Pandora hopes to predict music trends with three new charts

The appeal of streaming services is based around helping their listeners discover the latest artists and songs. Pandora has taken a further step, by introducing three new charts that will help predict music trends.

This is by combining social media data with insights from Pandora’s own streaming activity to offer a fresh glimpse at what’s popular—and which artists are about to break.

The charts – Trendsetters, Predictions and Top Spins – are powered by Next Big Sound and available on www.nextbigsound.com/charts.

Pandora’s Chief Operating Officer Sara Clemens said, “Pandora has 100 million listeners visit every three months, and they are deeply engaged, listening 24 hours each month – over two and half times greater than any other service.

“This generates hundreds of thousands of data points every day that help us map and predict a song’s trajectory. Our charts are the visualization of this fan activity, and are an easy to use tool that gives artists and their teams vital information to help them make decisions and grow their careers.”

Trendsetters highlights who everyone is listening to, listing 20 new acts with the most stations added over the past week. Artists graduate from the Trendsetters charts once they reach the “mainstream” stage of their career, as classified by their social and streaming trajectory.

Holding the #1 spot in the inaugural Trendsetters list is Illinois, US-based singer Kiiara. She performed well on social media with 24,000 followers on Twitter, 29,000 on Instagram and with 44,000 Facebook Page Likes. But she also did well on Pandora with over 92,000 artist-based Station Adds. She is followed by Chicago rapper Famous Dex, German born hip hop artist D.R.A.M, Atlanta rapper, singer and producer Russ and with Iceland rock band Kaleo making up fifth spot.

Predictions forecasts which artists are most likely to hit the Billboard 200 chart for the first time within a given year. Acts currently featured on it include French singer songwriter Christine and The Queens, English singer songwriter and model Dua Lipa and Swedish rapper Yung Lean.

It is driven by a proprietary algorithm built by the Next Big Sound data science team. The model is based on artists that have previously reached this milestone, and the social and streaming activity that preceded this success.

Top Spins indicates what tracks are on top on Pandora. It features the 100 songs spun the most on Pandora over the past week, with spin counts ranging between 1.5 to 10 million plays per week. Songs sunset after 16 weeks unless they are on a “hot streak.” A “hot streak” refers to any track that has not yet reached its peak rank and spin count.

Among those on Top Spins are Calvin Harris featuring Rihanna, This is What You Came For, Miami rapper K.E.N.T. Jones’ Don’t Mind, Drake featuring Rihanna, Too Good, DJ Khaled‘s For Free featuring Drake and Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeing from the Trolls soundtrack. There are two Australian tracks – Sydneysider Flume’s Never Be Like You featuring Kai at #21, and Melbourne soul outfit Cookin’ On 3 Burners’ This Girl at #50.

Over the past two years, Pandora has invested in helping artists connect with their fans at scale. This began with the launch of the Artist Marketing Platform (AMP) and Artist Audio Messages last year. Earlier this year came AMPcast.

Each week, tens of millions of Pandora listeners create over 30,000 stations based on artists or songs. This data powers Pandora’s charts, and gives artists visibility into the impact of their use of the AMP tools.