Introducing: Daily Music Data
We’re excited to introduce Daily Music Data — a new Instagram series designed to keep you up to speed on the key numbers driving the future of the music business.
This project addresses a recurring challenge we’ve noticed in the music industry: The lack of a single, accessible, and easily searchable repository of actionable data on the music business.
Critical industry data remains fragmented across various sources, including trade publications, company reports, and independent research firms. The rapid evolution of the music industry, driven by technological change, makes it especially challenging to keep a centralized resource like this up-to-date and relevant.
Daily Music Data aims to solve this problem by building a curated collection of data-driven insights that are essential for understanding the modern music business. At Water & Music, we analyze a vast amount of industry data for our research, and have developed a unique ability to identify the most impactful and interesting findings – those that drive business decisions and generate new knowledge, rather than contributing to the noise.
Every weekday at ~9AM ET, we'll share a carefully curated data point vetted by the Water & Music team, along with our brief analysis on why we feel it’s essential for understanding the modern music industry.
If you're looking to stay ahead of the curve in music, data, and tech, with actionable, concise insights that you can digest in five minutes or less, this series is perfect for you.
How we curate data
When selecting data points for this series, as with the rest of our research at W&M, we take our job filtering the signal from the noise seriously.
We prioritize evergreen, relevant insights that are applicable across a vast swath of the music industry. To ensure a well-rounded perspective, we cover a wide range of topics each week, including rights & licensing, marketing & discovery, fandom & community, ethics & DEI, live events, emerging technology (AI, Web3, metaverse), and more.
We love signals like:
- Macro trends that can be directly tied to micro-level strategies and tactics
- Deal terms (licensing, partnerships, investments) that set new industry precedents
- Data that brings clarity to otherwise noisy or misunderstood markets, especially in relation to consumer behavior and music value chains
Conversely, we avoid data points that are biased, outdated, or not directly applicable to the music business. We draw from diverse data sources, such as surveys, third-party analyses, trade reports, and our own in-house research, to ensure that our insights are sourced fairly and not limited to a single viewpoint or methodology.
Exclusive benefits for members
While the Daily Music Data page on Instagram is free to the public, paying Water & Music members get exclusive access to even more in-depth information.
We batch-schedule our Daily Music Data content multiple days in advance, drawing inspiration from evergreen reports while leaving room to react to immediate industry developments.
Paid members receive a preview of our upcoming data schedule, complete with links to full sources — giving you a more comprehensive view of the data we believe truly matters.
We hope Daily Music Data becomes another invaluable tool in your arsenal as you continue to innovate and lead in the new music economy.
Follow Daily Music Data on Instagram, and consider becoming a Water & Music member to access the full breadth of our research and insights, across industry stats, market-leading companies, partnership deals, and more.
If you have feedback at any point — especially around corrections or tips for future posts — please reach out to us at research@waterandmusic.com.
Thank you so much for your support!