ForTunes: How To Measure The Success Of Your Music In Real Time [Interview]

we had a very insightful chat with Florian from ForTunes, the analytics app designed for artists and record labels

In the complex world of digital music, what is the measure of success for an artist and his music? A question with so many variables, it is virtually impossible to answear it in a few phrases. Because it’s not only about the number of streams recorded on DSP’s like Spotify. It can spread like fire through obscure youtube channels. It can be pushed forward by an avid music blogger, writing about music from his cottage in Oceania. It can be remixed by a Nightcore TikToker. It can turn into a Twitch anthem for Minecraft addicts. And the list could go on and on and on.

Lucky for us, there are platforms like ForTunes that have assumed the difficult mission of tracking the perfomance of your music on almost all major music-related platforms out there. From the playlist that added your tracks to mentions on various music blogs, ForTunes comes as a comprehensive analytics platform meant to help you better understand how does the digital music world work in your favour and ultimately tune your promotional efforts in one direction or another.

The Austrian startup serves now more than 35,000 artists and record labels, with major companies and awards winning musicians among them. So we sat down for a quick chat with Florian Richling about the importance of data for an artist, the thrill of running after more and more followers on social media and about the best strategy for an artist to become popular. Oh, and we also have a cool 20% discount if you use the SOUNDFEED20 code when applying for a new account on ForTunes.

First of all, how did the idea of building the Fortunes service come up in the first place?

I spent almost 20 years in the music business, first as a musician, then for the most time as a producer, running a recording studio. ForTunes Co-Founder, Christoph, was a digital business manager at a major company.

Digitalization presents many new opportunities for music creators. At the same time, it means new challenges. ForTunes helps artists and labels to master this challenge.

How big is the ForTunes team and how many users do you have to date?

We are a team of 9 based in Vienna. We currently have a +35000 users on our platform. But we are growing! 

Who is ForTunes destined for? Do you need, as an artist, to have a certain level of success in order to use a service like ForTunes? Or is it helpful for debut artists or musicians who need a tool for discovering new ways of promoting their music?

ForTunes is not only a data analytics service but further a recommendation service. We have newcomers as well as Grammy nominees, boutique firms and also major companies. 

What does ForTunes bring new on top of the Spotify, Apple Music or Youtube analytics, already available for artists?

Let's think of the analytic backends of these services as islands. Even if these islands are wonderful, it eats up a lot of time and is exhausting, if you have to travel too many. ForTunes pulls these islands together to one bigger land, making it very convenient to wander around. ForTunes will also tell you when something is happing. Our feed informs our users cross-platform about updates, news and milestones. 

On the top of this analytics framework, we are building recommendation engines, that use the user's data to evaluate and optimize strategies.

It is essential for a musician nowadays to keep a close eye on stats? I mean, maybe it is better to just focus on creating a fanbase and on composing good music…

Exactly. That was a reason why we started ForTunes. Data and stats are useful, yet they can be very distracting. ForTunes takes the hustle out of music data and helps to refocus on the stuff you love.

Nowadays it's not only about the music, but also about the artist profile, built with the help of social media. What's ForTunes take on this matter?

Social Media has become one of, if not the most essential tool for music promotion.  

Distributors offer all stream and revenues related data. ForTunes stronghold is insights on streaming- but also social-media. We help labels and artists to overlook Facebook and Instagram posts and stories on. Users can rank them by various metrics and evaluate their engagement with our own developed Engagement Score. This saves a ton of time and helps to optimize promotion strategies. 

You clearly have access to a lot of music data. Saying this, can you define a successful track, in terms of playlists popularity, blog entries, engagement a.s.o.?

Algorithms are increasingly influencing the music ecosystem. Agencies and artists that understand how to activate these algorithms on different levels are more likely to be successful. The strategy depends on the genre. 

But generally, we see that the often underrated key to success is persistence. Artists who have constant output tend to perform better than artists following a more traditional approach, like for example, releasing only one album every two years. 

Algorithms are data-hungry. You have to feed them to be found.

From your experience with musicians using ForTunes, what did count the most for a song to start gathering streams: the editorial playlists, the independent ones or the algorhythmic playlist?

For becoming a successful musician or artists, interest and understanding of social media and promotion is mandatory. This is good and bad. Bad, because musical talents that fail to make use of social media, will find it harder to build an audience. Good, because never before in history, was it that easy to enter the market and make a living out of music.

We see that strong und continues efforts to get songs on 3rd playlists, will significantly increase the chances of editorial playlists. The keyword is Engamgent. Don't only optimize the stream count, but the number of fans that follow and support your artists along. 

What does the future look like for ForTunes?

We have a lot in stores for 2021 and are super excited for the upcoming months. We just launched, what I believe is, the best playlist recommendation engine on the market. Twitch integration is around the corner and some secrets we'll announce in a bit ;)