You can now view your iTunes sales activity even faster after you distribute through TuneCore.
Introducing: New DAILY iTunes Trend Reports.
What Are Trend Reports?
Trend reports show you unofficial sales data of your music on iTunes. We’ve always offered iTunes trend reports, but now they’re even better.
Here’s why:
- The trend reports are now updated DAILY (instead of weekly). Use the calendar function to view sales as recent as 1-2 days prior and as far back as 3 months.
- You can now view the trend data of your ringtones.
- We’ve visualized the data. See your sales in dynamic graph form. It’s not just a boring CSV file anymore.
- View your sales by metro area and really narrow in on the cities where your fans live.
- Our easy-to-use, web-based tool lets you sort your iTunes sales to your heart’s content, right on the screen.
Now you can use these daily iTunes trend reports to get a good sense of how your music is selling, just 24-48 hours after your release went live iTunes. We’ve included tips below on how you can use this information to help your marketing efforts.
*Remember, this is TRENDING data, and not an actual sales report. The money from iTunes sales comes into your account two months after the sale occurred (you can see this in your Downloadable Sales Reports under the Money & Reports tab in your account).
How to Access Your Daily iTunes Trend Reports
You can get to your Daily Trend Reports under the Money & Reports tab in your TuneCore account.
At the top of the page you’ll see Data Range, where you can select the sales period you want to view. At this time you can select 1 week, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 3 months.
(Click images to view larger)
The Total Sales section provides a visual representation of all the trend data in your account. This bar graph lets you easily get a sense your sales activity. You’ll notice that the graph will change dynamically to reflect the date range you enter, and you can you can toggle between Releases Sold, Songs Sold and Ringtones Sold.
The Reports section is where you can really get down to the nitty gritty and see how all your albums, songs and ringtones are selling. There are four tabs to sort by: Top Releases, Top Songs, Top US Markets, and Top Countries. If you’re looking for more information on a specific album or song, just click on the linked title (like Pump It Up below), and you’ll see that the bar graph changes to reflect the sales for that release or song.
You can sort your reports by Top Releases:
Here’s what it looks like if you sort by Top US Markets:
…and by Top Countries:
Once you’ve filtered the data to find exactly what you’re looking for, just click the Download Report button and you’ll get a .csv file showing the trend data you specified by filtering the reports. Download as many reports as you want to get the info you need.
For a more in-depth look at how to read your trend reports, check out our help section.
5 Ways to Use Your Trend Data to Help Your Career
So now that you have all this information at your fingertips, how can you use it to advance your career?
Here are a few ideas…
1. Let this new sales data help you with your upcoming tours. If the numbers are showing you have a solid following in the New Haven-Milford, CT area, make sure your upcoming tour includes a show at one of the clubs nearby, or try for the college crowd at Yale.
2. Once your shows are booked, look to see which songs are selling best in the cities you’re headed to, and plan a setlist your audience is sure to love.
3. After a show’s over, check your trend reports to see if people purchased your music digitally after you played a certain city, and use this info to measure touring as a sales driver.
4. If radio play is what you’re after, use your impressive new release stats to approach local radio programmers and DJs with confidence. Now you’ve got hard data that shows exactly where your fans are located and where your music is well-received.
5. If you planned a major social media campaign for your brand new album, see how that paid off compared to sales following previous new release campaigns. Learn what worked, and what didn’t.
There are so many other ways to use this new and enhanced trend data to help you manage the business aspects of your career.
Let us know in the comments how YOU use trend data…
So get started distributing your next release and use your iTunes Daily Trend Reports to continue growing your fan base!