How To Break an Artist in 2020: Three Tangible Strategies From Chartmetric’s Latest Report
Lessons Learned from Chartmetric’s 6MO Breakthrough Artist Report
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One of the biggest undertakings in the music industry is breaking an artist; with ~40,000 tracks uploaded to DSPs everyday, how does one break through all the noise? Music analytics company Chartmetric recently came out with its “6MO Breakthrough Artist Report,” which is an incredible resource that examines the development of some of the most significant rising acts of the last six months of 2019. As Founder/CEO Sung Cho states in the introduction, “we focused on querying our extensive database of 2M+ artists to uncover not so much the A-listers […], but the future Billie Eilish’s of 2020 and beyond.” Here are my 3 key takeaways from the report.
TikTok For Virality
The report starts off with highest gains in Chartmetric’s ranking system — Cross-Platform Performance (CPP) — which combines streaming and social popularity. Don Toliver had the highest CCP growth with a 9,262 CPP Rank Gain (moving from 9,374 to 112). As you can expect by the title of this section, TikTok was one of the main drivers of this incredible ascent. His “Trap&B” single, “No Idea” went viral on TikTok with an unbelievable 8.3M videos made using the song. This led to Toliver topping the Emerging Artist Chart on Billboard on January 8. However, as will be discussed later, while TikTok was a major factor, it wasn’t the only force behind his incredible rise.
Third on the CCP list is Trevor Daniel. His single “Falling” also became the soundtrack to millions of TikToks in late 2019, despite being released in 2018. Although the track gained little traction upon release, in late 2019 “Falling” found its audience through TikTok and seemingly took off. The track went on to hit No.7 and No.11 on Billboard’s Rap Streaming Songs and Hot Rap Songs respectively, as well as clinching his first top 40 appearance on the Hot 100. Daniel topped the Emerging Artist Chart by late January. On the slow success of the track, Daniel stated, “I’m glad it took so long, because a year was perfect timing for me to get mentally prepared,” Daniel says. “It couldn’t have happened better if I tried.”
TikTok also has cross-platform benefits, most notably on YouTube, as many compilation videos get uploaded to the video streaming platform. TikTok videos routinely appear on YouTube Channels such as Best TikTok Compilations (1.78M subs) and TikTokTunes (1.15M subs), which creates lyric videos to the “BEST TikTok Tunes.” This has helped artist Ashnikko, who received the highest percentage gain on the YouTube Channel Views Gain chart with an increase of 3,741%. Her track, “STUPID” featuring Yung Baby Tate became the soundtrack to millions of TikTok. It’s unofficial lyric-video uploaded by TikTokTunes has 32M views — compared to the official audio version, which “only” has 2M views. The track started to take off around late September 2019, apparently due to an account called Gluecosebaby, which boasts 34.5K followers. By September 27, the unofficial lyric video was uploaded to TikTokTunes. By October 4, the song hit No.1 on both the Spotify US and Spotify Global Viral songs chart.
TikTok shows its dominance in creating viral hits throughout Chartmetric’s report. No.1 on the Spotify Monthly Listeners Gain chart is Arizona Zervas’ “ROXANNE,” which became a TikTok sensation and subsequently, found success of DSPs, topping Billboard’s Streaming Songs Chart on November 25. Charmetric’s report does note that he has averaged one release per month since the top of 2016, so he didn’t come out of nowhere necessarily. But once again, his incredible 2,472% gain in Spotify Monthly Listeners (from 1,041,958 to 26,799,245) shows the power of TikTok.
Trailing closely behind Arizona Zervas in Spotify Monthly Listeners Gains, is Tones and I’s TikTok mega-hit “Dance Monkey.” Tones and I saw a 2,423% increase in Spotify Monthly Listeners. With 5.8M TikToks created using the song, the track eventually debuted at No.96 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list in October and in the past couple months, has reached No.5, as it continues to gain steam. These examples all displays TikTok’s immense ability to create “spikes” in an artists trajectory and catapult them to new heights in their career. However, we have yet to see if and how TikTok can create sustained success for an artist; therefore, what an artist does after that spike is perhaps just as, if not more, important.
If you want to know more about TikTok marketing, here’s an article I wrote on “How To Create a TikTok Marketing Strategy (And Why You Need One).”
YouTube For Discovery
While TikTok is gaining notoriety for helping artists go viral, YouTube is still shown to be the number one place that Gen-Z’ers and Millennials are discovering music, according to YPulse.
In this light, fourth on the CCP Gain Chart is Argentinian producer Bizarrap who has 4.19M subscribers on his YouTube Channel. His BZRP Music Sessions, featuring a variety of Latin American Trap artists rapping over Bizarrap’s beats collectively brought him to 606M Views and 3.6M subscribers by the end of 2019. With a continuous and consistent release schedule on YouTube, Bizarrap was able to make major gains on other platforms. Below are graphs that depict Bizarrap’s gains in Spotify Monthly Listeners in green, YouTube Channel Views in red and Instagram followers in grey.
