Starting October 27th, Chartmetric will be the first public, third-party music analytics platform to partner with SiriusXM/Pandora and host Pandora data for top music industry clients around the world. Chartmetric will track key metrics from the US-based music streaming platform thanks to a new integration that lets Chartmetric reveal a market-level view of millions of artists and tracks, dating back to 2005 and continuing on a daily basis.

“This close partnership with SXM/Pandora unlocks deep insights into a new and exciting listener audience,” explains Jason Joven of Chartmetric. “Pandora listeners often enjoy picking an artist to listen to and then letting the service recommend great music at the right time, which is also a boon for artists seeking new fans. This collaboration is the result of working with the great team at SiriusXM/Pandora, who we’ve looked up to for a long time in the music analytics world.”

Going live on Chartmetric’s Free and Premium tiers on Oct 27th, Pandora 28-day unique listener counts, daily/lifetime station adds, and daily/lifetime stream counts will be available at the artist level and track level.

"We're thrilled to be partnering with Chartmetric to make our data available through their tools, which we know are well-regarded by artists and their teams,” says Dan Wissinger at Pandora. “When armed with the right data, artists can build an audience on Pandora that moves the needle and continues to tune in long after release week."

Rounding out the full picture for artists, managers, labels, and brands, Chartmetric will create several Pandora-centric charts such as top unique listener counts and top lifetime streams, as well as three of Pandora’s own weekly charts: Pandora Trendsetters, Pandora Top Spins, and Pandora Predictions. Combining the streaming platform’s data with other popular platforms like TikTok and Twitch will bring a new perspective to Chartmetric’s overall portrait of an artist’s data.

“Adding Pandora’s data is special, as it’s a particularly deep integration into our platform,” remarks Spencer Franks, Chartmetric’s Product Manager. “The detailed level of streaming insight over time gives Chartmetric customers useful information to change the way they measure marketing campaigns, allocate team resources, and better connect with their fans, which is what this is all about.”

About Chartmetric

Chartmetric was founded in 2016. Its clients include all three major record companies, thousands of independent labels, publishers and distributors, as well artist managers, agents, festivals, promoters and brands from outside of the traditional music industry. Chartmetric ingests vast quantities of data from numerous sources, covering digital services, socials and traditional media. It provides users with an illuminative and ever-evolving source of astonishing insight. By deeply integrating data for millions of artists and tracks, Chartmetric helps its clients gain understanding about the complex global-social market for music. Chartmetric provides clarity for every aspect of A&R and music marketing, powered by advanced machine learning and data science.

About Sirius XM/Pandora

Pandora is a leading music and podcast discovery platform, providing a highly-personalized listening experience to approximately 70 million users each month with its proprietary Music Genome Project® and Podcast Genome Project® technology - whether at home or on the go - through its mobile app, the web, and integrations with more than 2,000 connected products. As the largest streaming music provider in the U.S., with an industry-leading digital audio advertising platform, Pandora connects listeners with the audio entertainment they love. Pandora is a subsidiary of Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI). Together, Pandora and SiriusXM have created the world's largest audio entertainment company.

If you’re a music professional and hear an intriguing artist you’ve never heard before, you need quick, useful information on that artist’s activities — from playlists to chart entries — to guide your decision making. But you may not have access to a laptop.

Chartmetric has created a mobile app for this very moment, when music professionals need a snapshot of an artist’s key stats. The app, available now to premium users at no additional cost, summarizes an artist’s chart position and playlist additions, along with other helpful data. Users can set up in-app notifications to keep them on top of any new developments. The easy-to-interpret overview gives mobile users a simple way to engage with Chartmetric.

“It's a natural reflex for your thumb to reach for a navigation app on your phone when you're trying to get somewhere,” says Jason Joven, Chartmetric’s Content and Insights Manager. “We want to make it just as natural to reach for a mobile app that helps you navigate the complexities of music data.”

Distilled from the robust and flexible charts and features on Chartmetric’s web app, the mobile app is designed to help A&R pros, booking agents, and festival programmers, who may be encountering new artists away from their laptops, find out the basics. It may also be of use to musicians, labels, and agents who need to keep an eye on what’s happening with a particular campaign or release from their smartphones.

The app will evolve as Chartmetric further refines what mobile features would serve their users best. "We’re looking to find new, mobile-first ways to present data and offer insights,” notes Spencer Franks, Product Manager at Chartmetric. “This is a first step to let even casual users engage with music data."

"You can throw everything onto a website. Mobile apps force you to be creative about how you communicate all the data you have to work with," explains Rutger Rosenborg, Chartmetric’s Digital Strategy Lead. "We’re always working on how to make data a little less overwhelming and more welcoming for creative minded people who may be new to data analysis."

