Navigating Our Metrics and Tags on Chartmetric

Chartmetric provides a powerful suite of metrics that measure an artist’s presence, growth, and influence across streaming and social platforms. While these benchmarks have long offered the music industry a reliable and transparent way to gauge career standing and momentum, they’ve also evolved alongside shifts in the digital landscape. What follows is a refreshed look at our core metrics—how they’ve grown over the past several years, and what they mean for understanding today’s music ecosystem.

Chartmetric Score

The Chartmetric Score is the foundation of how we measure an artist’s overall presence and relevance. It blends two types of data: long-term fan base size (followers and subscribers built up over time) and short-term engagement (streams, playlist activity, likes, comments, and shares). While both matter, the score is weighted more heavily toward recent engagement, since that best reflects how relevant an artist is today, while still recognizing the fan base accumulated over their career.

Scores are normalized by platform size (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, TikTok, etc.) and updated daily. The result is a score between 0 and 100, though climbing near the top becomes increasingly difficult. Because the metric is relative, an artist’s score can shift not only based on their own performance but also depending on how peers are doing at the same time.

Example: Artist A has a score of 95, placing them among the global top 20. Artist B has a score of 78, still strong but ranked lower since other artists in their tier are currently outperforming them.

Chartmetric Rank

While the Chartmetric Score provides an absolute number, Chartmetric Rank puts that score into context by showing where an artist stands compared to every other artist in the database. The Rank is calculated by ordering all artists based on their Chartmetric Scores, which means it is entirely relative.

This relativity is important: even if an artist’s score improves, their rank could still fall if many other artists improve faster. Similarly, an artist might rise in rank without major changes of their own if competitors slow down. Rank therefore reflects not just individual performance, but competitive positioning within the global music landscape.

Example: Artist A’s score of 95 might give them a Rank of 20, while Artist B’s score of 78 places them at Rank 2,000. Day to day, these ranks can shift as other artists move up or down in the system.

Career Stage

Career Stage translates the Chartmetric Score into a long-term view of an artist’s journey. Instead of being influenced by daily ups and downs, it looks at the median score over the past year to provide stability. Based on percentiles, artists are categorized into one of five stages: Developing, Mid-Level, Mainstream, Superstar, or Legendary.

Most artists are in Developing or Mid-Level, while only a small fraction reach Superstar or Legendary. Platform weighting also plays a role, with certain platforms such as Spotify and YouTube giving more influence. This metric helps identify whether an artist is emerging, breaking through, or cementing their place among global icons.

Example: Artist A sits in the 80th percentile, placing them firmly in the Superstar stage. Artist B, in the 50th percentile, falls in the Mainstream stage but is showing strong potential to climb higher.

For additional detail, artists can also be viewed through percentile rankings:

Legendary artists (lasting legacy, top \~1.5K globally).
Superstar artists (distinguished, top \~1.6K–12K).
Mainstream artists (top \~12K–35K, consistent success).
Mid-Level artists (top \~35K–100K, building recognition).
Developing artists (new or early-career, growing audience).
Emerging artists (new to the scene, not yet consistent across platforms).

These tiers apply both to artists and tracks, providing a scalable way to assess careers and releases alike.

Recent Momentum

While Career Stage shows where an artist has settled, Recent Momentum highlights the direction of change. It measures the slope of an artist’s score over the past twelve months, with more weight given to the most recent activity, especially the last three months.

This makes it clear whether an artist is on the rise, holding steady, or declining. Momentum is grouped into phases such as Growth, Strong Growth, or Explosive Growth. This is especially useful for spotting rising stars before they break into higher career stages.

Example: Artist A may already be in the Superstar stage but with flat momentum, showing stability but little new growth. Artist B, however, might be in Mainstream with explosive growth, signaling they could soon break into the top tiers.

Network Strength Score

The Network Strength Score measures the quality of an artist’s social media connections, not just their quantity. It looks at who follows the artist and how influential or selective those followers are. Being followed by a major figure who rarely follows others carries more weight than casual fan follows.

