Apple Music provides data service for artists on sales and streams, boon to indie sector

Apple is giving the millions of musicians who have content on Apple Music and iTunes the chance to examine the listening and buying habits of their fans.

Overnight it launched Apple Music for Artists in beta as a dashboard.

The new platform offers data about the performance of their tracks on the streaming service as well as sales through iTunes, and how they’re trending as an act on these.

It currently offers the service only for a few thousand artists, but that will change when it opens fully in the next few months.

The service will be a boon especially to independent acts which do not have much access to such information, allowing them to operate on a more level playing field.

According to Billboard, the data is broken up in different ways, including by demographics, and geographical locations (from the 115 countries it operates in, including Australia) and timing (right down to the last 24 hours).

This means that the act can work out if their music is effectively reaching their target audience.

On tour it could target which country to focus on, and even change setlists to cater for the varying popularity of their singles and albums.

Billboard reported, “They may further examine the listener demographics per city, for example, calling up how many times females ages 16-24 in Los Angeles have listened to a particular song.”

Apparently Apple initially thought of adding financial data as well but figured that royalties would be too complex to calculate.

It also offers notifications for when the act’s plays or sales reach a milestone.

Apple Music for Artists initially launches as a website but there are apparently plans to provide a mobile version too.

Apple Music for Artists is the latest analytics-related service Apple has introduced or changed in the last six months.

In August, changes to the Publisher dashboard made it easier to understand the analytics being provided.

Last month, it debuted podcast analytics as an iTunes Connect beta.