For the Love of Everything Fraggable, Let Data Help Evaluate What’s Best in Music
Looking at you, major award shows.
Look, I know that award shows aren’t completely objective when handing out accolades. Music tastes and opinions on what’s best aren’t objective either. But if you paid any attention to the 2022 Grammys and the social media buzz surrounding them, you undoubtedly noticed a strong “wait, how’s X more popular than Y?!” sentiment (usually phrased more colorfully).
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So, hear me out: isn’t it about time we let data help with such decision-making?
While the Recording Academy are the first to point out they don’t base their votes on album sales or popularity metrics, I think data can help navigate decisions. After all, millions of people streaming a particular track or creating TikTok videos around it are definitely clear evidence that the track made an impact, and numbers can help define the cream of the crop.
If you need an example of how different the 2022 Grammy results would have been if you were to base them on popularity data, I’ll give you three.
Data verdict #1: “Montero” is the most popular song of the year
The “Song of the Year” Grammy went to Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open”, but it’s Lil Nas X’s “Montero” that made the most waves on streaming and music channels.
“Leave the Door Open” did excel in one data category — it got the most YouTube video views, more than 510 million. Our 2022 State of Music address identified it as the best-performing English-speaking music video of 2021.
Data verdict #2: “The Business” scored highest among the “Best Dance/Electronic Recording” nominees
Tiësto’s track was by far the most popular among all the “Best Dance/Electronic Recording” nominees according to its combined streaming, social media and radio airplay numbers.
“The Business” was streamed over 800 million times and still claims the highest Spotify playlist reach (76 million). The winner — Rüfüs Du Sol’s “Alive” — comes in third with 19 million streams and 2.4 million YouTube views.
Data verdict #3: Best Metal Performance should’ve gone to Gojira
To the surprise of metal communities worldwide, Gojira’s “Amazonia” didn’t win the “Best Metal Performance” award. It went to Dream Theater’s “The Alien” instead, marking the band’s first Grammy win.
“Amazonia” won the online popularity vote with 12 million streams and almost 7 million YouTube views. Compared to Gojira’s numbers, the winning Dream Theater track has amassed only a quarter as much, despite the group’s legendary status.
Bottom line: data paints a pretty realistic picture of what people find “best” — so let’s give it a shot.
You can find all three case studies in Viberate’s Resources section. To dive deeper into music analytics yourself, try out Viberate — the trial run’s free.
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