Industry professionals and artists alike utilize music analytics tools to help them further understand their place in the market. Knowing where you stand and where you have room to grow is the key to excelling in this industry. To help you truly understand your stats, here are some of the best tools out there to guide you in the right direction…
Best Streaming Music Analytics Tools for Artists
SymphonicMS
If you’re a Symphonic Distribution client, you get access to some very helpful music analytics tools right in SymphonicMS that track key information from Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer,Pandora, TikTok, YouTube and more. Under the Analytics menu, you can access pages that provide data like:
Up-to-date streaming data from Spotify and Apple Music, with detailed breakdowns by artist, track, release, territory, and partners.
Daily iTunes and Beatport download counts and overall download trends.
Important Beatport statistics, such as subscriber counts and charting songs.
Navigate to this feature by clicking on Analytics ► Streams from the menu.
The landing page provides a catalog level view of performance across your entire catalog, broken down by several dimensions, such as Partner, Artist, and Territory. — You can also view breakdowns of an individual artist’s streams by clicking on them from the landing page. On the artist’s page, you’ll see breakdowns of their streams by several key dimensions, including partners, track, playlist placements, and many more!
All of these pages can be easily leveraged to help answer critical questions, such as how new releases are performing, where your audience is located, and which platforms your music is performing best on.
To access analytics for TikTok in the SMS, all you have to do is click on Analytics -> TikTok.
The landing page provides a catalog-level view of performance across the entire catalog on a given date range that you can change. Here, you can access details like engagement and Artist, Track, and Territory Analytics.
This tool makes it easier for creators to understand the TikTok metrics that really matter and helps maximize the impact of their future TikTok marketing campaigns. It delivers comprehensive and easy-to-read metrics on how many videos have been created using an artist’s music as well as how many views, likes, comments and shares the video generated. // To learn more about this, check out this article.
SoundCharts
SoundCharts offers social media data from six different platforms, playlist data from three different streaming platforms, and charts from seven different social and streaming platforms to give you actionable music streaming data, all in one place. Where’s this data coming from? Spotify, Apple, Shazam, YouTube, Deezer, Radio, SoundCloud, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Songkick, to say the least.
Spot On Track
Spot On Track is an analytics platform that lets you track stats from Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Shazam, TikTok and more. You can also see the current chart positions of your music, current playlists you’ve landed on, previous playlists, all your releases in each platform and more in an easy to navigate dashboard. Plus, it also offers radio play stats, retrieving all data directly from APIs. Although it’s pricey ($299/year), you can try it for free for 14 days first to see if you like it.
WARM
Get solid proof of your radio airplay to easily collect your royalties, discover where your fans are, and new emerging markets with WARM. With this platform, you can cover when and where your music is being played in real-time at the market’s most competitive price. By monitoring radio stations worldwide, WARM tracks your songs’ airplay in real-time in order to provide you with valuable insights that will help you take your music career to the next level. They also provide artists like you with the tools you need to improve your marketing and promotion strategies, and even accelerate your royalty collection.
Spotify for Artists
The best part about Spotify for Artists is their absolute count of artist’s streams, listeners, and saves. This analytics platform provides an easy-to-understand breakdown of playlist categories (algorithmic, editorial, and listener generated) and absolute counts for listeners and streams of an artist’s tracks on those playlists.
Detailed insights into streaming metrics like these are key for artists and their teams in this increasingly data-driven industry where Spotify reigns supreme.
Chartmetric
Chartmetric is an OG which gives you a bit of everything from every platform. With it, you get analytics and data from Spotify, Apple, Shazam, YouTube, Amazon, Deezer, Radio, SoundCloud, TikTok, Wikipedia, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Beatport, and more all in one place. Depending on if you utilize their Free or all-access Premium tier, you can get whatever you need depending on what’s most important to you. With Chartmetric, you can also do additional things like:
Track current and historical playlist adds on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, and YouTube.
Understand who your audience is and where they are in the world with audience demographics.
Global Digital Artist Ranking with Cross-Platform Performance (CPP), their proprietary global digital artist ranking that lets you measure artist performance across 16 streaming and social media platforms and metrics.
ForTunes
ForTunes is an easy-to-use mobile app for music data analytics on the go, drawing data from Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It gives you basic streaming and social media tracking results, just like the other platforms we’ve mentioned in this post, but having it all at your fingertips with the mobile app is life changing for artists and teams on the go.
Apple Music for Artists
With Apple Music for Artists, artists can keep track of the volume of their streaming plays on Apple Music and album/song sales on iTunes, all within a data set that updates every day.
In addition, artists can:
Gain insight into how specific songs/albums are performing.
See how their fans are growing in international markets in over 100 countries.
Find out which locations they’re the most popular.
Plan future shows.
