Liv Buli’s Reading List: Obama’s SXSW, Pandora ❤ Hip Hop and Nickelback is Cool Say What? It’s Just Another Week in Music and More

As she does (almost) every week, Liv Buli, the Data Journalist for Pandora's Next Big Sound shares what she's paying attention to, as she parsed data while also taking the cultural temperature. Liv often sees what matters before the rest of us; and shares it on Hypebot .

Afternoon fellow earthlings.

/giphy dog in a swing

I just got back from Adweek’s offices here in New York, where I learned that the ultimate giphy command is “dog in a swing” which has now derailed the rest of my afternoon. But the real reason I was there was to have a chat with Adweek’s Lauren Johnson about music and data and all the things we can learn from this, based on an article I wrote for them earlier this week. Feel free to watch it here, I won’t because watching myself on tape is like the most cringeworthy, horrible thing ever.

And here’s the article. Key takeaway — America is still listening to Nickelback. I‘m sure I‘m going to get in trouble for saying this, but shame on you America. SHAME ON YOU. I SEE YOU.

5 Things Streaming Music Data Can Teach Marketers That Top 40 Radio Can't

Best thing that happened all week? Emily Blake, formerly of Mashable and MTV, officially joined our team (two data journalists huzzah!), and already wrote her first article, curated and annotated her first set of charts, and is pretty much just kicking ass and taking names.

Hip Hop Sets The Trends On This Week’s Pandora Trendsetters Chart

Mark Mulligan just dropped another truth-bomb analysis of the streaming market and growth, based on a recent IFPI revenue report and what the labels are willing to share.

Just How Well Is Streaming Really Doing?

So let’s talk about this whole Katy Perry/Spotify kerfuffle. Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg released a piece last week that straight up accused Spotify of burying artists who sign exclusives with Apple. Spotify denied this (duh), and then Tim Ingham at MBW gave his take on the matter.

Katy Perry knows exactly how much Spotify is 'punishing' Apple exclusive artists… – Music…

While the power of playlisting fairly evident (though I‘d love to do a bunch more research on the matter), has anyone considered that maybe the song just isn’t that great?

Streaming means access. The tie to the Olympics + Katy Perry’s super-sized fan base should mean fans know there is new music to be consumed. Yet, if we look at the first few weeks of play on Vevo for Rise compared to Dark Horse, we see that it just doesn’t perform as well. Just sayin'…

So Obama is going to throw his own SWSX. He’s so cool.

White House Announces 'South By South Lawn,' SXSW-Inspired Micro Festival

And in videos this week is yet another viral snippet from Jimmy Fallon.

At about 4:43 Millie Bobby Brown starts cranking out Nicki Minaj’s verse from Monster and it is pretty much awesome. If you haven’t seen it already, I’ll let you round out the week with that.