May 30 2019 3 mins
Highlights
- It’s Found on Friday, and we’re celebrating the big five-oh by unearthing some breaking artists according to social and Spotify follows.
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.
Date
- This is your Data Dump for Friday, May 31st, 2019.
Found on Friday: A Dutch YouTube Personality, a Turkish Rocker, and Sisters in a Cover Band
- It’s Found on Friday, and we’re celebrating our 50th episode by unearthing three artists breaking on the social and Spotify follow growth charts.
- First up: 22-year-old Dutch YouTube personality and rising European pop star Simon De Wit, aka Blanks, who experienced a 27 percent growth in SoundCloud followers over the last 28 day period.
- Along with SoundCloud growth, he’s also experienced a 52 percent increase in Spotify followers and a 27.6 percent increase in Instagram followers.
- Blanks’ bio reads, “Make yourself happy,” and he’s got to be feeling pretty happy about those stats right about now.
- His beachy, funky pop vibe is sure to put a smile on listeners faces as well.
- Next up, it’s Turkish rocker Ufuk Beydemir, who is absolutely killing it on Insta with a 595 percent increase in followers.
- And it’s translating well on other platforms, too, with a 31 percent increase in Spotify followers over the last 28 day period.
- I don’t speak Turkish, but I don’t think you really need to to understand the wistfulness in his catchy and accessible rock ballads.
- Thought cover bands couldn’t gain traction? Think again. American sisters Sidney and Caitlin Powell, who comprise folk duo Neoni, are going viral thanks to their acoustic renditions of prominent pop songs like Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee.
- Just a quick glance at their YouTube channel reveals the sheer breadth of their covers, from Evanescence to Gnarls Barkley songs.
- But enough of the fluff, what about the numbers? Neoni have gone from zero to 100 (and then some) in their Spotify followers over the last 28 day period, which far surpasses any growth they’re seeing on other platforms. Their Instagram follower growth is down, in fact, by .6 percent, and their SoundCloud followers are up by only .9 percent.
- From May 14 to May 15, Neoni’s follower count skyrocketed from 179 to 16,730, which is interesting, because they don’t appear to have been added to any prominent playlists.
- While this smells like a metadata error at first sniff, a closer whiff shows why it’s not.
- What that exponential growth tells us is that Neoni either just joined Spotify within the last month and happened to bring some of their YouTube popularity with them all of the sudden, or…. something else is going on.
- Ah, the power of a name change. With a little digging, we find that Neoni used to be called Facing West, and the Powell sisters announced their official name change on Instagram on May 4.
- Looking at Facing West’s Spotify follower stats reveals an astonishing drop from 16,682 to 59. Can you guess when that happened? Yep, May 14 to May 15.
- It might have taken 10 days, but through their label or distributor, the sisters were able to transfer their Spotify follower count from Facing West to Neoni, which accounts for the lopsided, and ultimately deceiving, growth percentage for Neoni’s Spotify followers.
- All that to say, sometimes, numbers can be deceiving if you’re not looking at the bigger picture.
Outro
- That’s it for your Daily Data Dump for Friday, May 31st, 2019. This is Rutger from Chartmetric.
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- And article links and show notes are at: podcast.chartmetric.com.
- Happy Friday, have a great weekend, and see you on Monday!