**Guest post written by James Hill, a veteran of the music industry. He has worked at Warner Reprise Records and then Interscope/ Geffen Records and now helps indie artists with branding and manufacturing through his company Unified Manufacturing, a CD/DVD, custom vinyl records and merch company in LA.

 

"If you’ve read our previous article on getting to really know your fans, we’ve quickly talked about the benefits of utilizing analytic tools. Now, we’ve got you a whole article dedicated to it.

So aside from talking and interacting with your fans, you can also try using quantitative data from different analytical tools.

You might get overwhelmed with all of it, especially if you hate numbers. But I tell you, they’re worth investing a few minutes of your time. Plus, they’re actually not that hard.

In this article, we will mainly be talking about the different tools you can use to analyze your fans and how they are important.

Let’s start!

#1. SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

Of course, first of the many analytical tools you can use are those provided by your favorite social media platforms.

For both Facebook and Instagram, Meta has provided their users Page Insights Tool where they can check the engagement of each post and page as well as their followers’ most active time.

Unlike the former platforms, a tweet’s analytics is easier to see. And even if you don’t have Twitter for Professionals, you get to use their analytics tools.

To see your tweet’s analytics, all you have to do is choose a tweet and click “View Tweet Analytics”.

Then you get to see the number of engagements, the number of times the tweet was expanded, the number of times your profile was visited because of the tweet and the number of followers you got from that tweet you made.

These analytical tools are very helpful and are in no way harmful to your pocket. They’re free for any user who wants to see their social media growth so take advantage of it.

Related Article:

Music Marketing: How To Do Social Media In 2023

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#2. YOUTUBE ANALYTICS

Yes, YouTube is a social media platform, however, it’s got its very own spot on the list since contents shared here are mostly videos.

These videos may be short or lengthy and that depends on the channel owner.

For channel owners, like musicians, the platform has a separate YouTube studio where you can upload, edit, and organize your videos.

It also has a channel analytics tool which allows you to see your channel’s views, watch time, and subscribers in real time.

And if you go to the “Audience” tab you’ll be provided with data about your audience. There you will find the top subtitles or closed captioning languages that your viewers use.

This will greatly help you in catering to your fans since having subtitles is one of the best ways you make them feel important and acknowledged.

You’ll also get to see the age and gender of your viewers and even the top countries that contribute to your channel’s views, though the data might be a little inaccurate given that some users give false details and use VPNs.

You can also get to know the other channels your viewers visit as well as videos they recently viewed, which will all help you decide on the content to put out.
+How to Grow YouTube Viewership and Monetize Opportunities

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#3. MUSIC STREAMING SITE ANALYTICS

Music streaming sites have become a big thing in the music industry. It’s the easiest way for a fan to listen to their song so you better have your discography distributed there.

Another cool thing about these streaming sites is the fact that they also provide analytical tools for musicians like you. It’s a tool that helps you track how your songs are performing even after much time.

But aside from that, the data provided by their analytical tools can also help you analyze your fans. You see, you get to know what songs you’ve released have been streamed by your fans a lot. It’ll help you know the types of songs they’d want from you.

For Spotify, they have listener and followers data while Apple Music has listener trends.

Related Article:

How To Get Playlisted On Spotify

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#4. E-COMMERCE STORE ANALYTICS

Aside from analyzing your fans through social media engagements and online streaming site plays, you can also try analyzing them through their purchases of your merchandise.

Aside from it giving you your paying-fans’ demographics, it will help you see what type of merchandise most of your fans are buying and viewing.

With Brand Analytics from Amazon, you can also get reports on the popular keywords as well as competitor comparisons.

The analytics tool for Shopify, on the other hand, allows you to see where your store visitors are coming from by social media source.

This is a great way to know what social media platforms they’ve seen your posts from and decided to visit your online store.
+How To Create a Perfect Page to Sell Music on Your Website

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#5. DISTRIBUTOR’S DASHBOARD

If you’ve got yourself a distributor then this is another way you can get data for your fan analysis.

Since you will likely have an account created on your distributor’s website, you can try logging in and look for their analytics tool.

Much like the online streaming sites above, they give data on your music listeners demographics and your music streams and downloads.

Related Article:

Indie Musicians: How To Find A Distributor

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#6. WEBSITE BUILDER ANALYTICS

You can also try looking at the analytics report of your website, which will be provided by your website builder’s analytics tool. If you haven’t got a website yet, then I suggest you get to it.

It’ll be a really helpful tool to introduce yourself to your fans. Also it’ll be good to have everything, from your merch store, tour dates, to social media accounts, consolidated here.

An example of a website builder is Wix. What’s great about Wix Analytics is that it doesn’t only give you reports on your website’s traffic and visitor behavior, it also provides you with recommendations you can follow to improve your website.
+Bandzoogle - Band Websites That Work

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#7. CHARTMETRIC

If you feel like checking the analytics of your different social media accounts as well as online streaming profiles is too much of a hassle, then you might want to try using Chartmetric.

It might give you a different result though since the above-mentioned analytics tools only give you data about your account.

With this music analytics tool, data about anything related to you and your music are obtained from different social media platforms and streaming sites, then provide an analysis report.

On top of this, the tool also provides the overall prediction of the music industry’s direction which can help you decide on where to steer your career.
+Unveiling the Fan Journey From Discovery to Advocacy

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#8. SOUNDCHARTS

If you want to get insights on your radio airplay then you might want to use Soundcharts.

It’s a music analytics tool that is so much like Chartmetric, one of its differences from it is the fact that it also monitors radio airplay.

Moreover, you can compare your performance with other artists and even find out what’s more popular in realtime.

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#9. AWARIO

Much like the two mentioned above, this analytics tool also gathers data from different social media platforms and online streaming sites.

What separates it from the others is that it gives you the general insight on what is being explored and mentioned about you.

So if you’re wondering what are the things people mostly talk about when they talk about you or your music, you can try using Awario. This and the other two previously mentioned are not for free, though, so it’s up to you if you’re willing to spend money for it.
+It's All About Your Fans and Not You

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#10. GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Lastly, we have google analytics.

This is obviously a widely used analytics tool, however, you might not have your own account yet. If you’re planning on using this, then be sure to create one.

To use this analytics tool, you will be utilizing a Google Analytics Tracking ID. The tracking ID would be that path for your traffic data to reach your Google Analytics property where insights are given.

You can use it for any website or app you want. What makes this great is that all the analytics data from everything you want tracked can be found in just one place.

No need to open every single website or app.

And that’s it!

I suggest you maximize the free analytics tools first as you get familiar with these tools.

If you feel like they helped you in some sort of way and you feel like they aren’t enough for you or they’re taking too much of your time, then that’s when you can try spending on paid analytics tools.

You might think “Nah, I don’t need it”, but here’s the thing: If you want to go far in your music career, you absolutely need it.

So chop chop."

 

 

Related Blog Posts:

+Your Three Communities

+Find Your Fans: Using Data to Analyze Your Audience

+Do You Know What Your Fans Really Want?