How Trigger Cities Can Help Your Music Go Viral
We all want our music to be heard by more people, so anyone that gets a song that “goes viral” is incredibly lucky to say the least. That said, there are certain cities throughout the world where music can catch on quickly and ripple out to surrounding communities at a scale that normally doesn’t happen elsewhere. These are what the music data research company Chartmetric calls trigger cities.
According to Chartmetric, “Trigger cities share many common characteristics including diverse music tastes (going beyond just the domestic repertoire), a high rate of music streaming adoption, and large, dense populations.”
But they’re not all the same as each trigger city behaves differently depending on their region. For instance, trigger cities in Latin America and Asia typically tend to be both younger and larger than those in the U.S. and Europe. Their local music scenes are less developed, and they also tend to share music more frequently on social media compared to trigger cities in the U.S. and Europe.
So how were trigger cities determined? Chartmetric developed a list of artists who met the following criteria:
- Their first release was sometime within the past four years
- They ranked within the top 5,000 artists on Chartmetric
- Their YouTube audience was not dominated by a specific country
Chartmetric then “pulled each artist’s top 50 cities on Spotify by monthly listeners, and compiled the 30 that appeared most frequently to create our final list of trigger cities. These cities were then divided into four tiers, with the most commonly appearing (therefore most influential cities) appearing in tier one, and the next most common in tier two, and so on.”
The Trigger Cities Are. . .
So the most important music cities in order of influence:
- New York City
- Mexico City
- Lima, Peru
- Santiago, Chile
- Jakarta, Indonesia
- Sydney, Australia
The next most important cities are:
- Sao Palo, Brazil
- Kuala Lampur, Malysia
- Singapore
- London
- Los Angeles
The next tier is interesting.
- Guadalajara, Mexico
- Chicago
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Tokyo
- Instanbul
- Melbourne, Australia
- Bandung, Indonesia
- Quezon City, Phillipines
- Guatemala City, Guatemala
The last tier has a few of the most populated places on the planet,
- Mumbai, India
- Bengaluru, India
- Taipai
- Madrid
- Amsterdam
- Paris
How can you make this info work for you? Says Chartmetric, “While the core trigger cities concept revolves around organic growth, prioritizing social media marketing efforts in trigger cities can help get an artist’s foot in the door. This can include influencer partnerships, localized ads, and campaigns on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Another strategy is creating content that resonates with the cultural and musical preferences of these regions, such as using local languages, collaborating with regional artists, or tapping into popular local trends.”
It should be noted that in the vast majority of these cities, pop music was the top genre.
