HI!!! Welcome to I’m bored AF day! Someone asked how Benny Boy music is doing, so I’m gonna deliver the answer the best I can. There are a couple of things that I need to address/explain beforehand. Firstly, I’m not a music industry expert whatsoever, so what you are about to see is mostly a comparison of the data and statistics I found. Put my thoughts aside when doing those, to avoid bias, did not influence the data in any way, shape or form. The other thing is, that the numbers I found and used might not be a true reflection, the statistics that Spotify offers publicly are bad and if you are not a featured artist most of the available ones are based on popularity, thus Benny Boy is usually not included. Now, as for every comparison or experiment we need one thing! A reference.I went to look for artists of similar following to Ben, who would also create in similar genres. And that was hard. Mostly because I’m not interested in this type of music and I would have to research the artist too. Fear not! I found a suitable candidate to compare to our boy. Alexa Demie and her song Leopard Limo. Unbiased business, no personal opinion of Alexa’s music here, the only concern is THE SIMILARITIES! ● Both Ben and Alexa had previous relationships with music. Neither of them were successful. Leopard Limo and 11:11 (and by extension the whole EP) are both released after a long time of waiting and are some sort of dream for their respective singers. I would assume that the reader is familiar with Ben's story, so I’m only gonna include Alexa’s explanation, taken from last year interview with Cultured Magazine; I was joking last night, “Why did God make me so multifaceted?” Because there’s just so much I want to do! I’m very precious with my music. I wrote a song in 2012 that I never put out, but it’s always been at the back of my head. I’ve made new songs and I’ve written new things, but I can’t fully move forward until this one is out. I played it for Taylor and she started crying. She encouraged me to finish the video, because I shot half of the video in 2017. And so we shot the other half, which she directed while she was here. I’ve been speaking to my healer about it, and she told me that my body was tricking me—it wasn’t letting me move forward until I released this. I make so many things and then I just hold on to them. I’ll hopefully have my full music project out next year. If no one likes it, Taylor likes it and it’s for Taylor. So, I’m fine with that! ● The both have a pre-established following from their acting projects, it is Shadow and Bone for Ben and Euphoria for Alexa. In majority, they are both obviously known for other things as well but the big following after they were part of successful series is the similarity I was looking for. ● They both have clearly prepared personalities or the image they show to people. It is also reflected in their music. Would go as far as to say that fans expected certain things from both of them based on the way they present themselves to the world. ● This one is harder to prove and kinda based on my opinion (sorry!) but both projects seem to be largely self funded and all that follows. ● !GIGGLES BREAK! Alexa also had some merch shilling with music release. It was/is way better than Ben’s (IMO), it was made to order and is currently sold out…. So you can do that??? !END OF BREAK! Now to the differences that might put my finds in jeopardy but need to include those: ● It’s hard (for me at least) to understand who is the recipient of Ben’s music. His target group. There is nothing that pinpoints it to other groups than his fans, nothing extraordinary. For Alexa, there is a lot of aesthetic involved that is consistent with her persona and can appeal to fans of her, however it also falls into the ‘indie girl’ aesthetic that goes beyond her established fanbase. ● Following from the previous point, Alexa’s music (might be a bit biased here though) is not for everyone, there is a strong tendency in dislikes for it based on the aesthetic merits, if I may say so. Ben’s genres seem more popular and generally liked. ● In terms of promoting the music, Alexa is not doing anything. There is also no follow up if her music will go further or is the one single all we are going to get. Ben, as we know, has a whole EP coming out soon, thus the promotion is in place. ● Leopard Limo was released on the 13th of September, 11:11 on September 17th. Technically Alexa’s song is up for a month (most streaming services use 28 day period as a month equivalent) so I can confidently use the listeners in a month for her, while I don’t trust this for Ben. ● There is another upsie, Euphoria is very last year or 2019s more likely. Ben still has the SAB popularity hanging and it’s showing. Ok. With that I think we can move onto what you all have been waiting for. The sacred numbers! 