Specifically tailor set-lists for fans in each location.
Viberate
Viberate offers streaming analytics, airplay and social media monitoring, professional charts and artist comparison, industry trends and audience demographics, smart talent discovery, and so much more. Even cooler, this platform has tutorials, webinars, guides, blog posts, and more to guide you through the platform and get the most out of your efforts.
YouTube for Artists
YouTube for Artists offers an easy to use dashboard in their YouTube Studio with real-time analytics to help you monitor your audience, global reach and performance across the entire YouTube ecosystem.
The Overview tab shows you a summary of how your channel and videos are performing. The key metrics card shows your views, watch time, subscribers, and estimated revenue (If you’re in the YouTube Partner Program).In this tab, you’ll also see reports for:
Typical performance // A comparison to your latest video to your channel’s typical performance.
Top videos // Your recent videos ranked by views.
Realtime // Your performance over the last 48 hours or 60 minutes.
Latest videos // Your performance from your 10 latest videos.
Stories // Your performance over the last 7 days from your latest Stories.
When it comes to developing your audience, it’s important to understand which aspects of your strategy are working for you and which parts are falling flat. Having access to data that shows you where your streams are coming from, which streaming platforms are performing the best, and even which social media apps are creating the most engagement are all things to pay close attention to.
With services like these, it’s no longer a guessing game. You have concrete data to back up your every move. Use it wisely!
Planning to release a new music video? Congrats! Now it’s time to decide where to drop it. Both YouTube and Vevo offer many great benefits, but they’ve each got their own downsides. Before you release anything, here are some major differences between YouTube and Vevo to consider…
Differences Between Vevo and YouTube Videos
Before we dive in…
Even though your video is technically competing with a larger number of videos on YouTube, that doesn’t mean its capability for exposure is any less. By ensuring your channel and videos are optimized correctly, you can increase the visibility of your videos.
View, analyze and report your channel’s analytics.
Manage and optimize your individual videos with tags, cards, end screens, etc.
Set channel and video upload defaults.
2. Total ability to quickly and easily manage all parts of your channel at any time.
3. Ability to upload and take down videos quickly.
4. Livestream capabilities
5. Interaction with your YouTube fans through likes, comments and messages
6. No consideration for feature placement on Vevo.
7. Less likely for videos to go viral unless optimized correctly
Vevo
Vevo is the world’s leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform with over 23 billion monthly views globally. They deliver a personalized and expertly curated experience for audiences to explore and discover music videos, exclusive original programming and live performances from the artists they love on mobile, web and connected TV.
1. You cannot update your Vevo channel yourself, but you can have the below details updated through your distributor per request:
3. Vevo doesn’t guarantee more exposure, but has more potential to go viral, as Vevo videos tend to be surfaced more in searches due to their partnership with YouTube.
4. More likely to get your video featured in a well-exposed playlist, i.e. Vevo playlists.
5. Can be linked to your Official Artist Channel (OAC) so Vevo releases automatically show up on your OAC.
6. YouTube Premieres can be done with Vevo videos and are arranged through your distributor.
7. Vevo can set your personal channel as a Channel Moderator to the Vevo channel to manage comments on your Vevo videos.
8. Vevo also distributes music videos to Apple TV, Pluto TV, Samsung TV and Roku – just to name a few.
Can you release on both platforms?
Yes!
In fact, we recommend it. — Odds are your only content on your YouTube channel isn’t solely official content like music videos, live performances, track videos, or lyric videos (all of which that can be uploaded to your Vevo channel upon approval instead!). You can also upload to your personal channel videos like interviews, behind the scenes, teasers, fan contests, vlogs, etc.
If you decide you want to use your personal YouTube channel for all of these videos and then get a Vevo channel created to release more official content, you can easily get them linked together via an Official Artist Channel through your distributor.
If you decide to do this though, please make sure you don’t upload the same video twice (once via a distributor to your Vevo channel, and a second upload to your personal channel) since doing so will cause two versions of the video to go live on YouTube – which divides views, confuses fans, and affects overall monetization opportunities.
Because of this, we recommend that you release your official music videos with a distributor to your Vevo channel, and then utilize your personal YouTube channel for interviews, behind the scenes, teasers, fan contests, vlogs, and/or whatever else that has made sense for your brand as an artist.
In Conclusion…
We hope that this article has given you some things to consider and gives you the direction you need to optimize your next video release.
Want to learn how to build a fanbase and improve your skills as an artist from one of the best in the business? Musician’s Fanbase Growth Workshop offers all of that in their weekly Wednesday workshop. Here’s how to secure your spot for free.
