The advent of Spotify has birthed an entirely new economy of music-tracking tools.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with things like Chartmetric, Vibrate, and Musicstax.
Each of these platforms (and countless others not listed here) have one thing in common: they’re built on top of Spotify’s public-facing API.
Spotify’s API is full of useful data to help us understand our development as artists on the platform.
The trick is accessing it and organizing it in a useful manner.
Sure, we can always visit Spotify’s developer panel and find all this stuff for free there, but that interface is not designed for quick consumption.
For repeated usage, it just takes too long to navigate, which is why the aforementioned platforms exist in the first place.
But the hangup with most of the existing tools out there is that they’re either difficult to navigate, or they cost an arm and a leg to use every month because they’re so packed with a bloat of information most of us just don’t need.
Because there hasn’t been an “ideal” solution in the marketplace for my personal use case (and our use as a music marketing company with DuPree X), I teamed up with a friend of mine who knows a whole lot more about coding than I do, and we built our own.
But before we get into exactly what it is we made, let’s talk about why we made it in the first place.
Popularity scores
As an artist myself, most of the data I need access to on a daily basis resides inside Spotify for Artists.
In my opinion, Spotify has generally done a bang-up job of providing insightful data to artists through its “for Artists” platform.
Certainly better than the competition.
But there is one critical piece of information that has persistently failed to appear inside Spotify for Artists: popularity scores.
Now, why Spotify has chosen to leave this out of Spotify for Artists is anyone’s guess, but because a song’s and an artist’s popularity scores are key indicators of success on the platform, I like to stay up to date on this bit of data.
I don’t necessarily need it for every song in my catalog, but a quick, heads-up view of my artist popularity score and the scores of my top ten tracks is perfect.
We built a tool to showcase this very thing.
The Artist X-Ray
Because I’m checking popularity scores every single day for my own catalog and for every artist we serve with DuPree X, I wanted to build a tool that scratched my own itch.
Enter: The Artist X-Ray:
The X-Ray is an exceedingly simple tool that solves one problem, quickly and efficiently: finding the popularity scores for an artist and their top ten tracks.
It’s a clean interface with a single search field.
All you need to do is type in the name of the artist you’re looking for and you’re met with an organized display of every data point you need and nothing else you don’t.
We made it to be simple on purpose. By removing the bloat, we believe this tool solves a highly specific problem without all the extras we don’t personally use or need.
Keeping it light also allows us to keep it free, something we believe is important in our mission to serve independent artists just like us.
How we use it
Inside the agency arm of DuPree X, we keep a navigable database of every artist we’re currently serving, and inside every artist’s set of information, we keep a link to their Spotify for Artists account as well as their profile inside the Artist X-Ray.
This allows us to watch new releases climb the ranks through an artist’s popular tracks, helps us to see follower growth in real-time even before Spotify for Artists updates for the day, and helps us to gauge the efficacy of our ad campaigns so we can be sure what we’re doing is having a material impact on an artist’s growth on Spotify.
By taking the data inside Spotify for Artists and cross-referencing it with what we have inside the X-Ray, we now have access to a more complete picture of artist development on Spotify.
We do this for our clients.
I do this for myself.
And now, because this tool is completely free, you can do it too.
Enjoy.
Note: If you’re enjoying using the Artist X-Ray but see opportunities for improvement, please reply to this email and let me know what you might like to see adjusted. We’re keeping a log of user notes and requests and just might make some adjustments based on your feedback if we think it will improve the platform.
The advent of Spotify has birthed an entirely new economy of music-tracking tools.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with things like Chartmetric, Vibrate, and Musicstax.
Each of these platforms (and countless others not listed here) have one thing in common: they’re built on top of Spotify’s public-facing API.
Spotify’s API is full of useful data to help us understand our development as artists on the platform.
The trick is accessing it and organizing it in a useful manner.
Sure, we can always visit Spotify’s developer panel and find all this stuff for free there, but that interface is not designed for quick consumption.
For repeated usage, it just takes too long to navigate, which is why the aforementioned platforms exist in the first place.
But the hangup with most of the existing tools out there is that they’re either difficult to navigate, or they cost an arm and a leg to use every month because they’re so packed with a bloat of information most of us just don’t need.
Because there hasn’t been an “ideal” solution in the marketplace for my personal use case (and our use as a music marketing company with DuPree X), I teamed up with a friend of mine who knows a whole lot more about coding than I do, and we built our own.
But before we get into exactly what it is we made, let’s talk about why we made it in the first place.
Popularity scores
As an artist myself, most of the data I need access to on a daily basis resides inside Spotify for Artists.
In my opinion, Spotify has generally done a bang-up job of providing insightful data to artists through its “for Artists” platform.
Certainly better than the competition.
But there is one critical piece of information that has persistently failed to appear inside Spotify for Artists: popularity scores.
Now, why Spotify has chosen to leave this out of Spotify for Artists is anyone’s guess, but because a song’s and an artist’s popularity scores are key indicators of success on the platform, I like to stay up to date on this bit of data.
I don’t necessarily need it for every song in my catalog, but a quick, heads-up view of my artist popularity score and the scores of my top ten tracks is perfect.
We built a tool to showcase this very thing.
The Artist X-Ray
Because I’m checking popularity scores every single day for my own catalog and for every artist we serve with DuPree X, I wanted to build a tool that scratched my own itch.