1. The simple Google trends search. Starting with Benny Boy! There are 3 obvious peaks. In January, when he was licking cones with Julianne, in April/May when Shadow and Bone premiered which is obviously the biggest event that happened, and then the very eye catching sharp triangular spike in mid to late August. It was his birthday and the initial announcement. As you can see the popularity decreased pretty quick and continues to do so. There was no additional interest after the song dropped. Now for the youtube search popularity. As far as I’m aware, it is not additional data, the yt numbers are included in the overall web search interest you have above. The graph below is yt searches only and to simplify its only the past 30 days. We have a nice spike here! So people were interested in his music. There was initially high interest on the 17th but it all went away quickly. Also I’m not gonna include the picture but the youtube search for his name was twice in popularity in SAB season. If you look for related topics and queries, it's easy to see that all are concerned over his Shadow and Bone character. I looked up other searches like Ben Barnes music or 11:11 and there was a spark on the 17th and then it was gone. Now for Miss Demie. I won’t explain the spikes because I don’t think it's important. There was a low tendency before but you can see the spike at the very end when she released the song on the 13th. As for the related topics/queries they also do not involve her music, most are centered around Euphoria and her character. But, unlike Ben, people also search for her age, height (she is very tiny ;c) and her costars. For more comparison, Ben's popularity is centered in the US, Canada and UK/Ireland, with lots of searches from other European regions as well. Alexa is predominantly popular in the US and Canada. For the youtube search, again yt only and the past 30 days. Looks so similar to Bens, right? Similar situation. Initial peak and then going low. I would however risk saying that her stats are seemingly more stable than Bens. Also when I looked up yt data for the past 12 months, the day of Leopard Limo premiere was her yearly peak. Now we will compare our two stars. We’ll see if I’m onto something! Can you guess who is who? Ben is in red, while Alexa is in blue. On average she got half the interest he got. The youtube statistics are almost the same. Ben was way more popular in the past 30 days. Would give credit to Alexa though, she kept similar interest while not doing any big promotion. 2. YouTube Video Views I actually clicked on the 11:11 music video for the first time now… Well here are the stats from yt. Pretty evident that Benny Boy is way more popular. 3. Spotify Statistics For Spotify it's weird. What I gathered is that statistics may vary depending on the device you use to check those, statistics provided to artists and to us lowly viewers are different. Also there is no in-depth explanation as to how those are gathered and calculated beside the 28 day period and 30 seconds rules. All I know is that the numbers are individual listens, meaning that technically they shouldn't count multiple repeated listens by individuals? Unclear. Also Ben’s monthly listeners and song streams are weird right? 200k with a million on a song? I tried to get to the bottom of this. Smells like average listeners number with some individuals streaming 11:11 on repeat. You know what I mean… OR some users got the song in daily mixes but never checked out other songs he is credited for…. Then I got to the bottom of the shit. And if you already know what is coming I would like to apologize because I’m stupid and it took me a while to fully understand. So… Monthly listeners are the unique ones meaning that it's the real count, those people who have streamed a song by Ben in the last 28 days, might have done it multiple times but that is not counted into Monthly stats as a separate entry. The stream's overall count, it's the one visible right next to the song title, it counts every stream as a separate one even if it's a repeat by the same user. I got an opportunity to do a table (!!!) so I went for it. Artist Monthly Listeners Individual Song Average Streams Streams Per One User Ben 191,072 1,001,130 5 Alexa 89,488 183,566 2 Neither Ben nor Alexa are featured on any streams charts so the comparison ends here. I would add that I cross referenced the Spotify Charts with Billboard Global 200 and there are artists on the Spotify charts who do not appear on Billboards list so it’s possible! The Dreadful Conclusion. I decided to compare those two based on coincidental similarities. Clearly Benny Boy is far more popular. As I mentioned before, he also actively promoted the song, to his fans mostly, while Alexa did not. It is evident that their streams and views come from established fanbases only and they both failed to attract bigger attention. You may also realise by now that while in those circumstances Benny won, did he win on a bigger scale though? Lil Follow Up. I looked up singles/songs premiering at a similar time to 11:11 and I cross referenced the artists popularity with Ben, his listeners and streams. Artist Song Unique Recent Days Average Average Listeners Song Since Daily Song Streams Song Song Streams Per Release Streams Single User Benny 11:11 191,072 1,001,130 24 41,713 5 Boy Idles The 1,007,154 712,619 13 54,816 ~1 Beachland Ballroom Wet Leg Wet 555,685 473,929 13 36,456 ~1 Dream Namasen Finish Him 107,827 132,517 25 5,300 1 da Ten Everything 139,805 237,947 101 2,355 2 Tonnes You Got Juliette Le Dernier 669,215 706,332 24 29,430 1 Armanet Jour du Disco I looked for similar stats to his, it is Monthly Listeners around 200k. And you know what? No one with similar stats was able to pull out the streams he has in such a short time. Might sound subjective but that kinda looks like a small fanbase streaming it like their life depends on it. I looked through countless smaller artists with Monthly Listeners like his who also had new songs lately, no one has his streams, honest to god. It’s really hard to judge and I’m no expert but from what I saw, the song is not a success or viral or anything of this sort. Amongst his fans? For sure. Compared to the bigger picture? Not so much. I also should have looked up his streams earlier but never was interested. I will be on a lookout from now on. Maybe, if life lets me.
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-