Your Daily Data Dump from Chartmetric

Our guest today is Fabrice Sergent, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Bandsintown, where they “believe that live music is one of the last ‘tribal experiences' which creates happiness and understanding in the world. Their mission is to help artists build a sustainable future through virtual live streams, music releases, merchandise and traditional live events promotion. With a reach of 250 million Monthly Active music fans globally, over 67m registered concert goers and 550k touring artists registered to the platform, Bandsintown offers powerful, scalable and targeted digital marketing solutions to engage with music enthusiasts.”According to his LinkedIn profile, Sergent is “an entrepreneur driven by passion, having led hyper growth digital media enterprises in the U.S. and in Europe with extensive experience in the music industry, digital consumer marketing, brand building, business development, and mergers & acquisitions. He co-founded and led two start-ups to $100m+ revenues, starting his journey by founding Club-Internet, with the support of Lagardere/Hachette in 1995. Club-Internet was one of the very first Internet Service Provider (similar to AOL in the US) launched in France and later became one of the largest [Internet Service Providers] before it was purchased by Deutsche Telecom's T-Online in 2000 for 1.2 billion Euro.”Today, we'll look back on his road to music, what Bandsintown is up to nowadays, and what the future holds in store for live music.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

Our guest today is Ian Urbina, the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project. The project is a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., that produces investigative stories about human rights, environment, and labor concerns on the open seas.Urbina won a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News and a George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. Several of his stories have been adapted into major feature films, and his reporting for a New York Times Magazine article called The Secret Life Of Passwords was nominated for an Emmy Award.He has degrees in history and cultural anthropology from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, respectively. Before joining The New York Times for roughly 17 years as a staff reporter, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Cuba, and he also wrote about the Middle East and Africa for various outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Harper's, and Vanity Fair.On this episode, we talk to Urbina about the Outlaw Ocean Music Project, an offshoot of The Outlaw Ocean Project that's "[a]imed at people who might not otherwise have encountered this reporting." According to the project's website, "[T]he music renders stories more viscerally, and delivers them to the public through different channels. The music project's goal is to raise awareness and stoke a sense of urgency about the human rights, labor, and environmental abuses that occur at sea.”If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

Our guest today is Marc Brown, Founder of Byta, a music sharing app that lets artists, studios, and managers share, collaborate on, and promote secure music files before uploading them to streaming services. Marc is currently based in Stockholm, Sweden, though he is originally from Canada and spent many years in London working in A&R and artist promotion. On this episode, we discuss how he came to found Byta, what sets the app apart from DropBox and Soundcloud, and what this might mean for the future of Hi-Fi audio and NFTs.Check out Byta here.To attend a free Byta symposium that explores "how the music ecosystem will evolve and adapt to the developing digital landscape," register here.Byta recently published a white paper on the state of music sharing, which you can check out here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

Before starting Chartmetric, Sung worked on Sales Cloud as the Principal Product Manager at Oracle Corporation. Prior to that, he was the first employee/engineer at the publicly-traded gaming company Gamevil (which has a Market Cap of $400MM), where he initiated mobile game development and eventually positioned the company as a leading mobile game developer. Sung graduated with a bachelor's degree of electrical engineering and computer science from Seoul National University, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.He enjoys posting ideas on his blog (http://sungmooncho.com), which has attracted more than 5 million views and is considered as one of the leading tech blogs in Korea. Sung has invested in 10 startups in New York, Silicon Valley, and Seoul (http://angel.co/sung-cho).If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here. 

Russ Tannen is President of DICE, a UK- and now NYC-based mobile ticketing, live streaming, and live music recommendation platform that partners directly with venues, labels, and promoters to bring upfront pricing to live music fans (no fees are added at checkout, so the price you see at first is the price you get). Before rising through the ranks at DICE, Russ spent many years as an artist manager at Deadly Management during — and after — his time as an Events Manager at Vice Media. Before that, Russ studied Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in the UK.Read 20 things we've learned about Music Live Streaming by DICE Founder & CEO Phil Hutcheon.Check out DICE here, and download the app on your phone.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

The Arab nations have rarely been viewed as important markets by the global music industry. And artists from the region have only ever achieved modest international success. Until 20 years ago, exactly the same could be said of countless other countries. Today, markets like Latin America and South Korea produce global superstars with astonishing regularity.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

