Songstats: Taming Data to Change Artists’ and Creators’ Careers
Meet the data insights platform that helps artists grow their listens by 9-16%, while finding real opportunities and partners.
When Oskar Eichler, one half of the techno duo DONT BLINK, started to plot his course as a touring artist/DJ in electronic music, he hit a wall that many artists hit: there was no good way to really see what was happening with his music, to get and analyze the data in one place.
So he built one. Together with co-founders Evan Sacks and Jack Crawford-Brown, Eichler launched Songstats as a way to give artists, labels, and managers a clearer view of their music’s performance across streaming, playlists, charts, and social platforms.
What began as a solution to a problem he experienced first-hand as an artist has since grown into The Stats Company, home to Songstats, Songshare, Radiostats, and a major new product launching later this summer. Now supported by a team of artist-developers, The Stats Company is focused on bringing data insights to artists’ fingertips, uniting scattered feeds and information, and helping music teams turn signals into smarter decisions.
The Stats Company’s offerings have already been adopted by some of the biggest, smartest names in music, including Harry Styles, Cardi B, Maroon 5, Oasis, U2, Madison Beer, Meghan Trainor, Offset, and many others. It’s also the go-to platform for major labels (UMG, Warner), booking agencies (CAA, United Talent), and festivals (Tomorrowland). Though the company has deep roots in the electronic music scene, only half of its subscribers hail from that world. The company serves more than 10K customers across every genre and tracks more than 100M playlists, 500K labels, and 6.5M artists and performers.
Yet it all started with an artist’s wish for something better when it came to data. “I thought it would be cool to have a single place where I could see everything. I built the first version of Songstats for selfish reasons,” Eichler recounts. “We started off just wanting to make a useful tool that would benefit us as artists.”
Songstats launched in April 2020 and gradually incorporated everything from music-related social media usage to data from more than 15 of the most important DSPs including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Beatport, 1001Tracklists, Bandsintown, and SoundCloud.
The Stats Company team also found a way to incorporate airplay monitoring into the mix, a crucial but rarely available set of vital insights: Radiostats tracks more than 50,000 stations and TV channels globally, detailing the country, city, station for each airplay.
Yet usage tracking and data analytics alone don’t mean much to artists who have other, more creative matters on their minds. So Eichler, and the team created more ways data can serve artists beyond that first step of gathering it in a single spot. Songstats foregrounds career signals, spikes and changes in activity that truly matter. It suggests potential partners worth pitching and can gauge the health and impact of playlists. With thoughtful marketing tools and smart integrations with third-party services, Songstats can guide an artist to find new fans, collaborators, and opportunities, helping them change the course of their creative lives.
Signal in the noise
Artists have struggled to determine precisely what data means a boost in their career. Even the best dashboard with all the bells and whistles can’t answer the question of what it all means. Songstats approaches the problem by notifying artists about a significant development in real time via push notifications. From charting on Beatport, to an add to a key playlist or major DJ set, to a spike in Shazams, airplay, or user-generated videos, artists will instantly see what data has the biggest impact in a simple, intuitive way.
This awareness translates into artist action. DJ and music producer Kelly Reverb discovered that Gorgon City and Alesso played his track live at Coachella, opening up an opportunity to engage fans and celebrate. DONT BLINK discovered that massively popular DJ Mau P had played their remix of a Chemical Brothers track at EDC Las Vegas, leading the duo to release the track, which racked up millions of listens across platforms.
Overall, Songstats artists have turned these signals into real progress. Songstats subscribers on average see 9% yearly streaming growth on Spotify while subscribed.
New fan horizons
These signals can help artists find new fans, by transmitting what’s catching on and by seeing where fan response might be lagging. To make sharing easy, Songstats generates eyecatching artwork perfect for social accounts. Sharing works: those who shared artwork marking significant milestones or chart positions saw an average 16% yearly uptick in their monthly listeners on Spotify.
Along with engaging existing fans and followers, Songstats lets artists hone in on markets and communities that may be responding to their music, yet may be completely off the artists’ radars. Songstats makes it easy to target certain markets, make localized content where they’re seeing traction, and book shows in new cities where they see support.
Better collaborations and partnerships
Songstats includes label profiles, a win for both catalog holders, A&Rs, and managers. Thanks to these profiles, labels can track their catalog and priority releases, provide detailed reporting to artists, and gather data-backed arguments for editorial pitching. Finally, Songstats offers collaborator profiles for Composers, Songwriters, Engineers – all of the professional musicians involved in creating a track. Thanks to these profiles, creatives can aggregate and showcase their catalog of works and track the performance of the songs they contributed to.
The platform also supports artists as they sort through what playlists are valuable, active, and relevant to their goals. Songstats recommends playlists and runs health checks to provide global and genre ranks, as well as contact information for more efficient playlist pitching. It also provides creator recommendations to work with creators and influencers across social media platforms. These features add up to a powerful networking tool that matches the people making music and culture with the creators, curators, and reps looking for them.
Works the way artists work
Songstats, Songshare, and Radiostats work together in a way that flows seamlessly from the way most artists already think, work, and act. Songstats lets a wide range of creators and music professionals – producers, songwriters, engineers, session musicians – aggregate their profiles, instead of centering everything around artists. It embraces the full variety of roles and potential opportunities that many music and audio creatives seek.
By coming to creators with new possibilities and current developments, and by acting as a search engine, not just a passive usage dashboard, It allows them to create quick assets to mark important milestones and make new connections. It gives musicmakers of all kinds a better way to understand and plan their creative careers.
“Our platforms act like a manager in your pocket, handing you actionable insights and ideas, not just reporting how many streams you got yesterday,” explains Eichler. “Our mission is to build tools that encourage real forward momentum.”