Why Some Artists Go Global (and Others Don't)

0:04Dan Runcie: I'm Dan Runcie. Welcome to Trapital, where we are continuing our Trapital Summit series, and you're about to hear a conversation with the CEO and founder of Chartmetric, Sung Cho. He and I talked about two things on stage. The first is a brand new report from Chartmetric called The New Sound of Global Music, where Chartmetric's team dug into the global landscape for five different countries, Mexico, Nigeria, India, Japan, and Brazil, and talked about some of the unique dynamics there, what's happening from a global superstar perspective, and how each of the listening habits are quite different in these countries.

0:42Dan Runcie: I don't want to spoil anything. There's some really interesting insights there. So that was the first thing we talked about. The second thing we talked about is a new AI product that Chartmetric just launched called Flow. Flow is your agent that works directly with you to answer some of the more nuanced questions that you may have about the data as it relates to the artists that you may work with, the talent, and that can help anyone that works at a record label, a management company, a publishing company, and more. Sharp Metric is a widely used tool across the industry at a wide number of companies, and Flow was built directly to help enhance the product and take it to the next level.

1:20Dan Runcie: So you'll hear a few use cases about that as well. Thank you again to Chartmetric for your support with this year's Trapital Summit. Here's my conversation with Sung. This episode of Trapital is presented by Chartmetric, which recently launched its new AI agent, Flow. One thing I run into all the time with data, especially in entertainment, is that I know the question I want to answer, but getting there can take some time. Maybe I want to know which markets are overperforming for a particular artist, what's more causal versus correlated, and more. And that's what Sharp Metric is now solving with Flow.

1:57Dan Runcie: You could ask those nuanced, multi-layered questions directly, in plain English, and Flow works through Sharp Metric music data to give you the analysis instead of making you hunt through a bunch of different dashboards. Sung Cho showed me Flow, and we discussed it on stage at the Trapital Summit, And the most interesting part is how much easier it makes you going from asking the question to an actual decision that can improve your business. If you work in music, try it out. Check out the link in our bio.

2:26Sung Cho: I appreciate you joining us today. I appreciate it. Yeah, it was such a great venue. What a great venue.

2:31Dan Runcie: Oh, thank you. Well, we appreciate that. And as you know, we also thank you for this report that we're going to talk about today. The new sound of global music where they dug into five markets and five distinct paths across borders. And after we talk about some of those highlights, we'll also talk a bit about a new AI tool that you all recently launched for the company as well. Let's get into the report. When you and the team were putting this together, what was the biggest aha moment? Something that you all learned that you didn't think was the case when we talk about the new sound for global music?

3:03Dan Runcie: Two things.

3:04Sung Cho: One is the ripple effect. So if one artist goes truly global, then a lot of other artists follow. So we all remember, you know, Luis Fonsi, when that moment Despacito happened, Puerto Rican artists, lots and lots of Puerto Rican artists, and they became huge, really huge. After that, now Mexican artists followed afterwards. So that is a great lesson. So how you can capitalize, you know, when that happens. But number two, also how difficult it is to stick. when that huge wave happens and you want this trend to compound more and more of your country's artists going global in more countries. But it turns out that it's very, very difficult to make it happen because it's extremely competitive.

3:57Sung Cho: Everyone is fighting for the global audience. And now, as Dan mentioned earlier, these Gen Z generations, They're, you know, like watching short form videos all the time and different type of music goes vital all the time. So their attention like really goes around in all kinds of different music. So it makes it, you know, makes the music industry more fun and dynamic. But for people working hard day and night to make it happen, it's that much challenging.

4:31Dan Runcie: And when you put out reports like this, of course, you have the data itself and what it tells you. But because a lot of it is prescriptive with what's happening in Mexico, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Japan, those are the five countries. There's also country-specific context, I'm sure, that is helpful. So how much qualitative data do you have to complement that, whether that's research or insights directly from the field beyond just what the analytics may say?

4:58Sung Cho: So, yeah, first of all, we focus on the numbers first. but always what we try in in this report as well always try to go like a behind the scene uh when we see the brazilian artists uh from like the anita success and when that happened and we try to see hey in how many other countries did brazilian artists uh chart so we analyzed the last three years of Spotify week by week regional charts around like 100 plus countries that we are tracking every day and try to see if something happens, then one thing happens in Brazil. Does it translate to Colombia, Venezuela, or does it translate from Mexico to those countries?