Our guest today is Milana Lewis, Co-Founder and CEO of Stem, a platform making it easier for artists, managers, labels and brands to distribute music, manage contracts, share data, split royalties, and stay independent. After six years working in talent agencies, spending the majority of that time as a Digital Media Agent with United Talent Agency, Milana started Stem in 2015 with the goal of simplifying how musicians and their teams pay collaborators. At the start of 2020, Stem announced Scale, a $100 million cash advance program aimed at giving artists a way to access alternative funding with fewer restrictions than a label typically imposes. This year, Inc. featured Milana on their Female Founders 100 list.Check out Stem here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

UnitedMasters' Head of Marketing David Melhado (mel-HEY-doh) is a New York City-based industry veteran who first cut his teeth in music marketing and management in the South, holding roles at Atlantic Records, iHeartRadio, StreamCut Media & RocNation. Connect With Dave on LinkedIn and check out UnitedMasters here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here. 

On this episode, we chat with Aileen Crowley, former Vice President of Global Streaming Marketing at Universal Music Group. Before leaving the major label world in November 2020, Aileen devised data-driven streaming strategy for developing artists, working directly with artist management to translate streaming analytics, develop artist release strategies, and implement plans for audience growth. Prior to that, Aileen was the General Manager of DigSin, a subscription-based independent music label focused on singles, playlisting, and data, as well as being an artist manager—and that was after spending almost seven years at world-renowned consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Today, Aileen runs The Streaming Story, a website dedicated to contextualizing streaming success with the narrative surrounding that success.Since recording this interview, Aileen has teamed up with Lark42, a digital consultancy that solves hard problems in the music, data, blockchain, streaming and startup space.You can connect with Aileen on LinkedIn here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

Aqui Kumar, Jannick Steinke, Sebastian Gorki, and Valerian Dilger are music business students at the Popakademie in Germany. “Established in 2003, the Popakademie is a higher education institution for the music and creative industries and their pop cultural scenes. By focusing its study programmes on popular music, it offers an academic education that is unique in Germany's public university landscape.” In this context, the students are part of Popakademie's SMIX.LAB. Founded in 2008 as an interface between the online world and the traditional music industry, SMIX.LAB sees itself as a center for the digital music business. It integrates digital knowledge and future-oriented research, investigating the modern possibilities of music marketing and other forward-thinking initiatives.The students themselves have industry experience at companies such as Live From Earth, Electric Feel, Amazon Music, and Ease Agency. Over the past few months, the Chartmetric team supported the students in their project to study how TikTok is influencing the German charts.Check out their exciting research on our blog: https://blog.chartmetric.comIf you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here. 

Zael is a manager at YMU Group, a global talent management company with a roster that includes RAC, Kina, Ryan Caraveo, Ben Zaidi, and Oshi. Originally from Amherst, Massachusetts, Zael grew up around a lot of jazz, cows, and psychologists. After moving out to LA and building his own management company, Zael joined forces with YMU in late 2019 where he kicked things off by developing the marketing plan for RAC's third studio album “BOY” before signing Kina and Ryan Caraveo in early 2020.Connect With Zael on LinkedIn and check out YMU Group here. If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here. 

On this episode, we chat with Ami Patel, a writer for Water & Music, a passionate analyst of the international music scene, and the “Leslie Knope” of K-Pop fandom!Ami is a music marketing strategist from Houston, Texas, with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from the University of Houston. She has a passion for artist development and the global music market and frequently shares her thoughts on current music trends and new music discoveries on her website.In June 2021, Patel penned a 3,600-word tome titled “Anatomy of a modern pop fanbase: How fans use data to build their own music marketing powerhouses,” which will be the main topic of today's conversation with her. The K-Pop guide was rigorously researched and written by Patel and edited by Cherie Hu, who runs Water & Music, which is a membership-funded email newsletter, research hub, and community forum dedicated to unpacking the fine print of commercial, technological, and cultural change in the music industry.Patel was a recent participant in the first-ever Measure of Music music + data event in February 2021, and is joining us today from the great state of Texas.Note: Around 43 minutes in, Ami says, "1.93 million ticket buyers." The correct number is 1.33 million ticket buyers.You can connect with Ami on LinkedIn here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

