#29 - Sunlighter Hot 100 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! It’s been awhile since we’ve covered a music tech company, so this week, that’s what we’re doing. Scroll to the bottom to see who’s at the top of the charts.

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Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of Quest for Fire by Skrillex.

2. 🔀 Playlist updates: New ODESZA, more Julia Wolf, and Danny Ocean.

3. 💿 Industry updates from A-Rod fixing Ticketmaster to UMG growth.

4. 🤘 Tours: Train, Macklemore, Wu-Tang + Nas, The Lumineers and more.

5. 🎡 Festivals: Glastonbury and Dreamville.

6. 🎧 Chartmetric is our Sunlighter Spotlight of the week.

Chris: Believe it or not, Quest for Fire is actually Skrillex’s second studio album, which comes 9 years (!) after Recess. In jaw-dropping fashion, he released his third studio album, Don’t Get Too Close, one day after Quest for Fire. 😮 what a comeback. Think of the concept between Quest for Fire and Don’t Get Too Close as fire and ice, respectively. The juxtaposition is brilliant, with the lead song for both albums featuring the same artist and nearly the same song name, yet completely different in sound. While both albums set a quick tempo, Quest for Fire is the industrial version of its ethereal, counterpart that you’ll hear in album two. “RATATA” “Good Space” and the natural progression between “Hazel Theme” into “Still Here (with the ones that I came with)” are standouts, but admittedly, it’s not the same as his iconic dubstep sounds that brought dubstep to the mainstream. Regardless, we give Skrillex points for ingenuity and for bringing songwriters Starrah and Bibi Bourelly back into the spotlight.

Donya: Before listening to Quest for Fire, I knew Skrillex was an icon in the EDM genre and made the absolute bop that is “Where Are Ü Now,” but that’s about it. This is the ultimate hype album, with so many stellar featured artists. My favorite track on the record is “XENA,” featuring a Palestinian singer named Nai Barghouti. Skrillex tosses in Middle Eastern percussion patterns that are so distinct you can’t help but dance. A close second favorite is “Supersonic (my existence),” which gets closer to the traditional Skrillex dubstep we all know and love.

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Industry Updates 💿

This week was all about big money and meaningful changes in streaming revenue models. Check it here:

💸 UMG reported its subscription streaming numbers grew by 10% YoY in 2022, averaging ~$1 billion per financial quarter. SoundExchange, a non-profit organization designated by Congress to collect and distribute royalties for artists, reported $255.6 million in digital royalties to creators in Q4 2022 (ending just $40k shy of their goal of $1 billion in 2022). The German music industry hits €2 billion in revenue for the first time in 20 years, and Lyric Capital, private equity investment group, now has $800 million worth of music catalogs.

📈 TIDAL pivots from Direct Artist Payouts to investing in TIDAL Rising. Deezer and UMG partner to follow Lucien Grainge’s lead on building a new streaming revenue platform, and Scooter Braun has his eyes on building the next major record label.

⚾ Aaron Rodriguez is building a sports ticketing platform to compete with Ticketmaster (yo, A-Rod, can we include the music industry on this?)

Alright, we hear you – enough business. Now, onto the fun stuff:

👀 Timbaland and Missy Elliot tease a potential project together, John Mayer pranks his fans during a concert, Sara Bareilles and Kelly Rowland are set to be the first judges on an Audible singing competition called “Breakthrough.” For a while, T-Pain got paid every time an artist used auto-tune 😂, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres show in Buenos Aires is set for a cinematic release on April 19 and 23, Justin Bieber canceled the formerly rescheduled shows of his JUSTICE TOUR but performed with Don Toliver over the weekend at Rolling Loud 🤔, Weezer stunned Simon Cowell after singing “Beverly Hills” with the Detroit Youth Choir, and Chance the Rapper and his daughter shared a sweet moment with Martin Short on a flight.

Here’s everything else you missed:

• 📻 RadioGPT: Futuri, a software company focused on media companies, is developing solutions like TuneCore and RadioGPT, with the goal of revolutionizing traditional radio.

• 🔥 Skrillex is Hot: With his double-album release, Skrillex becomes the first artist to simultaneously chart 20 songs on the Dance/Electronic charts. 

• 🎧 Streaming GOAT: The Weeknd becomes the first artist to achieve 100 million monthly streams on Spotify. He’s ahead of Miley Cyrus (#2), Taylor Swift (#3), Rihanna (#4), and Shakira (#5).

• 🤖 Blockchain x Music Industry: Audius hires a new Chief Business Officer, Shamal Ranasinghe, to manage the relationship between the blockchain-powered platform and the music industry. Ranasinghe brings product management and catalog experience from his time at SiriusXM/Pandora.

Tour Announcements 🤘

• Hey, soul sister, Train is going back on tour this year over the summer.

• ABBA takes their Voyage album on a virtual concert tour.

• Wu-Tang Clan and Nas are co-headlining their N.Y. State of Mind Tour across 32 dates around the globe.

• The honorable spliff-smoking, food connoisseur, bambambaklava, aka, Action Bronson, will be doing three shows in April in New York City.

• Chloe Bailey announces her first solo headlining tour, playing 11 shows this spring.

