Apple Music have made some changes to the platform. They’ve added a Listening Now feature which includes real-time music analytics. Showing an artist how many listeners are currently streaming their track.
Listening Now is a new insightful feature that’s been added to Apple Music. It will benefit music artists as it will show them how many people are currently listening to their tracks. This will help them know where they’re potentially missing out.
Less listeners means more marketing needed. This could give many artists the boost they need to keep promoting their work. After all, it’s easy to promote music, and allow the hype to die off once the track has been released. It won’t however share itself.
The feature will display as a widget within the Apple Music dashboard. You’ll need to select the widget to get a detailed overview of the past 48 hours. You can also get a snapshot of your top six played songs over time.
The section Maximum Listeners is there to show the most listeners you’ve had at any one time. This is again over a 48-hour period. It will benefit music artists to track this information. Again, seeing where they’re going wrong with marketing their music.
However, the one issue is, not all artists will be able to access this information. You will need to meet a minimum threshold first. Any artists that dip under will then not see figures reported for that time period. This is something to be aware of.
These features are hopefully the first of many. Their rivals at Spotify are known for their artist features. Likewise, Tidal have recently updated their service to benefit independent artists. All streaming stores can and should do better to support musicians.