The Chartmetric mobile app is available to all premium subscribers, who can download the iOS or Android version here.

About Chartmetric

Chartmetric was founded in 2016. Its clients include all three major record companies, thousands of independent labels, publishers and distributors, as well artist managers, agents, festivals, promoters and brands from outside of the traditional music industry. Chartmetric ingests vast quantities of data from numerous sources, covering digital services, socials and traditional media. It provides users with an illuminative and ever-evolving source of astonishing insight. By deeply integrating data for millions of artists and tracks, Chartmetric helps its clients gain understanding about the complex global-social market for music. Chartmetric provides clarity for every aspect of A&R and music marketing, powered by advanced machine learning and data science.

Facing intense challenges, musicians and their fans have turned to livestreaming, something gamers have done for years. Music data analytics platform Chartmetric is watching livestreams and platforms like Twitch go from cool niche to increasingly necessary. Twitch’s musical side highlights how much music and gaming are entwined, as musicians mix gameplay with performance and gamers seek out music on their favorite streaming platform.

Chartmetric has been tracking more than 5,000 musicians, labels, and music-centric users on Twitch since May 15, 2020. It homes in on new Twitch streams with music as their focus by grabbing data from the top streamers in the Music category every few hours. Artists can also manually register to get their data to Chartmetric with a few clicks, allowing the platform to track followers and viewer-hours.

Chartmetric has created four new charts for music on Twitch: Weekly Top Users by Viewer-Hours, Monthly Top Users by Viewer-Hours, Weekly Top Users by Followers, and All-Time Top Users by Followers. “We feel these charts give a great overview of who’s gaining traction, as well as what level and kind of engagement they’re getting on Twitch,” says CEO Sung Cho. “We think these charts will prove valuable to music professionals of all sorts as they try to see how livestreaming fits into the business.”

Like TikTok, Twitch has nurtured its own crop of music creators, some of whom hail from the gaming world or incorporate gameplay or game culture into their music making. For example, the most followed Twitch streamer Chartmetric is tracking is Spain-based Ibai "Ibai" Llanos, the former League of Legends gamer and current G2 Esports creator who currently boasts some 2.2M Twitch followers. At No. 2, American streamer LilyPichu (1.4M followers) takes a more hybrid approach, blending music and gaming content, as she draws, plays piano, and games. In parallel to Twitch, she’s built a sizable music audience on other platforms (68.5K Spotify followers & 191.4K monthly listeners; 2.3M YouTube channel subscribers & 244M channel views).

Recently, musicians and labels from different countries, scenes, and eras have also managed to build and sustain impressive audiences on Twitch. Take, for example, the most followed label, Monstercat (791K), which alternates 24/7 streams of the label’s music with live performances and listening parties. Recently retired rapper Logic (374K followers) is now streaming frequently and gaining new fans, as have deadmau5 (469K followers) and Brendon Urie (391K). Twitch and other livestreaming platforms have given new windows of opportunity to a range of international players like LiveKiss, a Taiwanese radio station that has the most viewer-hours in the week of Sept. 8 (522K), beating out Beatport, Insomniac, and Dirtybird electronic music channels to top the charts.

“We love the stories data can tell, and these new Twitch tracking features and analytics add to the robust, helpful information we provide to our artists, managers, labels, and other professionals looking to understand what’s going on with music, no matter what the platform,” notes Cho. “Now they can get an even deeper glimpse into their story, or the story of the music they care about.”

About Chartmetric

Chartmetric was founded in 2016. Its clients include all three major record companies, thousands of independent labels, publishers and distributors, as well artist managers, agents, festivals, promoters and brands from outside of the traditional music industry. Chartmetric ingests vast quantities of data from numerous sources, covering digital services, socials and traditional media. It provides users with an illuminative and ever-evolving source of astonishing insight. By deeply integrating data for millions of artists and tracks, Chartmetric helps its clients gain understanding about the complex global-social market for music. Chartmetric provides clarity for every aspect of A&R and marketing, powered by advanced machine learning and data science.

The last six months have been unprecedented in the modern music industry, yet artists and fans have adapted and continued to create music and connections.This energy resonates in the latest report from Chartmetric, which takes a deep data dive into where and how new acts are emerging and how older tracks--be they from 1988 or 2018--are finding new life on popular platforms.

“Even with the disruption of lockdowns and quarantine, many of the trends we’ve noticed for quite some time remain in force and even intensified with the sudden change in lifestyles around the world,” explains Sung Cho, Chartmetric CEO. “Fans are finding tracks that are fun to make short videos to, or they are discovering new favorite songs thanks to popular shows on streaming services like Netflix. They are less concerned where the artist comes from, what their specific style is, what language they speak, or how old the track may be. They just hear something in it that clicks, and the song becomes a hit.”