On this episode, we chat with Tommaso Rocchi, a 2020 Master of Arts graduate of The Global Entertainment and Music Business program at Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain. As a former college radio Music Director at the University of Padua in northern Italy, Rocchi then moved on to Berklee to focus on copyright law, new business models, and data analytics.In September 2020, Rocchi penned a Chartmetric article entitled “How Data is Redefining the Role of A&R in the Music Industry Today,” based off of his research at Berklee. It focuses on where the field of A&R has gone in the digital era from its analog roots, and how data plays a significant role, but should never replace the human side of how professionals operate.Rocchi is currently a Project Manager for Data and Analytics at Netherlands-based classical music label PENTATONE.Connect with Tommaso: LinkedIn | Twitter | InstagramRead "How Data is Redefining the Role of A&R in the Music Industry Today" here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

On this episode, we chat with Andrew Thompson, Editor and Founder of Components, a media and culture publication focused on data journalism. Originally from California, Andrew received a degree in Political Science and Government from Temple University before moving into journalism. Becoming increasingly interested in data and data science, Andrew eventually became the Data Editor and Audience Development Manager at design software startup Ceros and then the Editorial Director of video streaming search engine Flixed. After a couple of years in New York City, he moved back home to Philly, taking Components from a side project to his full-time endeavor. Since 2018, Components has been covered and/or cited in Mashable, Vice, and more than 70 academic papers, and we were lucky enough to feature some of his research on our blog in an article he wrote called “What Spotify Follower Ratio Tells Us About Artist Growth and Fan Engagement.”Read "What Spotify Follower Ratio Tells Us About Artist Growth and Fan Engagement" here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

On this episode, we talk to Adam Kanwal about the article he wrote for the Chartmetric blog entitled, How to Promote Your Music in Southeast Asian Trigger Cities. Kanwal is a Digital Marketing and Analytics Consultant, working with artists including Amorphous, Still Woozy, Remi Wolf, Suzuki Saint, and Miss Madeline to analyze TikTok and YouTube trajectories, building campaigns from the ground up. He’s formed partnerships with over one hundred influencers globally, and has also served as the Digital Marketing Specialist for Shifted Recording in New York City.He’s a 2021 graduate from Cornell University in New York, with a background in Human Development, and minoring in International Relations and Music. His primary interests are in creating psychologically smart, culturally relevant, and globally reverberating digital marketing campaigns for up-and-coming musical artists.Read How to Promote Your Music in Southeast Asian Trigger Cities here. If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, on this episode, we talk to Berklee's Camille Lopez-Silvero about the article she wrote for the Chartmetric blog entitled, The Under 27 Club: Music and Mental Health in the Streaming Era. Lopez-Silvero is a 2021 Global Entertainment and Music Business Master of Arts candidate at the Berklee College of Music program in Valencia, Spain, and a 2020 Northwestern University graduate. She currently serves as the Head of Marketing and Branding at Disrupción Records, an independent, student-run record label based out of Berklee’s graduate campus. She has previously interned at Paradigm Talent Agency in their Chicago office, and a host of diverse companies including a New York-based creative digital agency (Swell Shark), branding company (Siegel+Gale), investment firm (Loeb Enterprises), and startup (Thnks).Read The Under 27 Club: Music and Mental Health in the Streaming Era here.If you want more free insights, follow our podcast, our blog, and our socials.If you're an artist with a free Chartmetric account, sign up for the artist plan, made exclusively for you, here.If you're new to Chartmetric, follow the URL above after creating a free account here.

On this episode, we talk to the Founder and Director of London-based firm Songular, Sam Lee. According to Songular’s website: “Songular is an independent music company that empowers fearless artists through strategic streaming campaigns. [Their] approach is artist-first and data-driven: This means that [their] bespoke campaigns are shaped by the stories [their] artists have to tell, and [they] use data to link the strategy to the story.” Songular’s roster includes Joji, Bakar, Young T & Bugsey, Zara Larsson, and Flume. Previously, Lee has served as a Music Editor for Deezer, a Radio Plugger, and in his earliest days, a Broadcast Assistant for the BBC and regular contributor to British culture outlet, NME.

Francisco is back to discuss the final part of our series on The Rise of Regional Latin Music. Here, we will preview where he sees not only Mexican Corridos or Colombian Cumbia going, and how these and other forms of Latin American genres are mixing to create new music for today’s younger generations.

Back for a second podcast visit, Mexico City-based Sony A&R Research Manager Francisco Toscano explains how global music streaming platforms like Deezer, YouTube, Pandora, and Spotify are driving the international growth of Colombian music genres like Vallenato, Música Popular Colombiana, Cumbia, and Champeta, rivaling other global talent like Lauv, BTS, and Carrie Underwood.