Enter: The Artist X-Ray:
The X-Ray is an exceedingly simple tool that solves one problem, quickly and efficiently: finding the popularity scores for an artist and their top ten tracks.
It’s a clean interface with a single search field.
All you need to do is type in the name of the artist you’re looking for and you’re met with an organized display of every data point you need and nothing else you don’t.
We made it to be simple on purpose. By removing the bloat, we believe this tool solves a highly specific problem without all the extras we don’t personally use or need.
Keeping it light also allows us to keep it free, something we believe is important in our mission to serve independent artists just like us.
How we use it
Inside the agency arm of DuPree X, we keep a navigable database of every artist we’re currently serving, and inside every artist’s set of information, we keep a link to their Spotify for Artists account as well as their profile inside the Artist X-Ray.
This allows us to watch new releases climb the ranks through an artist’s popular tracks, helps us to see follower growth in real-time even before Spotify for Artists updates for the day, and helps us to gauge the efficacy of our ad campaigns so we can be sure what we’re doing is having a material impact on an artist’s growth on Spotify.
By taking the data inside Spotify for Artists and cross-referencing it with what we have inside the X-Ray, we now have access to a more complete picture of artist development on Spotify.
We do this for our clients.
I do this for myself.
And now, because this tool is completely free, you can do it too.
Enjoy.
Note: If you’re enjoying using the Artist X-Ray but see opportunities for improvement, please reply to this email and let me know what you might like to see adjusted. We’re keeping a log of user notes and requests and just might make some adjustments based on your feedback if we think it will improve the platform.
The advent of Spotify has birthed an entirely new economy of music-tracking tools.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with things like Chartmetric, Vibrate, and Musicstax.
Each of these platforms (and countless others not listed here) have one thing in common: they’re built on top of Spotify’s public-facing API.
Spotify’s API is full of useful data to help us understand our development as artists on the platform.
The trick is accessing it and organizing it in a useful manner.
Sure, we can always visit Spotify’s developer panel and find all this stuff for free there, but that interface is not designed for quick consumption.
For repeated usage, it just takes too long to navigate, which is why the aforementioned platforms exist in the first place.
But the hangup with most of the existing tools out there is that they’re either difficult to navigate, or they cost an arm and a leg to use every month because they’re so packed with a bloat of information most of us just don’t need.
Because there hasn’t been an “ideal” solution in the marketplace for my personal use case (and our use as a music marketing company with DuPree X), I teamed up with a friend of mine who knows a whole lot more about coding than I do, and we built our own.
But before we get into exactly what it is we made, let’s talk about why we made it in the first place.
Popularity scores
As an artist myself, most of the data I need access to on a daily basis resides inside Spotify for Artists.
In my opinion, Spotify has generally done a bang-up job of providing insightful data to artists through its “for Artists” platform.
Certainly better than the competition.
But there is one critical piece of information that has persistently failed to appear inside Spotify for Artists: popularity scores.
Now, why Spotify has chosen to leave this out of Spotify for Artists is anyone’s guess, but because a song’s and an artist’s popularity scores are key indicators of success on the platform, I like to stay up to date on this bit of data.
I don’t necessarily need it for every song in my catalog, but a quick, heads-up view of my artist popularity score and the scores of my top ten tracks is perfect.
We built a tool to showcase this very thing.
The Artist X-Ray
Because I’m checking popularity scores every single day for my own catalog and for every artist we serve with DuPree X, I wanted to build a tool that scratched my own itch.
Enter: The Artist X-Ray:
The X-Ray is an exceedingly simple tool that solves one problem, quickly and efficiently: finding the popularity scores for an artist and their top ten tracks.
It’s a clean interface with a single search field.
All you need to do is type in the name of the artist you’re looking for and you’re met with an organized display of every data point you need and nothing else you don’t.
We made it to be simple on purpose. By removing the bloat, we believe this tool solves a highly specific problem without all the extras we don’t personally use or need.
Keeping it light also allows us to keep it free, something we believe is important in our mission to serve independent artists just like us.
How we use it
Inside the agency arm of DuPree X, we keep a navigable database of every artist we’re currently serving, and inside every artist’s set of information, we keep a link to their Spotify for Artists account as well as their profile inside the Artist X-Ray.
This allows us to watch new releases climb the ranks through an artist’s popular tracks, helps us to see follower growth in real-time even before Spotify for Artists updates for the day, and helps us to gauge the efficacy of our ad campaigns so we can be sure what we’re doing is having a material impact on an artist’s growth on Spotify.
By taking the data inside Spotify for Artists and cross-referencing it with what we have inside the X-Ray, we now have access to a more complete picture of artist development on Spotify.
We do this for our clients.
I do this for myself.
And now, because this tool is completely free, you can do it too.
Enjoy.
Note: If you’re enjoying using the Artist X-Ray but see opportunities for improvement, please reply to this email and let me know what you might like to see adjusted. We’re keeping a log of user notes and requests and just might make some adjustments based on your feedback if we think it will improve the platform.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.
Whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you:
Subscribe to the Newsletter: Join our growing network of artists, creators, and entrepreneurs by receiving The One Thing directly to your inbox every week.
Book a Consultation: Schedule a one-on-one call with me to improve your marketing across paid advertising, social media, and more.
The Spotify Traffic Accelerator: Join the hundreds of artists who have successfully learned to automate their growth on Spotify using paid ads on Instagram.
Become a DuPree X Artist: Hire our team to manage your marketing across streaming platforms and social media so you can focus on what matters most—making music.