Before the days of social media the term “vanity metric” didn’t really get much of a mention. For those who still aren’t familiar with the term, in colloquial terms it means numbers that make you feel special but really mean very little in terms of significant outcome.
Insta-micro-gram
On Instagram the old like really carries little weight when someone can just double tap a post as they doom-scroll their feed. If someone leaves a thoughtful comment, that means you’ve had a bit more meaningful engagement and if you see you followers rise after a post (and they don’t disappear in 7 days) then you might have just won some real fans.
Streaming Vanity Metrics
Unfortunately, streaming services and the availability of more data than any musician has ever seen about how people interact with their music has lead to a fixation about number of streams. Yes a stream equals a fraction of a cent/penny but that doesn’t seem to be the main focus when it comes to this number rising. Just racking up big numbers is what I’ve seen a lot of artists and bands focus on.
On the one hand this can be great if it triggers the new release algorithm to playlist your track. But when you have someone paying $50 for playlisting or streams (less common these days) that sounds a bit like the old pay-to-play or radio payola model.
Spotify’s Failing Business Model
Truth be told you are actually playing into the streaming services game, particularly Spotify. If you are interested you should check out this analysis of Spotify’s failing business model built on releasing music more frequently to encourage artists to rack up streams. It’s 19 mins long but it helps you really understand the lay of the land. You can skip to 18 mins in to head the bit about the streams in particular. Streams isn’t only a vanity metric, it represents a short term unsustainable approach to authentic music making.
The Takeaway: If you’re going to focus on metrics, focus on ones that matters. Followers on Spotify, Instagram etc are someone saying, I want to hear more from you. That’s a good start. Those are the types of people you want to get in front of. Maybe even see if you can get them onto that old school email list which you will still control when Spotify runs out of runway.
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