Reserve Your Spot for Modern Musician’s Fanbase Growth Workshop
Here’s the rundown…
Founder of Modern Musician and host of the Modern Musician Podcast, Michael Walker is hosting an in-depth “fanbase growth workshop” for artists who are ready to level up their music career, and thrive during these challenging times. In this workshop, he’s revealing some of their best techniques that are usually reserved for his $5000+ clients at Modern Musician. This is the first time he’s given away this information for free, and you don’t want to miss out on the valuable insights he has to offer.
“How do I get involved?”
Every Wednesday @ 3PM ET, they offer LIVE training in 3 main topics:
Artistic Identity: Hone in your music brand to give you clarity about who you are as an artist, so you can attract the best-fit audience who will love your music.
Thriving Fanbase: Set up your marketing so we can build your loyal fanbase based on your artistic identity and your strengths.
Revenue Multiplier: Create an automatic monetization system to fund your artist lifestyle so you don’t sacrifice your talent or lose touch with your musical identity.
If you’re interested in tuning in, click this link to register in one-click:
Once you’ve done that, you’ll receive a “welcome pack” with all the resources needed to take part in this special, one-time event.
——
Want to learn more?
In addition, you may have also heard about the Gold Artist Academy, Modern Musician’s flagship mentoring program. This program is a great resource for artists who are ready to truly commit and step up their game.
Learn more about the program, plus testimonials and additional details, right here.
It’s undeniable that TikTok has given many up and coming artists a chance at major exposure with its algorithm. As long as your music is on TikTok for you (and other creators) to use, you have the chance to promote yourself through challenges, trends and so much more. If you’re ready to promote your music on TikTok, here’s everything you need to know.
Back in 2019, we announced our partnership with TikTok which allows our clients to deliver their tracks onto TikTok for its millions of creators to use in their videos. This offers an amazing opportunity for our clients to spread their music through one of the most popular apps in the world, with us to guide them along.
In the meantime, think about what part of your track has the most potential for going viral. — That means 15 seconds of catchy, groovy greatness that you can imagine people singing or dancing along to. Don’t be afraid to dig into your back catalog to find songs that truly fit the bill. Oftentimes when one song goes viral, it may bring some of your other songs right up with it.
Hop On TikTok Trends
Every week, something new is trending on TikTok. Hell, it seems like something new has taken the platform by storm almost every day. Even if a trending challenge doesn’t necessary align with your brand, it’s still useful to get involved. If an unrelated video of yours goes viral, it may bring your other posts along for the ride.
Hopping on the latest trend is a great way to get seen by more people and blow up the engagement on your present and past posts. Whether you’re on the hunt for audio, effect or hashtag trends, there are tons of ways to find what’s popping off on TikTok. // To help you out, we wrote a whole post that gives you all the sneaky tips and tricks we know about how to find what’s trending.
Post Music Video Sneak Peeks
While you’re working on that new music video, take behind-the-scenes clips during the process. Even better, you can tease final cuts of the video by posting them as a Reel before the launch date. You can do this by using captions like, “Coming Soon… 👀” with the launch date worked in. You can even link to Spotify for presaves, YouTube premieres, or wherever else they can find your music once it comes out.
Create Your Own Challenges & Trends
If you want to go viral on TikTok, you’re going to have to get creative. The most popular challenges and trends on TikTok are lip syncing, dance routines and comedy type videos. That’s why it’s important to have songs on TikTok that are catchy enough to support these type of challenges.
Need some ideas?
If you hate dancing, you can tell your fans to create their own dances to your song and tag you on TikTok.
If you have a song with amazing lyrics, do a VoiceOver of you lip syncing along with the lyrics on screen.
Want fan engagement? Tell your audience to do covers of your song and repost them when they do.
Want to collaborate with others? Try the Duet, Stitch and Collaboration features.
Just how tagging other creatives can double your video’s reach, so can collaborations. Finding your niche is important in anything you do, as it helps engage a more loyal audience and helps you secure yourself in a more manageable, less saturated space. — Be sure to comment, like, share, duet, other artist’s work and encourage your followers/viewers to do the same.
Try Covers Of Your Song in Different Styles
One of my favorite trends that musicians like to do on TikTok is when they give new life to an existing song by creating new versions of it you would have never expected. For example, those videos captioned: “If my song, [blank] was a metal song” or “If my song, [song here] was an EDM banger”. As an artist, you have many strengths you can leverage when creating content. If you’re low-key really good at making beats, show off that talent with a cover. If you aren’t so good at another genre, you can ask your audience to do their own version.
Use The Right Hashtags
Hashtags are important on pretty much every platform. With the right hashtag strategy, you can increase the reach, engagement and visibility of your posts on TikTok in no time. Luckily, figuring out which hashtags will work best is fairly simple.
First, go ahead and open the app, tap on the “Discover” tab on the bottom of your screen and scroll through the previews of all the trending hashtags.
