Apple Music For Artist Out From Beta, Now Available With iOS App And Shazam

The tech-giant Apple has recently launched a free analytics tool for verified musicians and their camps. The tool was launched on Apple Music as 'Apple Music for Artist' and is available on desktop or other Apple devices. The product uses Apple Music streaming data to give artists a detailed scenario of their global impact and industry milestones.

The tool updates daily, enabling users to analyse who is listening to what songs and how many times and their source of streaming. The objective of this tool is to provide an idea of worldwide impact of their artistry and assist them strategically plan tours and promotions based on listening patterns or unlikely cities flooded with undeserved fans.

According to an Apple Music representative, the product remained in Beta for years before launch, which enabled the team to receive feedback and requests from artists and managers about the insights. These insights would be quite meaningful and yield better connection to their fans.

The notable features that gained attention from the Beta feedback are Apple Playlist inclusions, letting artists know what curated playlists their songs appear in and where those tracks are positioned in said playlist. It also provides insights on which countries spin that playlist most and in which countries their song is included in the playlist. Such dashboard is extremely valuable to receive insights about how the music is performing across the world.

The basic dashboard stats represent overall plays and song purchases in iTunes and radio spins (on Apple Music editorial and algorithmic stations).

A ton of insights can be checked to the city level in over 100 countries. The data can be viewed either in list or on a visual heat map. Additionally, artists can also analyse the demographics of listeners including age, gender along with cities. But due to Apple's privacy policy it is not possible to cross-reference two sets of data.

Another peculiar feature that may interest the artists is the integration of Shazam. They can see their Shazam data including top shazamed cities and countries which would be quite helpful in figuring out which tracks are worth pushing and promoting.

Much like AWAL artist app, Apple Music for Artist provides automatic alerts if there is any significant change in the activities. For example –

1. the comparison between first week plays of newly released piece to previous week-one plays
2. If the music hits milestone of 1 Million plays
3. Sudden acceleration in plays across the world
4. When they are added to a significant Apple Music playlist

Varying from the third party distribution or service companies, Apple's new member does not provide insights on how act's streams translate into royalty payouts.