K-pop Fans Go Eco, Deezer Squares Up and K.Dot on Top 🤺

Question: Kendrick Lamar surged in streams, but what was the percentage increase? 4%, 19%, or 25%?

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Save The World With…Music?

K-pop fans have launched a campaign intended to make music streaming more eco-friendly. Kpop4planet (a group of volunteers) is comprised of K-pop fans who want to hold large corporations responsible for their carbon footprint. 

The campaign is putting music streaming under the spotlight. While K-Pop fans are one of the biggest groups of streamers (they will stream up to 5 hours a day of the same artists), they have successfully gotten Korea’s largest streaming platform to make a promise to be 100% renewable energy by 2030. 

And if you’re thinking - surely streaming music isn’t that bad? You’re in the majority. What most people don’t know is that when you stream an album 27 times, it uses more energy than producing a CD. 

So imagine that, at high volume, spread across 616.2 million people with streaming subscriptions. 

It’s not cut and dry, though. Emissions can be increased or reduced based on the equipment we use to listen to or how heavily we stream music.

Big Spikes in H1

We mentioned in the last issue that there would be market growth, which is already coming to fruition. Reports show that in the first half of 2024, there has been a 15.1% spike in on-demand audio streams, putting the amount of streamed media at roughly 2.3 trillion. And that excludes on-demand video. So, it's a pure audio figure. 

For quick comparison:
2023 saw a record 4.1 trillion plays, and H1 2023 was 1.99 trillion. 

Let’s examine the figures a bit more. During H1, a stunning 46 acts garnered more than a billion streams. Then, the rest of the breakdown is as follows: 96 acts got at least 500 million streams (less than one billion), and 816 artists scooped between 100 million and 500 million streams. 

Finally, 892 acts scored between 50 million to 100 million streams. Smaller artists make up the rest of the figures. For example, 29,253 artists had between one million and ten million streams. 

📢 Remember, you can check your dashboard anytime for trends in music streaming. Freshly ground data served up piping hot!

Drake Loses Spotify Top Spot

Beef aside, this is worth talking about because of how quickly and powerfully trending music moves. You may be sick of hearing Not Like Us by now, or you may have it on repeat. Either way, K. Dot knocked Drake off his coveted Spotify top spot. 

At the time of writing, Kendrick’s total listeners were 74,339,787, while Drake's has dropped 4% to 74,062,374. Kendrick's appearance on Like That has also contributed to the listeners. But that doesn’t make it any less impressive to be riding a 19% increase (a similar growth is seen for Metro Boomin and Future). 

While many songs hit number 1 and then take a dramatic slide, Not Like Us hit the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100, dipped to third, and then returned to first. The music video for Not Like Us refreshed the love for the song and caused another wave of listeners to get hooked again. 

This marks the first multi-week Kendrick Lamar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning artist, has spent in the HOT 100. According to the figures, it was thanks to 54 million streams and 40 million radio plays.

While they might not directly count, millions of User-Generated Content through YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram (at minimum) helped make this happen. The power of fans on social media shouldn’t ever be underestimated.

Deezer Challenges Spotify

In our last issue, we reported about two music streaming services that offer AI playlist generation. Well, this week, Deezer has entered the ring. While Spotify and Amazon Music have already started rolling them out, Deezer’s has just entered beta.  

How do you get it? Deezer has rolled it out to 5% of paid subscribers at random. So, you can’t just sign up to test it now. Although, that could change. 

Deezer already has a feature called Flow that offers an infinite AI mix of music based on the user's listening preferences and mood. So, this is a logical next step for them.

With all of the AI playlist creators coming up and being refined, the real differentiator will be how well their AI understands the prompts and their users.

May the best-trained AI win!

AI Playlist Tools to try out: Spotify AI Playlist Maker, Amazon Music Maestro, & YouTube AI Radio.

Self-moderation Spotify

The comments feature on Spotify’s podcasts could’ve been a space for polarizing, cruel comments. Rather than appoint moderators to do the job, Spotify has implemented a self-moderation process. In short, you won’t be able to publish your own comments. Instead, creators must review the comments and choose what will be published. 

The response has been mixed. This means podcasters have to do extra work, and moderate which limits freedom of expression for the public. And it seems to be more of a façade (according to Kevin Wallsten, a political professor at California State University Long Beach). 

He says that self-moderation and selected comments being published give Spotify no liability over what is posted. The burden of moderation, engagement, and potentially harmful comments being published falls entirely on the podcaster. 

Here’s what Spotify had to say on the matter: 

“[We’re] taking a deliberately slow and measured approach as we test out these systems,” says Spotify’s Maya Prohovnik, “and the ways we extend the feature will depend on the feedback we get from creators and Spotify users.”

What do you think? Should podcasters have to moderate their comments to such an extreme? Or should the comment section be open to all (with the option to block and remove hate speech)?

Answer: Did you spot the answer? K. Dot achieved a massive 19% increase!

Quick tips: 

Use FreeYourMusic for smooth music transfers (up to 600 for free). 
Playlist curator? Artist? Check out: Music24. Grow streams (without bots).
Free personalized music posters based on your listening? Yes, please! Check it out: MusicPoster.io.

Thanks for being part of the SongsBrew community,

Until next time!

Exclusive access to the music metrics that matter sponsored by Music API & FreeYourMusic.