Now, let’s dive a little deeper. In the search bar at the top, go ahead and search whatever hashtags are relevant to you. Once you hit search, you’ll be able to see related hashtags and view counts for each of them.
With a quick Google search, you’ll see that the most popular hashtags for musicians are: #music, #singer, #artist, #songwriter, #livemusic, #newmusic, and the list goes on and on.
However, these are just the most popular, overall hashtags. If you’re looking for more interactive engagement with a more segmented fanbase, we recommend looking into artists like you on the platform and checking out the hashtags that are popular in their circles. Then, you can make a solid list of these and keep them in mind for your own efforts.
Try TikTok’s Promote Feature
With Promote, you can turn any organic TikTok video into an ad, right from the app. You can start reaching new audiences, build a following, and drive traffic to your business website. Once you run a Promote campaign, you also get insights into your audience and how your videos are performing to help you improve your efforts moving forward.
We wrote a whole post that breaks down exactly how to do this; you can check that out right here.
Utilize TikTok Analytics
Driven by machine learning and a technical algorithm, TikTok thrives on data and metrics. If you want to improve your content’s performance, understanding your profile’s detailed analytics is the first step to improving your efforts. With it, your data-filled dashboard is separated into three main categories: Overview, Content and Followers.
By clicking through each tab, you’ll be able to see videos views, profile views, follower count, and follow demographics in terms of gender and geography. With this information, you can see which videos are working and which aren’t. Then, you can adapt your strategy as you go to improve in the future.
Aside from being an addicting past time for most of us, TikTok is also a wonderful tool for your promotional efforts as an artist. If you work with the algorithm and all the features the platform has to offer, you’ll see your content start to thrive.
On that note… As you reach a wider audience on TikTok, you can funnel those users over to your socials and streaming platforms in the process. By taking steps like adding links to other platforms in your bio, cross promoting content on your feed and following the tips mentioned above, you can grow your audience everywhere in no time.
Job hunting. We’ve all done it, and most of us will continue to have to do it until retirement comes along. Indeed and Glassdoor are great for seeing everything and anything all at once, but what if you’re tired of wasting your time sorting through thousands of unrelated jobs? Believe it or not, there are job sites just for us music biz folks. Here are some of the best music industry job sites to help you land your next job…
9 Music Industry Job Sites To Help You Land Your Next Job
The Digilogue
The Digilogue is a diverse community of creators and industry professionals in music and tech. They curate conversations and programming around industry education, artist discovery content, and a great career resource on their website. Under their Music Careers tab, click on Job Postings, and you’ll find tons of job listings up for grabs. // Check it out for yourself on their website here.
Music Business Worldwide
This site is one of the best resources for anyone looking to broaden their horizons in the music biz. Music Business Jobs is a website for the global music industry to find the best candidates for their open positions. They post openings all over the country, and you can filter results by location, companies, and job type. // Check out what’s available right here.
Doors Open
The world of electronic music is shaped not only by artists and fans, but also by thousands of small businesses, from clubs to booking agents to publishers and promoters. If you’re looking to work in the electronic music scene, this resource is for you. Doors Open is a place for people to connect with companies and projects they believe in, and for independent music companies to find the staff they need to turn ideas into reality. // Check ’em out here.
Shesaid.so
Shesaid.so is a global community of women and gender minorities in the music industry. They’re absolutely awesome, and they happen to also provide a very useful job portal tab on their website where you can browse open positions and apply. // Click here to see what’s available.
Music Careers
Music Careers is built for music professionals by music professionals to help you find your next job in the music industry. They post up to date jobs, refresh every 30 days, and give you the ability to refine your search by specific niches within the industry. They even post freelance opportunities, too. // Check out what they’ve got to offer here.
Digital Music News
You may already be a fan of Digital Music News‘ industry articles to keep up to date on the latest news, but have you checked out the jobs tab on their website? There, you can check out music industry jobs from major record labels and streaming services to universities, merchandising companies, startups, and more. // Check it out here.
A2IM
A2IM has their own job board to help you find your perfect position. Whether you’re looking for temporary work, an internship, or full-time, their database can search jobs by keywords and location. // Check out jobs on A2IM here.
Music Jobs
Music Jobs is part of a global publication and online community which brings their subscribers industry opportunities and daily news from the world of film, TV, music and gaming. On their site, you can also sign up and subscribe to emails with job opportunities tailored specifically to what position you’re looking for. // Click here to check out the site and search for jobs.
Entertainment Careers
Entertainmentcareers.net is a great site which features jobs in in Film, Television, Music, Production Companies, Radio, Animation, Acting, Production, PR, Design, and more. Whether you’re interested in the music industry or something adjacent, this is the ultimate place to check. // Browse available jobs on their site here.
