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YouTube Music is stepping up its game in the music data landscape by introducing a new public metric called “Monthly Audience.” This move challenges the dominance of Spotify’s widely-used “Monthly Listeners” metric.
The key difference is that YouTube Music’s “Monthly Audience” will provide a more comprehensive view of an artist’s reach on the platform. It will not only include views of official artist videos, but also account for collaborations on other channels and fan-uploaded content featuring the artist’s music. Crucially, the metric will even encompass non-music content from the artist’s own channel.
This expanded data set aims to give a more holistic representation of an artist’s overall audience on YouTube. The metric will be updated daily, offering a real-time snapshot of performance.
The introduction of “Monthly Audience” comes at a pivotal time as the music industry increasingly relies on data-driven insights. With platforms like Spotify and YouTube dominating music discovery and consumption, the ability to accurately measure and benchmark an artist’s performance has become paramount.
