Stream count, like global temperature rise, is only giving you half of the picture.

If you’re only looking at lagging indicators like stream count and global temperature rise, chances are you’re missing out on key opportunities for action.

Use leading indicators for strategic analysis and lagging indicators for assessment.

To evaluate large systems, analysts will typically use two types of indicators as measurement. Leading indicators help us understand what’s happening in the moment, driving strategic decisions to foster growth or stymie decline; lagging indicators help us assess those decisions, providing insights about historical performance.

Lagging indicators tend to grab all of the headlines: unemployment rates, global temperature rise, stream counts—these are all datapoints of effect. And it makes sense. They’re simple, they’re stable, and they’re safe. They’re also really not the best datapoints to use for making decisions, because these indicators tell you that something has happened, not that something is happening or could happen if you do X, Y, or Z.

That doesn’t mean that looking at lagging indicators like stream counts isn’t important—it just means that incorporating leading indicators into your analysis can help you form a strategic action plan based on a comprehensive analysis of performance, be it in music marketing or in climate policy.

When the global temperature rises, it’s already too late.

To help illustrate why stream counts might not be as informative as you think, let’s examine something that has required action for decades but has consistently fallen short of critical points of no return: global temperature rise.

Before I send us both into a nihilistic doomloop, it’s important to remember that humans have a penchant for adaptation, and the more attention we pay to leading indicators of temperature rise, the more urgency we can bring to policy. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I look at graphs like this….

As you can see, global temperature has been rising pretty steadily since the early 1990s, but it wasn’t until we passed the mid-century plateau that it really started becoming a concern. Unfortunately, once global governments started trying to do something about it, we were already on a new trajectory toward a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius, which has potentially cataclysmic implications.

• In 1997, many nations nominally agreed to The Kyoto Protocol, representing an effort to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Relative to the 1951-1980 average, global temperature had already increased by 0.4 degrees Celsius by that point.

• In 2009, The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen aimed to reach a legally binding agreement on emissions reductions. Global temperature had already increased by 0.65 degrees Celsius by that point.

• In 2015, The Paris Agreement set a goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Global temperature had already increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius by that point.

• June 2023’s relative global temperature rise was 1 degree Celsius, and Leipzig University estimates July 2023’s global temperature rise will be 1.5 degrees Celsius—the effective point of no return spelled out by The Paris Agreement.

Even though June and July 2023 are on track to be the hottest months on record, we won’t actually know the average global temperature rise for 2023 until the year is over, and that’s exactly the issue with relying solely on lagging indicators. They can unintentionally create a holding pattern, fostering a state of inaction instead of reaction.

Sadly, thermal inertia, climate feedback mechanisms, and carbon dioxide accumulation can create an enormous lag between leading indicators and an actual rise in temperature. So, the temperature rise we’re experiencing now is likely the result of triggers from many years ago. But here’s the thing: Because leading indicators are today’s datapoints and not yesterday’s, that means we can react to them to help course-correct.

Leading indicators of global temperature rise can include greenhouse gas concentrations, sea surface temperatures, and ice sheet retreat, but climate science is much more complex than music engagement, so I’ve been hard-pressed to find a well-publicized daily tracker for any of these leading indicators.¹ For now, let’s turn to an industry where widely accessible music data analytics tools have helped bring real-time music insights to everyone.

All of a sudden, an artist’s stream counts don’t seem so important anymore.

Whether you’re looking at music headlines or executive reports, the number one concern tends to be how many streams an artist or track has. Considering streams generate revenue directly, this totally makes sense. However, if you’re actually trying to develop an artist, affect future streaming performance, or craft a release strategy, you’re going to want to look at leading indicators.

Generally speaking, an artist’s streams increase linearly at a predictable rate, usually somewhere between 5 and 15 percent annually. That’s why investors who know nothing about music have been buying up copyrights like real estate or bonds. They pretty much don’t have to do anything to make a steady return.

For those who do want to do something, leading indicators of music performance can include, but are certainly not limited to, monthly listeners, TikTok posts, Shazams, and non-editorial playlist adds. Significant growth in these metrics is an important indication that an audience is actively—and currently—engaging with an artist or a track. Let’s take the recent success of Aqua’s 1996 hit “Barbie Girl” as an example.

Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice sampling Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” helped the track generate TikTok success in early July 2023. By the time the Barbie movie came out on July 21, an explosion in Shazams helped boost streaming growth. That streaming growth confirmed the cross-platform success of the track’s virality.

Nearly a month before their track actually received a noticeable boost in streaming, Aqua’s Spotify monthly listeners jumped dramatically thanks to Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice. Monthly listeners don’t directly account for revenue, but when they increase significantly, that can give you fuel to turn that reach into revenue. During the month between that listener spike and the movie’s release, the track was averaging 4 million weekly streams. The week after, the track doubled that count.

Now this is certainly a unique example given the hype surrounding the Barbie film, but orchestrated or not, we can still clearly see all of the indicators leading up to the track’s change in stream count trajectory. Chances are, you’re not going to have a success story quite as remarkable as this one, but if you do start to see some growth in one of these dimensions, then you try to foster that growth through marketing and advertising. Reacting to these leading indicators quickly can help you change the trajectory of an artist’s streams and revenue. In turn, those lagging indicators will help you evaluate the performance or ROI of your campaigns, and you can replicate or adjust from there.

Like the climate, today’s digital music environment is a complicated ecosystem run by feedback mechanisms, so instead of always looking at the past, a holistic view can help you understand what actions you need to take now to affect the future.

Information is abundant, and time is not—but that doesn’t mean we should only see the trees. The proliferation of information should help us see the forest.

1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) does publish daily global Carbon Dioxide levels in 5-day increments, and we appear to be at around 419 parts per million (ppm), which is about a 2 percent increase from 2019 and a 25 percent increase since the 1980s. If we could focus everyone’s attention on these datapoints, then preventive action would be much easier.