UNLIMITED SUPPLY with Digital Music News Sam Friske Says: Beware Vanity Metrics
Sep 9, 2025
Sam Friske, founder of Cadence and former Universal Music Group exec, dives into the deceptive world of vanity metrics in music. She argues that superficial data, like Spotify streams, misleads artists about their actual success. Instead, she champions the need for meaningful metrics that help nurture real fan engagement. The discussion emphasizes re-evaluating how artists assess their performance in a data-driven industry, steering them towards metrics that truly matter for their growth.
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Monthly Listeners Don’t Equal Fans
- Monthly listeners on Spotify are largely meaningless as a measure of true fandom or engagement.
- Sam Friske argues the metric can mislead teams into false assumptions about artist health.
Alison Ponthier Example Shows The Gap
- Sam Friske cites Alison Ponthier as an example where high monthly listeners didn’t translate to recent streams for her independent single.
- The feature credit inflated monthly listeners while the new song only received a small number of plays months later.
Raw Streams Can Be Bought
- High stream counts can be purchased or gamed, making raw streams a poor proxy for sustainable fan growth.
- Sam Friske links paid streams and playlist payola to the illusion of success.