The metric also considers second-degree connections (followers of followers) and weighs platforms differently, with Instagram and YouTube ranked higher than TikTok. This score provides insight into how well-connected an artist is within the broader music ecosystem.

Example: Artist A is followed by several globally known musicians who rarely follow others, giving them a very strong Network Strength Score. Artist B, despite a large following, lacks influential connections, resulting in a weaker score.

The Social Engagement Score captures how actively fans interact with an artist’s content. It measures likes, comments, views, and shares, but also adjusts expectations based on both audience size and career stage.

This adjustment ensures fairness: a Developing artist with a smaller but loyal fan base may score higher than a Superstar with millions of followers if their engagement rate is stronger relative to their tier. It’s a measure of true fan activity, not just audience reach.

Example: Artist A, a Superstar, generates millions of impressions but lower-than-expected engagement for their level, placing them in a lower percentile. Artist B, a Developing artist, drives consistent and passionate engagement from a small fan base, earning a higher score for their career stage.

City Affinity Scores

City Affinity identifies locations where an artist’s audience is disproportionately concentrated compared to city population and average artist distribution. This helps highlight genuine geographic fan hotspots.

For example, if Artist A has 1 million followers with 100K in London (10%), but the average artist only has 5% there, Artist A shows a 2x affinity for London. This signals a uniquely strong local presence that may influence touring, promotion, or partnerships.

Brand Affinity Scores

Brand Affinity measures the overlap between an artist’s audience and specific brands. This includes followers, hashtags, mentions, and location tags. The metric is relative, meaning it adjusts for both the artist’s reach and the brand’s size.

This reveals which brands an artist’s audience connects with most strongly. For example, if Artist B’s fans engage with a sportswear brand at double the expected rate compared to other artists, that indicates a powerful brand alignment opportunity.

Mood Tags

Mood tags reflect how listeners themselves define and experience music. They are derived from user-generated content such as the way fans name and describe playlists, the comments they leave on songs, and the other tracks that appear alongside them. By analyzing these organic signals, Chartmetric identifies consistent emotional descriptors—like dreamy, ambient, or ethereal—that capture how audiences perceive a track or even an artist’s overall mood profile.

Example: Artist A’s track might be tagged as Dreamy because it frequently appears in playlists called Floating in Space and Ethereal Female Vocals, with fans commenting that it feels otherworldly. Meanwhile, Artist B’s track could receive the Ambient tag as it shows up in playlists like Groove Salad and Chillout Downtempo, with listeners describing it as atmospheric.

Genre Tags

Genre tags classify artists and tracks by analyzing their context across playlists, connections to other artists, and community or manual tagging. A key signal is playlist co-occurrence: if an artist frequently appears alongside acts consistently tied to a genre like “Electronic” or “Ambient,” that strengthens the association. Likewise, when tracks appear in playlists curated around a genre—such as electroNOW or Peaceful Ambient—the system reinforces those links. These signals are validated by Chartmetric’s tagging team and the user community, ensuring accuracy and relevance.

Example: Artist A might be tagged as Electronic because they share playlists with Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers, and appear in hundreds of electronic-focused playlists. Artist B might carry the Ambient tag due to consistent overlaps with Brian Eno and Boards of Canada, and frequent appearances in playlists like Music for Airports and Atmospheric Calm.

How to Access These Metrics

These metrics can be accessed through a variety of tools and programs depending on your needs. Platforms like Musicstats.com make many of these insights easy to explore in a simple and user-friendly way, while Onesheet.club leverages Chartmetric data to help artists and their teams create professional, data-driven press kits and marketing materials.

For businesses that need direct integration, Chartmetric offers an API plan that allows you to pull data into your own applications and workflows, while our Data Share plan is designed for enterprise-scale access to the dataset. Finally, for those who want to go beyond standard reporting, Chartmetric also provides a Custom Dashboard offering, which make it possible to design unique views and create new metrics tailored to your specific business objectives.