Integra 8 Research Unveils New 'Retention Rate' Metric

Integr8 Research President Matt Bailey introduces the music industry to Retention Rate, a new metric designed to identify which songs have staying power when interpreting streaming data. According to Bailey, comparing plays for a song's peak week on Spotify with its play count 10 weeks after its peak reveals a telling story. His formula for Retention Rate is the ratio of how many times streaming music consumers streamed a song in its 10th week after peaking, compared to how many streamed the song during its peak week.

"A song's peak streaming week is a measure of how many fans an artist has and how passionate and engaged those fans are. Artists like Harry Styles, Morgan Wallen, Drake and Taylor Swift have fan bases that run wide and deep. A high Retention Rate means the artist's biggest fans like it enough to keep playing it and reflects new people who have discovered it after it debuted," Bailey explained. "A song's ability to remain among the most streamed songs week after week is more predictive of a song's hit potential. That's what Retention Rate is all about."

In his newest blog, "Retention Rate: The Magic New Metric for Measuring Hit Potential in Streaming Data," Bailey shares examples of other songs with strong and weak Retention Rate, the correlation to Integr8 Research's own callout data, and practical ways to use Retention Rate.

Bailey will host a webinar about Retention Rate on Wednesday, April 19th at 2pm. Registration is now open here.