SoundExchange, the performing rights organization that collects and distributes streaming royalties to labels and artists, has released three year-end top-10 and top-20 charts:
- Top Streamed Songs
- Top Streamed Artists
- Top Streamed Breakout Artists
The Breakout list is based on newness to royalty collection — specifically, qualifying recording artists can not have received SoundExchange royalty payments before September 1, 2013. As such, that list contains names outside of mainstream awareness. In other words, not Drake, Imagine Dragons, One Republic, Pearl Jam, Katy Perry, etc..
Even so, the top Breakout honoree has attained a large swath of fame: Sam Smith. Also in the top three are Jasmine Thompson and Magic!.
The lists represent streaming metrics reported by non-interactive services (e.g. Pandora) between September 1, 2013, and August 31, 2014.
Isn’t it an internet best practice to include links? It’s cool that these lists are out there, but if you’re going to talk about them and stoke my interest, shouldn’t you at least link back?
For anyone else that interested, these can be found here: http://www.soundexchange.com/tops-in-digital-streaming-music-2014/