Follow us around the world as we examine T. Swift’s album drop, remember a Mexican cumbia legend, and recognize Korea’s finest through the market coverage lens.
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, August 23rd, 2019.
Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’, Celso Piña’s Passing, and Monsta X’s Big Win
We’re going around the world today, covering T. Swift’s fresh album drop, the late Mexican cumbia legend Celso Piña, and Monsta X’s multiple wins at the SOBA Awards.
Taylor Swift’s “Lover”
Leading up to the highly anticipated album release, Swift’s Chartmetric rank is holding strong at No. 3 and and her Spotify Popularity Index is at 93 out of 100.
Her “Lover” lyric video is No. 3 on top YouTube playlist Popular Music Videos but, interestingly, not on TikTok’s Top 200 Tracks at all.
Still, #LoverTOMORROW was trending on Twitter on Thursday, and Swift made headlines with her upcoming CBS Sunday Morning interview, where she reportedly claims that she’ll be re-recording her entire catalog -- you know the one that Scooter Braun and Ithaca Holdings now hold rights to.
Talk about a metadata nightmare.
But I digress, scrolling down to the charts section of T. Swift’s profile on Chartmetric
“You Need to Calm Down,” which was released on June 14, has been performing best on Amazon, Shazam, and Deezer charts.
“The Archer,” which was released on July 23, is, comparatively speaking, not doing well across platforms, and it’s slowly sinking on the charts, in fact.
“Lover,” released Aug. 16, is on the rise on Shazam, and it generally scores somewhere between the other two singles on the charts.
An interesting way to track her regional success -- especially now that her album is hot off of the press -- is to look at top countries and cities by market coverage.
In other words, the ratio of listeners or views an artist has reached over the maximum available listeners in the region.
For Spotify cities by monthly listeners, for instance, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Bangkok, Arlington (TX), and Minneapolis are Swift’s current top cities by market coverage, giving her plenty of saturation in Southeast Asia.
For YouTube Views by country, Northern Mariana Islands, Canada, Myanmar, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden rule, truly marking her international status.
And for YouTube views by cities, Sugar Land (TX), Quincy (MA), San Ramon (CA), Alexandria (VA), Brighton (NY), and San Marcos (CA) are all definitively American cities winning out here.
Celso Piña’s Passing
Now, heading South a bit, we change gears for some tragic news: Mexican Cumbia legend Celso Piña died of a heart attack on Thursday. He was 66.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “Piña was a pioneer, known for his fusion of cumbia and tropical sounds as a base, combining them with all kinds of popular genres from the north, to sonidero, ska, reggae, rap, hip-hop, among others.”
He first came to prominence in Monterrey, Mexico, and went on to snag Grammy Award nominations in the Best Contemporary Tropical Album and Best Alternative Artist categories in 2002.
His last solo studio album, “Sin Fecha de Caducidad,” is a decade old now, but he still maintains almost a million monthly Spotify listeners.
His top cities by market coverage on Spotify and YouTube are pretty exclusively Mexican, and his top countries are largely Latin American, but the USA does pull the No. 2 spot when it comes to market coverage for YouTube views by country.
We’ll continue to keep the memory and the music alive, Chief of the Bell. Rest in peace.
Monsta X’s Big Win
Spinning the globe again, we land in South Korea, where Day 1 of the Soribada Best K-Music Awards, aka the SOBA Awards, wrapped on Thursday.
Based on data from Korean peer-to-peer file sharing service Soribada, the ceremony recognizes some of the top Korean performers.
It was perfect timing for their Aug. 21 album release, Phenomenon.
Similar to Piña’s hometown market coverage data bias, Monsta X’s Spotify monthly listeners and YouTube views by cities are largely East or Southeast Asian -- especially Korean, naturally.
With YouTube views by country, however, Sweden takes No. 2, Germany No. 4, Bulgaria No. 5, and Estonia No. 6.
Looks like Monsta X might be able to add a few stops to their upcoming world tour?
Outro
That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, August 23rd, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.