Now some artists may think that they don’t have the funds to consistently make videos for their releases. Well, moving onto YouTube Channel View Gains in the 6MO report, British Trap duo, D-Block Europe, dropped 18 audio-only videos in November 2019. This is a great way to have a presence on the platform, without the need for video content. They have also wrapped up millions of views on the UK Grime aggregator channel GRM Daily. These aggregator channels (Proximity, Majestic Casual, etc.) act as discovery points for high-quality audiences, as the people who visit their pages are (a) looking for new music and (b) interested in that specific genre. The graph below depicts how D-Block Europe’s YouTube Channel views (red) follow a similar path to their Spotify Monthly Listeners (green). Causation is difficult to prove but the idea here is that YouTube can act as a discovery point to garner new audiences, who then crossover to DSPs.
The power of aggregator channels is once again shown with Brazilian Gospel singer, Midian Lima, who is fourth on the YouTube Channel View Gains chart. Her YouTube presence was boosted significantly by being featured on her label’s YouTube Channel, MK Music, which has 9.31M subscribers (her own YouTube Channel has 290K subs). Her music video for “Aguenta Coração” (released in December 2019) currently has 4.5M views.
Features & Collabs For Audience Growth + Diversification
“Cross-pollination […] offers platforms and access to audiences, and that is very powerful for newer artists. […] We operate very much a team mentality amongst the A&R squad here; we’re all very open to cross-collaborate; it’s not all siloed.” — Ben Cook, President of Atlantic Records UK
Collaborations appear to be on the rise, and there’s good reason for it. According to Distrokid’s calculations, the number of songs that feature a collaboration more than doubled from 2015–2017, from 5% to 11%. Furthermore, in a 2018 study by The Economist, it was found that collaborations represented more than a third of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100. This can, perhaps, be due to hip-hop, which has always been a collaborative music genre, rising in popularity. Finally, Charmetric found that collaborations have increased tremendously over the past decade. In fact, all genres except for Hip-Hop and Country have tripled or even quadrupled their collaboration percentages in the past decade (Hip-Hop collaborations still grew 2.5x over the past decade, and still topped all other genres).
“Whether it’s cross-genre or within, artists are working together more and more to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, a successful collaboration can significantly prolong a song’s popularity and relevance.” — Charmetric
Number five on the CCP Gain Chart is Dutch duo production team Afro Bros who was part of a song called “Instagram,” which featured Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, David Guetta, Natti Natasha and Daddy Yankee. Not only is the song itself based on collaborative efforts but it was able to reach more audiences through a remix pack that included 10 different remixes by various DJS from around the world.
Fourth on the Spotify Monthly Listeners Gain chart is JP Saxe, whose monthly listeners increased 600% after the release of his song with Julia Michaels, “If The World Was Ending.” Not only did his Spotify Monthly Listeners grow, but so did his follower count on essentially every other platform.The graph below depicts his Spotify Monthly Listeners in green, Instagram followers in purple, Twitter followers in grey and CCP rank in blue. This, once again, displays the power of collaboration.
Following JP Saxe on the Spotify Monthly Listeners Gain chart is SHAED, who released a song called “Trampoline” in 2018. It wasn’t until ex-One Direction-er ZAYN hopped on as a featured artist in September 2019 that SHAED’s monthly listeners increased by 567%. In the graph below, SHAED’s Spotify Monthly Listeners are tracked in green, Instagram followers in purple, and CCP rank in blue. Yet again, collaboration proves to act as a catalyst for audience growth and diversification.
Key Takeaways
All of these tactics, and others, should not be seen in a silo but work together to help break an artist. BZRP’s YouTube channel features a variety of Latin American trap artists rapping over Bizarrap’s beats — it was noy only utilizing YouTube, but his collaborative strategy as well, that helped him reach new audiences. Furthermore, TikTok was not the sole factor that skyrocketed Don Tolliver’s career but also his Travis Scott-led collaboration album, JACKBOYS, which landed him on playlists like Today’s Top Hits and RapCaviar. While a viral song or prolific collaboration certainly may help launch a career, these strategies and others have to work together to really break an artist. Here are some tangible takeaways:
TikTok:
- Use TikTok strategically. On “Old Town Road,” Lil Nas X said, “I promoted the song as a meme for months until it caught on to TikTok and it became way bigger.” As well he told Rolling Stone that he purposely “put some potentially funny lines in there.” Lil Nas X’s music and marketing strategy work in harmony together — the song has funny lines it, Lil Nas X promoted it through memes.
- If you want to really try to push a song on TikTok, try incorporating “TikTokable” lines or moments in your music? How can you take one of your existing songs and create videos out of some of the lines? The music should match the storyline in the video.
YouTube:
- Create and release as much content as possible — can’t make videos? Put out psuedo-videos— i.e., audio-only videos. Can’t make a music video? Put out a lyric video.
- Identify and message YouTube aggregator channels in your genre — there are hundreds, if not thousands of them online
- Reach out to micro-influencers asking if they’d use your music in their videos
Features & Collaborations:
- Look to collaborate with other artists to help grow and diversify your audience. This can be done both with upcoming releases as well as catalog (e.g., SHAED x Zayn example above)
- Strategically organize a remix package as part of a release plan
- Bring on featured artists onyour songs and reach out to be a part of others’ songs
- Collaborate in terms of music but also live shows, social posts, YouTube videos, and more. More collaboration will lead to growth in audience
- Purposefully collaborate — it may not do you any good to collaborate with an artist who is in a complete opposite genre or style; find a good match to actually build grow your own fanbase
Of course, this is all easier said than done. Breaking an artist takes consistent and thoughtful high quality effort. I hope this article provided you insight into how to strategically plan that thoughtful effort.
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