Part 1 of our streaming manipulation series, we covered some funny business in the playlisting world. 
  • On Part 2, we’re scratching a different part of streaming’s underbelly: fake artist accounts.
  • Last November, Pop Buzz and others covered a mysterious account uploading ostensibly unreleased Ariana Grande tracks under the name Zandhr.
  • As it turned out, the tracks had been available online for some time, but that didn’t change the fact that a streaming account reportedly not linked to Ariana Grande, according to the BBC, was uploading her intellectual property to potentially profit off of.
  • While the Zandhr account has since been taken down, our data suggests the fake artist accrued 9.5K Spotify followers and almost 30K monthly Spotify listeners, in addition to landing an “Ariana Grande - Every Song” playlist with some 20K+ followers of its own.
  • Playboi Carti found himself in a similar predicament when three different fake accounts — Lil Kambo, Unocarti, and Unocompac — started uploading his tracks, with some pitch-shifting his songs in an attempt to disguise the illegitimate uploads.
  • While both Lil Kambo and Unocarti’s profiles appear to have been taken down, the former amassed a 50K+ playlist reach from 37 playlists and the latter almost a 20K playlist reach from 19 playlists.
  • Unocompac, meanwhile, appears to still have at least one Playboi Carti song up, enjoying 14K Spotify followers and a 30K playlist reach from 54 playlists.
  • The best — or worst — part is that Unocompac’s artist gallery on Spotify includes three out-of-focus nighttime shots of a white suburban teenager posing and throwing up fake gang signs.
  • Shaking my damn head.
  • While this all might seem rather innocuous, as most of these accounts never amass more than a couple of thousand followers, it’s important to remember ...
  • One, fake artist accounts effectively steal intellectual property and income from the legitimate artists they’re “impersonating.”
  • And two, fake artist accounts devalue the work of all legitimate artists who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into making and marketing their art. 
  • While this phenomenon probably isn’t something to worry about in the short-term, how it’s handled now will determine how big of a problem it becomes in the long-term.
  • With so many metadata errors, artist-song mismatches, and unclaimed blackbox royalties as a result, the last thing artists need is an army of mysterious impersonators gaming the system. 
• Outro
  • That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Monday, July 1st, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
  • Free accounts are at chartmetric.com
  • And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
  • Happy Monday, and we’ll see you tomorrow!