You’ve already started routing your tour using streaming data, so it’s time to fill up those support slots.
Pretend you’re the English Indie Pop duo The xx. A few months ago, you posted this on Instagram:
One thing’s for sure: You need some acts to bring on the road with you. So, where could you start, from a data perspective?
First, set your goals. You’re looking for a few emerging acts to reach out to that have a similar, but different, sound; a partially-common, but not too common, audience (to boost ticket sales and reach); and availability to tour Europe — and potentially beyond — later this year.
Second, take stock of how you’re doing in relation to other similarly performing and similarly sounding artists. At present, you have 3.3M Spotify Followers and 4.4M Monthly Listeners (MLs). Looking at our Neighboring Artists tool, MC G15 has about as many Followers as you but less MLs (3.7M). However, the genre match probably isn’t great since he’s Funk Carioca/Brazilian Electronica.
Looking at MLs instead of Followers, Pink Sweat$ has the same count of the former but a lower Follower count, which could actually be a good option for you, because it suggests that he has some amount of buzz behind him but not as big of a fanbase. Pink Sweat$ may be a bit more R&B-forward, but that could make for a pretty cool pairing — especially when it comes to stretching your audience reach.
Let’s say you want a bit more genre continuity, though. If we toggle our Neighboring Artists filter for genre cluster to take genre into account, it turns out Hozier actually has about the same amount of Followers, but 3x as many MLs (14.67M). In other words, he’s red hot, and you don’t want to be outshone if you’re headlining the tour. Switching over to MLs instead, Mac DeMarco and Wallows come up as potential suitors. With Mac, you might not be outshone, but you could be competing for audience members who would prefer to see him in the headlining slot, based on their similar cachet in the Indie scene. Wallows, on the other hand, are certainly buzzing in the Spotify sphere, and they seem to hit that sweet spot: similar audience base, but not too similar.
Third, the industry is constantly changing, so keep your options open by compiling a targeted list. Using our Advanced Filters under the Artists tab, you can set your target Spotify MLs and Followers range. For you, as The xx, that probably means 1-3M Followers, 1-4M MLs, and a Spotify Popularity between 40 and 70 (just below your 74 out of 100). Since you don’t want genre-agnostic results, you can hit those sub-genre filters too….
Indie Dream Pop? 19 artists returned? Now that’s a list we can think about while we continue planning our optimal route and choosing the right venues.