5:54Sung Cho: Or do they stay inside Portuguese-speaking markets only? Or do they translate into Spanish-speaking markets as well? So we look at each and every artist and really go down. Also talk about the musical style, the genre. The genre resemblance and Corrido Tumbados. When that became so popular, is it so unique to Corridos? and Corridos Tumbaros, is that that's only? Or does it also inspire, that musical genre inspire other type of music and how the audience interests are changing over time?

6:36Dan Runcie: If you don't mind, can I share my favorite takeaway from the report? Please. You had a big focus on the report in terms of superstars themselves. Right. And with Brazil specifically, it seems as if the Brazilian superstars are much more likely to have fans that are in Brazil themselves who are making them superstars. The superstars in Nigeria, it's the exact opposite. Where the fans they have are superstars from other countries. And I'm still trying to unpack that. Was that something that you all expected to see

7:05Sung Cho: or have you been seeing that in the data? Exactly. Yeah, thank you so much. So that was a surprise to me as well. Nowadays, people discover new music so easily. And on TikTok, those music go vital. And we all know, calm down. You know, that music, every single person, you know, on this globe probably heard that music at least once. Great music, great song, Afrobeat, really true to that nature. But that one success happened. It happens that Nigeria in that like local country, that GDP or the support for the artists, that was only 3%. Nigerian artists, when they go global, their audience, like 97%, is outside of Nigeria.

7:51Sung Cho: Of course, these include some other African countries, including South Africa. But still, it goes to Luxembourg, you know, many European countries. This is a result of diaspora around the world and how that culture is just so global. Compared to the Latin music, of course, Latin diaspora is huge. But when it comes to going through that barrier of Latin-speaking, Portuguese, Spanish-speaking audience, in that case, Nigerian music, of course, this is an English-speaking country, first of all. So all the songs are in English. And then after that, Taira, that water that came out and another billion streams, also, of course, in English and more like pop-style music.

8:38Dan Runcie: I was also curious, particularly to talk about Nigeria more, the means of consumption in different countries also plays a factor because I do know that in Nigeria specifically, downloads is still a very common way that people are consuming music as opposed to maybe a country like Brazil, where the DSPs that many of us know have such higher penetration and distribution there. So is there any data that is happening where people still are listening to those superstars that are from Nigeria and in Nigeria, but maybe the streaming data just may not capture it because streaming isn't the one-stop shop the way that it might be in Brazil, for instance?

9:22Sung Cho: Yeah, 100%. That's such a great insight. as we tend to measure what's happening in digital streaming world. Only we have much less coverage when it comes to physical albums and CD sales. If we complement with those data, I think it will really show the true aspect of what's happening.

9:42Dan Runcie: And I think, too, I assume that a big piece of your role is also being able to separate correlation versus causation, right?

9:50Sung Cho: Yes. So something happens in one platform first, and then that goes, ripples into other platforms. As a result, you know, this happened. So if you look closely, you can really find out what happened first versus later. But still, I would say it's quite challenging because it's happening so fast. When the song goes viral, the TikTok, the challenge when something goes viral instantly, Spotify machine or Apple Music machine, Deezer machine, All of these machines are closely monitoring what's happening there, vice versa, when something goes viral on Amazon Music and vice versa. And then the radio stations follow quite soon after.

10:32Sung Cho: It's still hard to say what happened first versus later. But in the end, this is where AI could also make mistakes. As humans, we have our own sort of intuition and we have those information. AI has that as well, but sometimes, you know, AIs tend to be too aggressive with reasoning and inferring. So it can sometimes make mistakes. Luckily, our users are so smart. So good thing is all of these questions happening in chartmetric platform, we have built our own evaluation system to, you know, not necessarily check whether that is the fact is true or not. we don't worry about hallucinations. We don't have to worry about hallucinations anymore.

11:20Sung Cho: Two years ago, it was all about hallucinations, but rarely happens with the numbers. So the engine is good, but these kinds of basic mistakes, when it happens, then our users point them out. Then when that happens, we have automatic detection system that, whoa, this user is suspicious about this info. Go double check. And then our engineers also come in to check those arguments. So we are constantly improving this way.