Newer platforms like TikTok and tried-and-true breakthroughs via sync exerted vital influence on what tracks caught listeners’ attention. Chartmetric saw a lively mix of older, catalog tracks garnering fresh excitement, whether we’re talking MC Hammer or Anne-Marie, along with newcomers surfacing on TikTok like BENEE (the rising star behind “Supalonely”). Tracks that gain viral following on one platform often get a significant boost across the digital board. Pop and hip hop remain strong, and remixes, features, and other flavors of collaboration are setting the tone for music in 2020.

Below are some key takeaways from the report, covering the period from Jan. 1 to June 30, and released publicly on Aug. 31, 2020. You can find the full report, complete with interactive graphics and data breakdowns for prominent artists and tracks, here.

It’s not just you...it’s us

For Trending TikTok videos, collaboration and multi-artist tracks are the rule, not the exception, with seven out of the Top 10 tracks at the end of June having multiple artists featured on the same track.

For many tracks, this takes the form of remixes, which are immensely popular on TikTok and can give catalog tracks (released 18+ months ago) a second wind, as is the case for Shaun Reynolds’ remix of Anne-Marie’s 2018 track “2002"; Puri, Jhorrmountain, and Adje’s 2017 track “Coño,” which has a whole host of remixes now; and Nfasis’ 2017 track “Tra Tra,” which spawned a number of remixes and led to the #AhiChallenge on TikTok.

TikTok as “trigger platform”

TikTok virality continues to help artists grab success on other platforms, with Powfu/beabadoobee, BENEE, and Jack Harlow being particular artists of note. After having viral TikTok tracks, these artists saw Top 10 growth on Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, and/or Shazam. Many of the tracks with the most Shazam growth have had TikTok success as well. It could be purely correlational, but it also supports current industry thinking that TikTok is driving music discovery. Even if artists haven’t figured out how to grow their own TikTok-native audiences, the platform is clearly an effective auxiliary tool for growing audiences on other platforms.

“TikTok might be the new viral marketing platform for music right now, but it’s still largely artist agnostic. User interactions with particular tracks — or even just one particular lyric from a track — continue to be the dominant form of TikTok use. For now, artists seem to benefit most from track-level marketing on TikTok while building their brands and engaging with their audiences elsewhere,” says Chartmetric Digital Strategy Lead Rutger Rosenborg.

A potentially powerful discovery tool, TikTok is also a vibrantly global one. America still dominates under most circumstances, however: United States artists accounted for more than 60 percent of the tracks on the Trending TikTok Tracks chart for the period (not taking into account levels of consumption). Indian artists' tracks comprised 4.28 percent of the tracks — or the 4th most — on the TikTok chart for this reporting period, indicating the growing importance of TikTok for Indian artists over the course of 2020 before the government banned the app at the end of June.

“Imagine the implications for American artists if the upcoming negotiations with Bytedance were to fall through and TikTok actually was banned here,” notes Rosenborg.

Lockdowns did impact American tracks on TikTok, however. There was a significant dip in Top TikTok Tracks from American artists in March, lining up with Chartmetric’s April analysis of COVID-19’s effect on Spotify and YouTube. In other words, tracks from American artists were added to videos less during the height of coronavirus quarantines in mid- to late-March, a time when many artists paused their release plans. Though Pop and Hip-Hop took a hit as a result, they were still by far the most popular genres on this TikTok chart during this time period.

Syncs (especially on Netflix) equal hits

Chartmetric tracks various broadcast and OTT/SVOD syncs, and two intriguing cases of sync making a song go viral stood out in this half year of binge watching.

Sync can lift an older song to new heights. Indie Pop artist Ashe released her song “Moral of the Story” on Valentine’s Day in 2019. Around the same time this year, the song got a second wind after appearing on the Netflix movie To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, which nearly doubled the track's Spotify Popularity and brought it to No. 3 on Chartmetric’s list of tracks with the most growth in Shazams. People who watched the movie were likely Shazam-ing the track en masse. This engagement increased Ashe's daily Spotify followers 10x and daily Instagram followers 100x, arguably catapulting her to a new level in her career.

“Despite their potential for growth, SVOD syncs are obviously a rare opportunity for most artists, but it’s just one way to be involved in passive audiovisual storytelling,” says Chartmetric’s Content & Insights Manager Jason Joven. “So being open to lending your music to anyone telling their own stories--whether through backing a TikTok influencer’s video, streaming across a gamer’s Twitch livestream, or nabbing a Netflix sync--seems to be the real opportunity for growth in 2020.”

