Boost Tour Planning Efficiency with Music Analytics

Ethan Caldwell

Mar 1, 2025

When it comes to planning successful tours, music analytics can be a game-changer for artists and managers alike. Platforms like Viberate and Chartmetric offer powerful insights into fan demographics, geographic distribution, and audience engagement, which are crucial for making data-driven decisions. In today’s competitive music industry, understanding where an artist’s fan base is located and how they engage with content across platforms is key to optimizing tour locations and ensuring better audience turnout.

Comparing Pricing of Music Analytics Tools

Before diving into the specifics of how these platforms support tour planning, let’s compare their pricing. Viberate starts at €19.90 per month, billed annually at €239, offering artists a budget-friendly option. On the other hand, Chartmetric is positioned as a premium service, priced at $160 per month or $1600 per year, providing more extensive data and tools for in-depth audience tracking.

While both platforms cater to artists, managers, and labels, they vary in pricing based on the depth of features offered. Let's explore how both of these tools can drive tour planning.

Using Music Analytics to Optimize Tour Locations

Tour planning is no longer about guesswork. Music analytics platforms allow artists and managers to pinpoint exactly where their fans are located, making it easier to plan tours in cities where engagement is highest.

Fan Demographics and Geographic Insights

Viberate provides detailed analytics on where an artist’s fan base is most active. This data is segmented by country, city, and even individual platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok. Artists can track which regions generate the most streams and fan interactions, enabling them to focus tour efforts on locations with high fan engagement. Viberate also breaks down fan demographics by age and gender, providing artists with a clearer understanding of the kind of audience they are attracting in each region. This helps tailor promotional campaigns and tour announcements to resonate with the target demographic in specific cities.

Chartmetric offers a similar advantage by providing audience demographics and geographic insights from more than 25 platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Instagram. The platform aggregates fan data, making it easier to see growth patterns across different regions. By tracking fan growth trends over time, Chartmetric helps artists and managers identify which cities are most likely to have a high turnout at live events.

For example, if an artist sees consistent growth in streaming numbers from a particular city, it indicates a strong local fan base. By using these insights, artists can strategically schedule tour stops in cities where they are likely to sell more tickets and draw larger crowds.

Event and Tour Tracking Data

In addition to audience demographics, Chartmetric provides a unique feature called event and tour tracking data. This allows artists to analyze past and upcoming concerts, which helps in determining optimal tour locations. By tracking the success of previous tours and events, artists can identify which cities have performed well in the past and make more informed decisions about future tour stops.

Viberate offers similar insights with its "Audience Maps & Demographics" feature, which shows the geographical distribution of an artist’s fan base. This makes it easier for artists to assess their regional relevance and prioritize tour locations where they have the strongest fan engagement.

Playlist Performance and Streaming Data

Another important factor in tour planning is playlist performance. Both Viberate and Chartmetric offer playlist tracking tools, which are particularly useful for understanding how well an artist’s tracks are performing on various platforms.

Chartmetric allows users to track playlist adds, streaming performance, and chart placements across multiple platforms. This data can be leveraged to time tour announcements with periods of high engagement. For example, if an artist’s track is added to a major playlist and sees a spike in streams, it might be the perfect time to schedule a tour stop in the city where the song is most popular.

Similarly, Viberate provides a detailed view of an artist’s playlist performance. It tracks playlist placements, reach over time, and provides a customizable chart that shows which editorial and user-generated playlists are driving the most growth. By understanding how their music is performing on playlists, artists can time their tour schedules to align with peaks in their streaming activity, ensuring higher engagement and attendance at live shows.

Audience Engagement and Social Media Metrics

Social media plays a significant role in tour planning. Knowing how fans engage with an artist’s content across platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube can help in crafting promotional strategies and selecting tour locations. Both Viberate and Chartmetric offer tools to track audience engagement across social platforms, allowing artists to gauge the strength of their fan base in different regions.

Chartmetric’s platform includes social media data from platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). Artists can drill down into engagement metrics to see which posts or content types resonate best with their audience. This helps in creating targeted campaigns for specific tour stops, ensuring that the right content is used to promote shows in different cities.

Viberate also provides social media analytics with a cross-channel record of how releases and announcements influence fan growth over time. By analyzing engagement patterns, artists can determine which regions respond most actively to their social media posts and announcements. This information is invaluable when it comes to deciding where to focus tour promotion efforts.

Fanbase Size and Growth Trends

Fanbase size is another critical element when planning a tour. Platforms like Viberate and Chartmetric allow artists to track the growth of their fan base across platforms over time. This helps managers and artists assess whether their fan base is expanding or shrinking in particular regions, making it easier to decide where to tour next.

For example, if an artist’s fan base is steadily growing in a city over the past few months, this could indicate a good time to schedule a show in that location. On the other hand, if fan growth is stagnating in a region, it might be better to focus efforts elsewhere.

Viberate’s "Fanbase Size and Engagement" tool tracks the size of an artist’s fan base across multiple channels and provides metrics for assessing fan activity. This data is essential for understanding how engaged a fan base is in different regions, ensuring that tour stops are planned in cities where fan engagement is highest.

Chartmetric takes this a step further by offering fanbase insights across 9 million artist profiles, giving a comprehensive view of where any artist stands in today’s marketplace.

Conclusion

Incorporating music analytics into tour planning allows artists and managers to make data-driven decisions that optimize tour routes, boost attendance, and maximize revenue. Platforms like Viberate and Chartmetric provide valuable insights into fan demographics, geographic distribution, playlist performance, and social media engagement. By understanding where an artist’s fan base is located and how they engage with content, managers can strategically plan tour stops in cities with the highest fan engagement, ensuring successful live events.

While both platforms offer comprehensive tools for tour planning, based on the analyzed data, Viberate provides the best price-to-performance ratio. Its competitive pricing combined with robust analytics across multiple platforms makes it an attractive choice for artists and managers looking to maximize their tour planning without breaking the bank.

In the competitive world of music, utilizing music analytics to plan tours is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity.