How Music Charts

• Highlights
  • We do our best to stay out of the political fray, but with the Democratic debates wrapping last week, we look at the candidates’ streaming profiles to get a sense of not only who they’re listening to — but who is listening to them.
• 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 9th, 2019.
• When Streaming Gets Political, Who Gets the Vote?
  • Think profiles and playlists are only for artists? Think again.
  • We do our best to stay out of politics, but with the debates wrapping last week, why not look at the candidates’ streaming profiles to get a sense of not only who they’re listening to — but who is listening to them ... and how?
  • Since no one is vying for the Republican nomination, with Trump seeking a second term, we’ll look at six of the Democratic candidates: Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden, and Marianne Williamson.
  • Booker’s Cory Booker’s Music playlist might only have around 150 followers, but what it lacks in popularity it makes up for in track popularity, with almost half of its 101 tracks at a popularity score of 60 or above.
  • At around 180 followers, Biden’s streaming profile has about the same count as Booker’s playlist — but only 22 monthly listeners.
  • Harris’ Kamala’s Summer Playlist ups the ante with more than 4,000 followers tuning into her heavily rap, hip-hop, soul, and funk oriented 46-song listing.
  • O’Rourke’s BBQ for Beto has some 500 followers listening to his 94-song playlist, which ranges in genre from folk to classic rock and country to hardcore punk.
  • Keep in mind, O-Rourke used to play in punk bands, so he definitely knows what’s up in that regard.
  • As might be expected, Williamson’s streaming profile is heavily geared toward meditation, prayer, and motivational speeches — and it’s paying off.
  • Williamson’s follower count is almost 1,800 with a Spotify monthly listener count of around 1,200, helping to make her listeners to followers ratio about 1 to 1.
  • Perhaps most interesting, and maybe most unsurprising, is that her daily Wikipedia views shot up from some 12,000 to some 350,000 following the debate, correlating strongly with a daily change in her Instagram followers from around 600 to around 11,000 on Aug. 1.
  • Yang’s Favorite Jams playlist leaves the others in the dust with more than 5,000 followers — despite it being primarily catalogue based.
  • Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Yang appears to really enjoy Florence & the Machine and the Cure.
  • Streaming performance might not be an indication of political performance, but it does give us some insight into who these candidates are looking to win over — or at least how good their music taste is.

Outro

• That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, August 9th, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
• Free accounts are available at chartmetric.com
• Article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com
• Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next week!