Welcome to issue #8 of The Hum. We continue our series on the data in music, with a look into the data surrounding artists. With this issue we are also launching our first musician survey, where we seek to understand the experience of small and medium musicians.
In our last issue, we explored how ticketing revenues are split between artists, promoters, venues, and other players in the live music space. We also continued our portable music series with a brief history of the iPod.
Check out our about page to learn about who we are and why we started The Hum.
Metrics of Music
Part Three: The Artist
When trying to discuss artist data, the question of what/who is an artist must be asked. In today’s landscape, the “artist” label can be applied to the songwriter, lyricist, arranger, performer, and to a certain extent, also the producer and engineer. Artists can be any combination of these. To keep it simple for this article, we will consider the artist to be any combination of the songwriter, performer, lyricist, and/or arrangers.
The data around an artist includes other parts of the musical ecosystem such as songs and fans, which we have covered earlier in our series. However, when we look at data through the lens of the artist—how their songs perform, and how their fans listen make up some of the information that is most useful to artists.
What data exists around artists?
First party streaming data - this is the data that DSPs collect about an artist’s performance on their platforms. Subsets of this data are usually made available to artists directly by the DSPs through platforms like Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists. These types of data are also shared by DSPs to other stakeholders, like distributors and aggregators. Examples of data included in this category are:
Song and album performance on a given DSP (e.g. number of plays per song, song saves, playlist adds)
Audience metrics (e.g. number of fans/followers, avg. plays per listener, audience demographics)
First party social media data - this is the data that social media platforms collect through an artist’s profile and followers. Similarly to DSPs, social media companies often give creators access to tools to understand their performance on their platforms. This data helps artists inform how their fan engagement and reach out on social media is doing. This includes data like the number of followers an artist has, their follower demographics, and their engagement and post performance.
Live show data - this type of data pertains to the measurement of an artist’s live shows. Typically, larger artists, promoters, and venues will have robust mechanisms and tools to measure this type of data, while smaller artists will generally not have access to tools to measure it, other than manual attendance counts, door counts, and ticket sales. This data includes show attendance, ticket sales, merch sales per show, tour sales, and audience engagement.
Financial data - this category of data considers the income and expenses of an artist to understand what their financial health is and to be able to project the performance of future efforts. Data in this category includes revenue stream and cost breakdowns (e.g. music sales, streaming royalties, merch sales, sync/licensing revenue, and touring revenues and costs)
Radio data - This data, which includes number of radio plays, and audience reach helps artists track the songs that are gaining traction on radio and the total audience that is exposed to their songs through this medium.
Web mentions - This is the data that helps artists get a picture of the number and types of mentions their band, songs, and activities generate on the web. This type of data can also include sentiment data, to understand not just the amounts of mentions, but the overall feelings behind them.
TV and movie syncs - This is the data related to the number of plays and audience reach that a song placement on a TV show or movie generates for an artist.
Aggregated industry data - Many companies like Songstats, Chartmetric, and Viberate offer artists and labels platforms to integrate their data sources into a single place. Their promise is that they can help contextualize and provide a broader and deeper picture of an artist’s performance across their data than any other individual data source can.
While artists today have access to vast amounts of data when compared to the data that an artist would have 15 or 20 years ago, it can be hard to know how to interpret and utilize this data. This article by Amber Horsburgh provides a useful overview of how metrics can be used to identify drivers of success, risks, and problem areas for artists. Overall, the thoughtful collection and analysis of data can help artists better identify and grow their audiences, tailor promotion of their music, gain insight into which songs and strategies are working and which aren’t, plan tours, and understand the financial aspects of their band, like royalty payments and tour expenses.
The Voice of the Artist
Introduction
In our last issue we unpacked the price of a ticket and how it’s divided. However, a helpful reader pointed out that the artist's expenses weren’t included. The perpetual struggle to “make it” in music has evolved over the past few decades with the use of social media and, more recently, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Expenses vary from artist to artist but often include the cost of transportation, merch, food and lodging, maintaining equipment, and paying each band member.
Many are convinced artists can profit from digital streaming platforms (DSPs) or touring. As English songwriter and producer James Blake has shown with his recent shift to the subscription platform Vault, “it’s just not sustainable for an artist just to focus on their art.” An article documenting the real costs of touring written almost 10 years ago by folk-punk artist David “Spoonboy” Combs still rings true to many musicians today—although many would say it’s gotten harder as expenses and inflation have increased while profits have remained roughly the same.
No tour can happen without some consideration of money. And since it’s not something we’re [musicians] prone to bringing up, people outside of our world might not understand how crucial it is, even for artists playing living rooms. - David Combs
The artist’s point of view is crucial in both determining the challenges of the music industry, as well as identifying barriers to making sustainable choices. In this new effort we’ll survey and interview artists to capture their perspective. We aim to speak with a variety of musicians from independent artists playing DIY shows to (hopefully) larger acts that have made music their career.
If you’re an artist interested in sharing your experience, anonymous or not, please fill out this survey or email us at thehum.news@gmail.com.