Chartmetric Music Industry Trends Report on Breakthrough Music in 2020

The last six months have been unprecedented in the modern music industry, yet artists and fans have adapted and continue to create music and connections. In our latest music industry trends report, we dive into where and how new acts are emerging and how older tracks — be they from 1988 or 2018 — are finding new life on popular platforms.

Even with the disruption of coronavirus quarantines triggering sudden lifestyle changes around the world, many of the trends we’ve noticed in our previous music industry trends reports remain in full force, while modes of music discovery leapfrog from TikTok to Shazam and music syncs on Netflix shows.

Below are three samples from Chartmetric's new music industry trends report, covering the period from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2020, and released publicly on Aug. 31, 2020. See all the interactive graphics and data breakdowns for prominent artists and tracks below:

Find 6MO H1 2020: Breakthrough Music, Chartmetric's new music industry trends report, here.

The Steady Rise of Rxseboy

While the rest of the most viral artists in H1 2020 relied on playlist adds to make their mark, 20-year-old Lo-Fi rapper Anthony Tubbs, aka Rxseboy, built a steady increase across all streaming and social media platforms, possibly thanks to his constant flow of features and releases.

Known for collaborating with Canadian lo-fi act Powfu, Rxseboy’s fanbase really started to grow following his May 11 single “ill come back to you,” featuring Powfu and fellow Emo rapper Sarcastic Sounds. His current leap in Chartmetric’s overall popularity ranking system (Cross-Platform Performance) will not likely wane during the rest of 2020.

There's No I in Team

For Trending TikTok videos, collaboration and multi-artist tracks were the rule, not the exception, with seven out of the Top 10 tracks at the end of June having multiple artists featured on the same track.

For many tracks, this took the form of remixes, which are immensely popular on TikTok and can give catalog tracks (released 18+ months ago) a second wind, as was the case for Shaun Reynolds’ remix of Anne-Marie’s 2018 track “2002"; Puri, Jhorrmountain, and Adje’s 2017 track “Coño,” which has a whole host of remixes now; and Nfasis’ 2017 track “Tra Tra,” which spawned a number of remixes and led to the #AhiChallenge on TikTok.

Netflix Syncs Equal Hits

An important trend for the future of the music industry is that sync can lift an older song to new heights and cross cultures, hitting new fans in the feels regardless of language or cultural context. Netflix's Korean drama hit Crash Landing on You featured Yerin Baek’s "Here I Am Again" and Yoon Mi Rae’s "Flower." Both trended on Shazam more than any other of the drama’s soundtrack songs and were probably most memorable to Western viewers with their English refrains heard during some of the more emotional moments in the series. This meant good things for the artists: Yerin Baek saw a nearly 200K increase in her Instagram followers that coincided with the show's premiere worldwide on Dec. 14, 2019.