On this How Music Charts episode, Dan Runcie breaks down the business of hip-hop with his media company Trapital. Trapital began as a subscription-based newsletter talking about topics such as Beyoncé’s streaming strategy, how the hip-hop’s indie community has taken off and How Tyler, The Creator Built a Cult-Like Following. Trapital’s readers are music executives, media moguls and venture capitalists. We cover why a San Francisco Bay Area tech strategist is in hip-hop, how he fell in love with hip-hop culture, how he leverages his experiences in edtech, fintech, and with a major commercial airline, and his time as a freelance writer for WIRED and Complex. This episode's Speed Round topics: Bobby Shmurda's release, Square acquiring Tidal, Master P & Clubhouse, Scooter Braun's venture into cannabis, and TikTok's Black Creatives program.

On this episode of How Music Charts, InnerCat Music Group founder Paris Cabezas explains how a tech-oriented, data-driven mindset can help optimize digital music distribution, artist marketing, and YouTube monetization in today's music industry. As a bonus, he also breaks down the complicated, and often misunderstand, concept of neighboring rights.

On this episode, we talk to Milwaukee-based, genre-bending independent artist Cullah, who has released an album every year for the past 15 years, subscribing to an open-source, royalty-free, and data-driven approach to his music career.

Mexico City-based Sony A&R Research Manager Francisco Toscano explains how global music streaming platforms like Deezer, YouTube, Pandora, and Spotify are driving the growth of Mexican music genres — from Mariachi to Corrido — and regional Latin music worldwide.

Today’s guest is Jacob Fowler, Chief Technology Officer at The Orchard. In four years, Fowler rapidly worked his way up the chain of the music distribution giant from Product Manager to Director of Product to SVP for Engineering and Product and then to his current role as CTO, starting in February 2020. On this episode, we talk with the music industry exec about music tech, mobile apps, and signals that artists and their teams should look out for in their streaming and social media data.

On this episode, we chat with Priya Dewan, VP of South Korea and Southeast Asia at The Orchard and CEO of Gig Life Pro. Priya knows the music markets in Asia inside and out — not to mention the qualities it takes to be a leader in the music industry, no matter what market you’re in.

In the second part of our conversation with Synchtank Founder Joel T. Jordan, the music licensing entrepreneur talks data efficiency and artistic integrity.

Synchtank Founder Joel T. Jordan is a punk rock music entrepreneur now connecting the biggest movies, TV shows and video games through slick tech. Learn about his rise in the world of music synchronization and how artists can make licensing a real part of their career. In Part 1 of this two-part episode, we get into Jordan’s punk beginnings in the business, and weave a narrative through the world of music licensing that translates his punk rock, do-it-yourself ethos into a sector with surprisingly similar DNA: technology.

In light of our exciting new Pandora integration, we chat with Pandora's Dan Wissinger and Jay Troop about why Pandora matters to the music industry and to artists’ careers, how artists can get their music on Pandora, and what strategies you can use to make sense of your Pandora data — whether it's on Next Big Sound, AMP, or Chartmetric.

In honor of the recent Black History Month in the United Kingdom, Warner Music Group's Christine Osazuwa has taken over today’s episode to discuss equality and diversity in the music industry with UK Music's Paulette Long OBE and Ammo Talwar MBE. Aside from her role as Director of Data & Insights, Christine is also a Co-Chair of WMG UK’s Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) employee resource group, The Link. As a Nigerian-American working in the UK music industry, Christine is committed to a diverse and equitable music business and the power that data can bring to any conversation — as are her esteemed guests, both of whom run the UK Music Diversity Taskforce.

We’re back with a Part 2 of our talk with award-winning journalist Cherie Hu, who has been covering the intersection of music, technology and business for over five years. In this section, we get her hot takes on recent headlines involving the geopolitical TikTok debate, virtual singing competitions, and of course, Kanye West. We also visit Cherie’s well-informed crystal ball, and hear some of her predictions over the next few years on Kobalt Music, audio on Amazon and Audible, and songwriting artificial intelligence. Finally, we get into how Cherie has grown her 8K-member newsletter Water & Music and 600+-member Patreon community to support her ability to provide independent insights and cultivate a like-minded community of innovators. Towards the end, you’ll hear a question from one of our newer writers, Michelle Yuen, whose work you can find on our blog at blog.chartmetric.com.

In Part 1 of our conversation with music tech soothsayer Cherie Hu, we go down two futuristic rabbit holes, including what streaming technology will look like in 2040 and what role "fake" artists have in the future of the music business. Plus, we dive into the future impact of gaming and film on music.