• Can we go thrift shopping? Macklemore will be embarking on THE BEN TOUR in September. He’s partnered with PLUS1 to donate $1 per ticket to supporting youth in recovery.

• $NOT will be going on tour in May as part of his Get Busy or Die North American Tour. I think I’d rather get busy.

• Argentinian rapper, DUKI, will be heading to the United States for the first time, playing only five shows in the month of May.

• Dierks Bentley announced his upcoming GRAVEL & GOLD TOUR, where he will be accompanied by numerous special guest artists including Elle King, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, Shane Smith & the Saints, Tracy Lawrence, Caylee Hammack, and more.

• Bon Iver announces a tour with 11 shows throughout the month of August from Minnesota to Martha’s Vineyard.

• The Lumineers announced upcoming tour dates to support their fourth album, BRIGHTSIDE. James Bay will be the opener for their tour.

• K. Flay and Grandson announced a their co-headlined I Love You, I’m Trying Tour.

• Alex G and Alvvays are joining forces for a 2023 North America tour.

• Weezer announced their Indie Rock Road Trip to support their 15th studio album (that’s a lot of albums…)

• The Struts are heading back to North America for their Remember The Name… The Struts Tour.

• Citizen Cope announced a North American tour which kicks off in April.

• Rock n’ Roll legends KISS announced their final shows EVER, finishing where they started, on 23rd Street in Madison Square Garden. THE END OF THE ROAD TOUR ends December 2, 2023.

• Carlos Santana will be heading to Dallas in May to kick off his band’s 1001 Rainbows Tour.

• The Doobie Brothers are extending their 50th Anniversary Tour.

• The Flaming Lips embarked on their tour just a couple of days ago, kicking off in Lake Tahoe.

• Mexican rock artist, Siddhartha, will be touring across the US for the first time, hitting 18 cities between May and November.

Festival Announcements 🎡

☕ It’s tea time: Glastonbury announces their first “draft” official festival lineup, and it looks pretty spectacular to us. The festival has been a cultural event for our friends across the pond since 1970, and every year they’re known for bringing top-tier artists along with 200,000+ attendees. You’ll recognize many of these artists, and maybe you remember a few from our previous editions of Sunlighter (hint: Christine and the Queens, Lewis Capaldi). It sounds like there are more artists in talks to join this lineup before it kicks off this June, so stay tuned.

💭 Sweet Dreams are Made of This: J. Cole launched the Dreamville Festival back in 2018 and curates the festival lineup each year–wow oh wow, this one is stacked. The two-day festival takes place in Raleigh, North Carolina at Dorothea Dix Park, giving fans 300 acres of space to enjoy a family-style cookout as fuel for roaming around the multiple stages.

Sunlighter Spotlight: Chartmetric 🎧

Since the late 1940s, advancements in information technology have given rise to a new age digital commodity - data. Its intrinsic value to technology companies has positioned consumer data to become one of the most important bargaining chips in many modern business transactions. For the music industry, having deep data insights against competitors can help change the trajectory of an artist’s career or the overall success of a record label. This week, we’re covering one of the most powerful music data platforms on the market today, Chartmetric.

Analyzing Chartmetric

Boasting more than 8.7 million artists and 88 million tracks, Chartmetric provides a music data aggregation platform that allows any user to view comprehensive streaming and social data tied to an artist, track, playlist, or brand. While the platform provides rich, in-depth analytics on a variety of music metrics, ranging from Chartmetric’s in-house “Artist Rank” calculation to unique music trends across cities, Chartmetric also excels at abstracting away detailed insights to tell the larger story about macro listener habits. Combining the breadth of industry-focused analytics and the ability to transform insights into actionable strategies, Chartmetric’s platform is both versatile and appealing for a number of use cases–whether it’s positioning A&R divisions at record labels to capitalize on the best up-and-coming talent or supporting artist managers in growing the presence of the artists they represent. Aside from the base analytics platform, Chartmetric also publishes consolidated music industry reports, provides a (newly acquired) marketing service that instantly creates artist one sheets, hosts a podcast focused on the intersection of creativity and data within the music industry, and publishes a newsletter that provides analysis into music industry trends. It’s a high-alpha, low-cost tool that has proven to launch artist careers. The numbers don’t lie.

What do the charts say?

Here are some of the real-time insights that can be extracted from Chartmetric’s platform:

• 🎤 The most popular artist in the world is currently The Weeknd.

• 💐 The highest-ranked track has been and continues to be “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus.

• 🧊 For the past week, Niall Horan and Ice Spice were the respective number one and number two artists on the Spotify Weekly Top Artists leaderboard.

• 💿 Across the three largest streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon), Republic Records appears to be dominating the competition, having more signed charting artists charting than any other record label.

• 📻 Spotify dominates the top 50 playlists in the world, curating 46 out of the 50 most popular playlists.

• 🍲 The most popular released album within the past week is Gumbo by Young Nudy, followed by the record by boygenius.

Here’s another chart to consider:

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week with some true introspection from our friend Porter.

Check out our other articles and give us a follow on Twitter!

Next Sunday, we'll be at SXSW 🤘

Chris and Donya