Newly launched Apple Music for Artists rivals Spotify’s data analytics tools

Since Spotify launched it’s Spotify For Artists platform back in 2017, the global streaming giant has been considered the number one platform for creators for one reason — data. That could all be changing soon as leading competitor, Apple Music, has just released its Apple Music For Artists platform from beta testing stages, adding on some new features in the process.

The new Apple service caters to musicians, offering detailed insights into music releases by metrics such as listener demographics, playlist inclusion trends, Shazam popularity and iTunes sales data (the latter two of which are Apple-exclusive data points). The tech giant acquired Shazam at the end of 2017, making it the only major streaming service connected to a download marketplace.

Apple Music For Artists also boasts an insights section designed to highlight noteworthy data at any given moment, like how the first week of a new song compares to the first weeks of previous songs, or when the popularity of a song is spiking, or if they’ve hit a big milestone like one million plays. The data is invaluable to artist management teams, telling them when it may be time to shift promotional focus on a given single, for instance.

The data is also browsable by city on a map, which can help artists break down listener info by city in over 100 countries as well as display top Shazamed cities and countries. So if someone’s planning a tour, they can use this to data to choose which cities to hit, for instance, or to find the correct venue size in a given market.

Apple Music for Artists also moves from being desktop-only in beta to existing in mobile form as well, which is an added feature to rival Spotify for Artists’ popular mobile app.

Any artist can claim their account for free, here.