Brand Mentions: Your Shortcut to New Artist Discovery

Avery Malone

Oct 1, 2025

Why brand mentions matter for A&R

When an artist is mentioned or tagged by a well-known brand, it’s often a strong signal that they’re gaining real momentum in their scene. These mentions serve as early indicators of cultural relevance and marketability. They show that the artist’s presence is resonating with audiences and tastemakers—even before the big streaming spikes arrive.

For A&Rs, tracking brand mentions is a practical shortcut to identifying talent before the competition does. It gives you insight into who’s already caught the attention of influential players, and who might be the next to break through.

Platforms to monitor brand mentions

To effectively track brand mentions, you need visibility across multiple platforms. Instagram is a key space—look for artists tagged in Stories, grid posts, or brand reposts. TikTok is another critical platform, especially when artists participate in brand-led challenges or organically use branded products in their content.

On Twitter (now X), brand campaigns often include artist shoutouts or direct mentions, providing a trail of who brands are aligning with. YouTube also offers signals through brand-sponsored content, product placements, or artist collaborations with sponsored channels. On Spotify, watch for brand-curated playlists that feature up-and-coming artists.

These touchpoints all help identify artists already entering brand conversations, which can inform your scouting.

Real-world use cases

Brand mentions have already driven real signings and artist breakthroughs. One label moved quickly to sign a rapper after Adidas reposted his freestyle clip—wearing their gear—and it sparked local virality. An R&B artist gained industry attention after appearing in a COLORS collaboration tied to a brand, which led to major festival bookings. A DJ became a trending name after Red Bull featured them in a video campaign, even before reaching 50,000 monthly listeners.

These examples prove that monitoring brand mentions can uncover momentum you won’t find in traditional metrics alone.

The right tools for brand mention insights

To monitor brand mentions and evaluate talent effectively, you need the right A&R tools. Platforms like Viberate, Chartmetric, and Songstats provide comprehensive data ecosystems to support fast, informed decision-making.

Viberate

Viberate is built with A&Rs in mind, offering smart filtering and chart tools that simplify talent discovery. Their A&R charts are powered by real performance data across music and social platforms. You start with an objective ranking system that shows how every artist is performing, even the ones under the radar.

The A&R filters are where Viberate really shines. You can filter artists by genre, country, fanbase size, and performance on specific platforms like Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more. This helps zero in on artists who match your label’s focus areas. You can also apply HOT filters to catch trending acts or use rank-based sorting to highlight fast movers.

To make your work efficient, Viberate lets you save customized charts and views. You can bookmark filtered views and return to them anytime, with live data updates. Their dashboards include tools like the "Career Health" speedometer and a visual "Career Performance" timeline, giving a quick sense of artist momentum.

For deeper evaluations, you can build a Custom View dashboard that only shows the analytics you care 

about. Artists you follow get tracked on your homepage, where you can also run side-by-side comparisons. All of this helps you track brand mentions in context—with performance data to back it up.

Chartmetric

Chartmetric’s A&R tools are designed for early discovery. Their dashboard highlights artists who are growing the fastest across major platforms including Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, SoundCloud, and even Wikipedia. You can filter these rising profiles by country, genre, and release date.

One standout feature is their Spotify playlist tracker. It pinpoints which artists are gaining traction through playlist inclusion, a key sign of early industry interest. Combined with growth metrics, you get a clear sense of who’s heating up and where to dig deeper.

The platform also offers powerful artist list filters, helping you identify the right profiles for your label, no matter their career stage. This is useful for spotting brand mentions alongside other early-stage indicators of visibility.

Songstats

Songstats gives you real-time visibility into artist performance across digital platforms. Its strength lies in providing immediate feedback on which artists are gaining traction—whether from a brand repost, campaign shoutout, or a sudden jump in audience engagement.

Their dashboards give you a full digital overview of an artist's footprint, helping you assess potential more accurately. This includes social mentions, platform growth, and benchmark comparisons with similar artists.

For A&Rs focused on staying ahead, Songstats offers real-time campaign tracking. If a brand campaign goes live, you can see its impact reflected quickly and adjust your scouting focus based on the results. This makes it easier to move fast on talent that’s breaking before others catch on.

Final thoughts

Brand mentions are not vanity metrics. For A&Rs, they are an early alert system for relevance and visibility. Artists gaining brand attention—especially before hitting major streaming milestones—often represent breakout potential. By using tools like Viberate, Chartmetric, and Songstats, you can systematically monitor brand mentions and combine that signal with deeper performance insights.

In a market where speed and data matter, this approach gives you an edge in talent discovery.

Use brand mentions as your radar, and the right tools to act on what you find.