Synced songs can cross cultures and hit new fans in the feels. Netflix's Korean drama hit Crash Landing on You featured Yerin Baek’s "Here I Am Again" and Yoon Mi Rae’s "Flower." Both trended on Shazam more than any other of the drama’s soundtrack songs, and were probably most memorable to Western viewers as their English refrains were heard during some of the more emotional moments in the series. This meant good things for the artists: Yerin Baek saw a nearly 200K increase in her Instagram followers that coincided with the show's premiere worldwide on Dec. 14, 2019.
 

Slow and steady wins the race: Rxseboy

While the rest of the most viral artists in H1 2020 relied on playlist adds to make their mark, 20-year-old Lo-Fi rapper Anthony Tubbs, aka Rxseboy, built a steady increase across all streaming and social media platforms, possibly thanks to his constant flow of features and releases. Known for collaborating with Canadian lo-fi act Powfu, Rxseboy’s fanbase really started to grow following his May 11 single “ill come back to you,” featuring Powfu and fellow Emo rapper Sarcastic Sounds. His current leap in Chartmetric’s overall popularity ranking system (Cross-Platform Performance) will not likely wane during the rest of 2020.

Top genres stay on top

Though some analysts noted lockdown bumps in more “nostalgic” genres, including classic rock and country, on streaming services, Chartmetric’s data argue that hip hop, electronic, and pop artists still reigned during the first half of 2020. Rock artists are virtually non-existent in terms of top growth percentages across the platforms Chartmetric analyzed for this report. Pop, Hip-Hop, and EDM-oriented artists seemed to have the most representation, with DJs performing particularly well on Shazam.

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About Chartmetric

Chartmetric was founded in 2016. Its clients include all three major record companies, thousands of independent labels, publishers and distributors, as well as artist managers, agents, festivals, promoters and brands from outside of the traditional music industry. Chartmetric ingests vast quantities of data (from nearly 2.4M artists worldwide) from numerous sources, covering digital services, socials and traditional media. It provides users with an illuminative and ever-evolving source of astonishing insight. By deeply integrating data for millions of artists and tracks, Chartmetric helps its clients gain understanding about the complex global-social market for music. Chartmetric provides clarity for every aspect of A&R and marketing, powered by advanced machine learning and data science

In recent months, many popular artists have struck like bolts from the blue, popping up suddenly on platforms like TikTok. Chartmetric, the music data and analytics company committed to inspiring creativity, wants to show the whole backstory.

To find these trending artists’ tracks right as they take off, the company has created a new weekly TikTok Chart. Among other key features, the chart lets users search by velocity (how fast a track is gaining traction) and by rankings that extend deep into the leaderboard (down to the 1000th-ranked track). That allows the chart to reveal not just the same big names for weeks, but the substrate of fast breaking new artists who are winning over TikTok influencers and active users alike.

“So many up-and-coming artists who become super popular seem to appear quite suddenly to outsiders, but in many cases, they were not overnight successes,” explains Chartmetric founder and CEO Sung Cho. “You can see that there’s a story, a buildup to their success. The artists on this chart didn’t come out of nowhere. All biggest stars may dominate the top of other charts, but you’ll find many artists right below, millions more. We wanted to show what’s happening for those millions more dynamically.”

TikTok is characterized by viral pick-up on new trends and tracks that fit the spirit of the moment, regardless of their release date, language, or popularity on radio or big playlists. A song with the right lyrics or feel can zip from obscurity to millions of TikToks with remarkable speed. “On TikTok, the artists benefit, but it’s all about the users and what suits their goals, whether it’s getting laughs or nailing the dance they want to do,” say Jason Joven, Chartmetric’s Content and Insights Manager. “Old music is as popular as new music.”

Other platforms and services, like most labels, highlight new releases from top artists as their first priority. But not TikTok, Joven points out, which surfaces tracks of all kinds, including a Kane Brown ballad that couples began using as a soundtrack to aerial gymnastics routines and a vintage Harry Belafonte track that’s become popular among joke-telling TikTokers, both of which popped up on Chartmetric’s radar as they put together their bi-annual report late last year. 

In catching these unexpected meteoric rises right as they happen, Chartmetric’s chart reflects the company’s overall commitment to presenting data dynamically and creatively, finding the signal in the noise generated by music consumption, social media, and UGC video. Cho, Joven, and team are as scrappy as many of the influencers and artists they monitor, drawing on Silicon Valley’s rigorous experimentation and using data in ways that both harness and unleash creativity. Bringing a fresh tech approach to the industry’s chaotic data, Chartmetric has worked to let the data speak in ways meaningful to artists and other stakeholders.

“We like to say we’re taming data to keep artists from having to deal with a dozen open browser tabs and dashboards, a nightmare of spreadsheets and notes and other distractions from core tasks,” states Joven. “We want to unearth actionable insights by connecting numbers to narratives.”