Can you predict the 10 biggest releases of the week by stream-counts? If so, a new site called Stream League may be right up your street – although it could also puncture your hit-spotting confidence.
Launched by Kieron Donoghue – previously of ShareMyPlaylists, WMG and Humble Angel Records – it’s pitched as “a free weekly fantasy draft for music industry professionals”.
Every Friday, the site publishes the latest tracks to appear on Spotify’s ‘New Music Friday’ playlist and asks players to pick (or ‘draft’) the 10 that they think will get the most streams over the following week.
Stream League then tracks those streams – on Spotify only for now – and shows a league table of the best pickers.
This isn’t just for fun and giggles. Donoghue hopes Stream League will become a valuable “dataset on industry consensus and dissent around new music”, with plans to publish a weekly ‘The Numbers’ report analysing that data.
For example, in the week of 15-21 May, four of the 10 most-streamed new tracks were not drafted by any of the players in Stream League’s beta test.
“There are tracks the industry collectively bets on that go nowhere, and tracks almost no one picks that explode,” said Donoghue. “Over time, the data will show us who in the industry has the sharpest ears, and where collective taste diverges from what audiences actually stream.”
It’s very early days (disclosure: I’m fifth in the current midweek table, although that’s out of 14 beta testers, so I’m not going to boast too much) but this morning sees Stream League emerge from stealth mode, keen to sign up A&R, marketing, editorial and management professionals from the music industry.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source musically.com ’