Moscow-based K-Pop concert promoter Sophie Chivanova returns to How Music Charts to talk BTS, Fortnite, and the future of concerts in a post-COVID world.

Sophie Chivanova: from Russia with love for K-Pop and concert promotion. The Moscow-based K-Pop concert promoter speaks to How Music Charts about the Russian music industry, why streams don't necessarily translate to ticket sales, and the state of live music in Asia and Europe.

On this episode, we continue our conversation with DFSB Kollective President and Korean music industry expert Bernie Cho, who discusses glocalization, transmedia marketing, a post-TikTok world, and yes, Donald Trump’s Triller account. If you want to get a primer on Bernie’s story, the K-Pop business model, and what exactly a “hot city matrix” is, check out Part 1 of this two-part series.

DFSB Kollective President Bernie Cho has more than 21 years of culture creation in the Asian music, television, and pop culture industries. In this two-part episode of How Music Charts, Bernie pulls the curtain back on K-Pop and the Korean music industry, showing just how successful South Korea's export strategy has been worldwide.

Most recently a VP of Digital Strategy at Sony Music Nashville, where he worked with some of the biggest names in Country, Ed has always been — and still is — a metalhead at heart. Ed’s global and multi-genre experience imbues his perspective on digital trends in the music industry with nuance and prescience, and in this episode, we chat with him about Country music, Metal fandom, the future of TikTok, and trends in digital marketing and digital strategy in the music industry.

#iVoted Founder Emily White is taking her world class tour management skills onto the campaign trail, using music and music data to activate voters nationwide. In this episode, Emily talks about the highs and lows of tour management, explains "How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams," and describes how music data analytics is helping the 2020 #iVoted initiative activate voters nationwide for the upcoming presidential election.

Will Page, former Chief Economist at Spotify and PRS for Music, discusses world trends in the IFPI Global Music Report 2019, his "Batman" life as a young Scottish government economist by day and Straight No Chaser music journalist by night, what economics have to do with the music industry, his enduring love for Ghanian Highlife, the huge value of music copyright, and how music streaming subscription fees are connected to Blockbuster Video memberships.

“Start small and don’t skip steps” isn’t just an axiom embodied by Diana Gremore’s own career, it’s something she encourages artists and their teams to think about when approaching their own growth trajectories — especially during the uncertainty of live music in a post-COVID world. In this episode, we chat with Paradigm Talent Agency's first-ever Business Intelligence Analyst about creating her own role in the music industry, how artists benefit from brand partnerships, and what the future of live music (and live streaming) looks like after coronavirus.

Call Me Ace is a rapper who draws a unique line through his artistry, music data and the corporate grind. Born to Jamaican émigrés in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1989, Ace found himself studying Anthropology at Columbia University in New York City 18 years later. At Columbia, he was the Co-Founder and President of the Columbia University Society of Hip-Hop, but after graduating in 2011, he turned to education, working as an operations analyst at Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City before setting his sights on business school. In 2016, Ace graduated with an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, releasing his first EP, Misinterpretations, the same year. As he transitioned from consulting at Deloitte to marketing at Facebook, he continued to release more music that explored his creative- and business-minded personas, eventually hitting the Billboard charts with his March 2019 album Airplane Mode. Today, Ace works on the Creator & Artist Development team at YouTube as the Global Program Manager for Music Label Partnerships, and he just released his new EP, Working From Home.

In this episode, we explore artist live streaming on Instagram Live and YouTube Live and how it’s affected social media follower growth for Jill Scott and Erykah Badu (Verzuz), Tory Lanez (Quarantine Radio) and Ty Dolla $ign, Metallica (Metallica Mondays) and Iron Maiden, H.E.R. (Girls With Guitars) and SZA, Diplo (Corona World Tour) and DJ Snake, and Charli XCX and Miley Cyrus (Bright Minded) during the coronavirus pandemic. Follow along with the original article at blog.chartmetric.com.

We analyzed YouTube viewership trends in six different countries (S. Korea, India, USA, S. Africa, Brazil and Italy) to help you understand how music consumption may or may not be changing during the global spread of coronavirus. Follow along with the original article at blog.chartmetric.com.

Rap and Hip-Hop wunderkind Ben Sauberman has put together a list that many artists, artist managers, and A&Rs only dream of. Blending data with creativity, Ben has mapped out the regional YouTube video curators who blow up local Hip-Hop scenes, thrust burgeoning rappers into the national limelight, and help give a region its "sound." From type beats to drill and trap to gangster rap and emo rap, Ben is here to school us on why YouTube channels like Cole Bennett's Lyrical Lemonade are so important for Hip-Hop today.