11:50Dan Runcie: And this also sounds similar to the tool that you all recently launched, this product called Flow, which allows users to speak conversationally with the data that they are pulling from your platform. So can you tell us what that allows the people that are subscribed to the product to do now that they may not have been able to do before?

12:11Sung Cho: So we began developing flow. It was more than two years ago when we first started the project. Soon after ChatGPT came out, we saw the possibility, the new possibility. But the brain, the engine itself was not so great back then, especially when it comes to number interpretations. Too many hallucinations. But still, we tried. We tried to improve that quality by improving our prompt and, you know, giving different instructions. But over time, it became so good, so brilliant, so smart that we now are quite happy with this quality. When you go to Flow, what's different about this new experience is, of course, chart metric dashboard experience is not going away.

13:02Sung Cho: there's this absolute value that you can find those numbers you know you know where to find those numbers and how to compare across different artists and different territories so that's a big value but if you want to compile a report for example you know yesterday i asked this question to flow hey i'm planning a tour for shakira in 20 cities cities next year in five continents Give me those recommendations of 20 cities and supporting artists. Which artists should I invite to those cities? And if you went to those tours and concerts, you remember how some of these supporting artists are so random out of different genres.

13:46Sung Cho: So you don't actually enjoy discovering these artists. Using chart metrics and flow especially, you don't have to dig in all of these numbers. And it takes hours and hours, even with the best tools in the world, But still, for an analyst, tour planning is one of the most time-consuming things. And our users ask these kinds of questions a lot nowadays to flow that they were not getting the right answers before. But now, since it's much more, the answer is much more comprehensive, it's easier than ever to get answers, you know, these kinds of answers. And you can also ask one more for each and in every city, which brands should we collaborate?

14:29Sung Cho: And of course, we know all these collaborations and brand affinity. So it will give also those information.

14:37Dan Runcie: And let's take that example. So you're planning a tour for Shakira. Yes. When you have an output like that, do you then spot check that with CAA or with a promoter to say, hey, how closely does this line up with the work that you all do? And the reason I ask that is because streams can give you some information, but it can be hard to look at that and know who's going to sell out in Milwaukee, who's going to sell out Madison Square Garden for three nights.

15:02Sung Cho: Super valid, super valid. And these kinds of precious insights live only in that organization many times. Ticketmaster, CAA, these agencies and promoters, only they have those precious golden data. And we don't intend to infiltrate and take out those data. So I think in the end, those like smart companies and smart people and analysts there, they just work together with chart matching and get the data they want. But I wouldn't say I wouldn't say that people simply should follow whatever, you know, AI tells you to do. That should not be the case. Still, getting feedback from the people. Absolutely.

15:48Sung Cho: Absolutely.

15:49Dan Runcie: The right way to do. If we zoom out and assuming that every person or company that is your client base, if everyone has the access to these tools, I know a lot of them use Chartmetric today to get their advantage and to be able to grow their business. What do you think their advantage then becomes if everyone has access to these tools?

16:09Sung Cho: Yeah, such a great question. First of all, those people who are using Charkmetric versus not using Charkmetric, I want to say that at least, you know, those people are using Charkmetric and have the advantage. But among themselves, you know, what kind of other advantages can you have? A lot of these data insights and other insights you can get. But what makes a difference in the end is the execution. So a lot of people still get insights, but people don't necessarily execute those plans well. that's what our humans we humans are much better at making it happen and bringing the excitement from people that's something i haven't seen really you know ai is being really good at creating those kinds of excitements yet so something unique to us still so where should people go if they want to learn more about flow or about it's on chartpatrick.com and you can find the reports section thank you thank you again sun show

17:11Dan Runcie: Thank you again to Sun Cho and for Chartmetric for their support at this year's summit. Thank you again to Sean T. Smith for capturing the audio and video at this year's Trapital Summit. Thank you to G, Eric, and Abigail on our team for everything they did to help make this episode possible. And thank you for listening. If there's one person you know that would really enjoy Trapital and get a lot out of it, send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow. Please leave a comment, leave a review. Make sure you're subscribed to the show to get the next episode. All of that helps make sure that you get the next episode and that Trapital reaches the right people.

17:46Dan Runcie: Thanks again. Talk to you next time.