Understand your analytics

Success means something different for every artist. Knowing how to read your artists’ analytics can help you decide what specific areas to focus on.

Apple Music offers different platforms to understand your music analytics and apply to different features. Apple Music for Artists is a web and iOS application allowing artists, labels, and distributors to quickly view high-level content performance across Apple Music, Shazam, and iTunes. Sales and Trends is solely a web-based data visualization dashboard that allows content partners to view their performance across Apple Music and iTunes. Sales and Trends includes more granular, customizable filtering criteria and downloadable reporting.

All data is shown in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and refreshes daily. New release data can take 48 hours to display in your Apple Music for Artists partner view dashboard.

Analytics in the Apple Music for Artists partner view

We measure your artists’ music performance in the following categories:

• Listening Now shows the number of fans who initiate plays of your music. Note, this does not include plays that occur when a listener is offline.
  
• Plays are recorded when a user initiates song playback in Apple Music for more than 30 seconds. We provide a holistic view of all plays, including plays from Apple Music radio stations. Apple Music radio stations are created when a user picks a song or an artist to generate a custom radio station, or from an Apple Music curated radio station.
• Average Daily Listeners are the average number of daily unique listeners in the time frame selected.
• Purchases are recorded when a customer buys your artist’s song or album from the iTunes Store.
• Shazam Count is recorded anytime your artist’s song is recognized by the Shazam app, or one of the partner apps that use Shazam technology.
• Radio Spins are recorded when your song is played on one of the more than 40,000 tracked terrestrial and digital radio stations around the world. This does not include Apple Music Radio.
  
• Video Views are recorded when an Apple Music user watches your artist’s music video for more than 30 seconds.

The Apple Music for Artists partner view is intended to provide performance-level data about all music in which your artist is listed as a primary artist. We measure analytics for the following types of content:

• Songs include the total plays of a song, including every album and compilation it was released on.
• Albums include any album, EP, or individually released single.
• Playlists include any Apple Music editorial playlist.
• Videos include any music video uploaded to Apple Music.

You may have delivered multiple versions of your artist’s music, such as remastered or radio edit versions. We aggregate this data into a single track grouping, which is why you will see one album or single cover art to represent the track group as a whole.

Find out who is Listening Now

Get real-time data on how many fans are currently streaming your music on Apple Music. Our Listening Now widget tells you how many listeners have initiated playback on one of your songs at any given moment.

Select the widget to get a detailed view of your Listening Now trends from the past 48 hours. Maximum Listeners highlights the top number of listeners you had at any given point in the last 48-hour period, while Average Listeners gives you the average number of listeners in the last 48-hour period. 

For privacy reasons, there is a minimum listener threshold in order to display Listening Now analytics. You may notice gaps in your data reporting period when that threshold has not been met.

Track your radio spins

Radio Spins is integrated throughout the Apple Music for Artists experience. Monitor more than 40,000 radio stations from over 200 countries and regions with Radio Spins to see which stations are giving your music air time. Visit the Trends page to view detailed data like which radio stations spin your music the most, or which songs from your catalog are generating the most radio spins across all monitored stations. Places will highlight where your music is being played across global airwaves.

Listener trends in the Apple Music for Artists partner view

The Trends section helps you uncover insights about your artist’s music’s performance. Compare analytics based on the actions your artist’s listeners take, and use different filters to learn details about their gender, age, location, and the songs they connect with the most. Learn about listener trends.

Geographic data

The Places section shows you where your listeners are by city, state, and country or region. Apply filters to help track the popularity of new releases for your artists, understand consumer demographic behavioral trends, and get an idea of where in the world your artist’s music resonates. Learn about your global impact.