We analyzed Spotify Monthly Listeners trends across nine genres to help you understand how music consumption may or may not be changing during the global spread of coronavirus. Follow along with the original article at blog.chartmetric.com.

In this episode, we chat with Elliott Althoff, Associate Manager of Digital Strategy at Republic Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Our conversation touches on everything from the differences between indie and major labels to the creative ways you can use data for marketing campaigns. Hopefully, you glean some important insights from our conversation, but most importantly, we hope we’re making your shelter-in-place just a bit more manageable, whether you’re working from home or not.

For this audible article, we highlight another important music data story that you might have missed, from a January 2020 piece our Data Scientist wrote. It's about the global, industry-wide trend of music collaborations in recent streaming history. As always, if you want to follow along with the charts and visuals, the link to the original blog article is in the show notes. Enjoy "How Music Collaborations Evolved in the Digital Era: A Decade in Review", from our resident Data Scientist here at Chartmetric, Dr. Nuttiiya Seekhao.

We’ve got a special one today, and it wasn’t planned. Our guest is Ariel Chichotky, the Director of Buenos Aires-based Dale Play Records, who are at the forefront of an Argentinian Trap movement that has hit the 2020s running. If you’re thinking this is related to reggaetón, you are sorely mistaken. That genre originated in Puerto Rico and Colombia, and while you see some of its artists participating in trap, trap is its own animal. The American South rap style known for its much harder sound and harsher lyrical content, has, like many of its hip-hop-related cousins, travelled through the Internet to the entire world, and Argentina is now one of its epicenters. Ariel is an experienced Artist Manager, who cut his teeth with Argentinian funk band Suprafonicos, then moved on to managing Argentinian telenovela-star-turned-pop-star, Lali. He then moved on to his current role as Director at Dale Play and finds himself growing the careers of trap artist Duki (whose Sept 2019 hit “Goteo” has amassed 72M YouTube Views and over 120M Spotify streams), trap producer Bizarrap (whose YouTube Music Sessions have amassed over 812M channel views), and soulful, hard-to-define up-and-comer Nicki Nicole (who commands 3.2M Instagram followers). Ariel holds a business degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and was introduced to us by our friend Zack Bolak.

This week, we're diving into Data Scientist Josh Hayes’ comparative analysis of major label vs. non-major label chart performance. Which record labels, major or non-major, had the most chart-topping tracks?

This month, we released our second 6MO report (July-December 2019), doubling down on our ability to find quality artists who are rapidly gaining traction and deserve to be highlighted to industry insiders. New in this edition are TikTok Trending tracks, Bandsintown Tracker gains, and artists who received the most "first-time" playlist adds on streaming platforms in H2 2019.

In this episode we chat with Ross Nicol, founder of Off Season Creative, a boutique Brooklyn-based creative direction agency with a focus in music. Ross has worked with the likes of Teddy Geiger, Lucius, Mom + Pop Music, Real Estate, Whitney, the list goes on…. So our conversation touches on everything he’s learned in the music industry — from the importance of landscape and location, to understanding the artist mindset, to the indie/major divide (or lack thereof), and how data is more useful on the strategic managerial end than on the discovery and conceptual end. Of course, one of the really important byproducts of the digitization of the music industry is just how much data can actually help empower artists to take control of their own careers. And Ross has been helping artists do just that, drawing on his extensive knowledge and experience with management, marketing, creative direction, and design. Originally from San Diego, Ross went to school in Nashville and eventually migrated even further east to New York City. After a long bout at a major NYC artist management firm, Ross decided to go indie himself, launching Off Season Creative, a company that takes “a holistic and strategic approach in defining and developing an artist’s creative direction through design, photography, and typography.”

From 2012 to 2019, Jackson Bull (Twitter: @jacksonabull) was with SiriusXM, moving up the ranks from Board Engineer to Program Director and working with many of the company’s over 1K stations. Before that, he worked in various capacities in social media and film editing, and was a DJ at his university’s station, WMUH Allentown Radio. He interned at several industry publications as well, and most recently, has made the glorious return to school to train in data science at Flatiron School in NYC. Check out our discussion on his live radio grind, how music data helped him bring more ammo to music programming meetings, and how the SiriusXM/Pandora acquisition has created a whole new data world for a data scientist to thrive in.