If you have any questions about Music Connect, a great place to start is their knowledge base.
The Music Connect knowledge base welcome guide has seven "tour" videos showing key aspects of the database, including how to find information about specific songs, albums, and artists as well as how to create ranked lists and run trend and industry reports.
Music Connect has lots of acronyms scattered throughout the site, such as TEA ("Track equivalent albums", or 10 digital song sales/1,250 premium audio streams equal 1 album sale). You can find the meanings of these acronyms here.
Music Connect's Industry Report gives a big picture view of the music industry. The easiest way to access the report is through the drop down menu on the left of the Music Connect home page.
Industry Report uses five key metrics to cover the music industry's overall health. They are total consumption, album sales with TEA (track equivalent albums), overall album sales, total track sales, and on-demand audio streaming.
The default comparison point for the data is this period (The current chart week) vs last period (The previous chart week), but you can also filter the data by year to date this year versus year to date last year as well as this period this year versus last year.
If you scroll down the Industry Report page, you can find out more in-depth information about these metrics, like how many albums are sold at chain retailers or independent record stores.
Finally, you can click on "genre" and "markets" at the top of the Industry Report to get even more specific information. Genre applies the Industry Reports metrics to specific music genres like blues, country, dance/electronic etc, and market applies the metrics to specific geographical areas.
Charts
The Charts section of Music Connect has different album, streaming, radio airplay, and miscellaneous charts capturing data about the most successful songs and albums in a variety of genres or formats from the past twelve years.
You can access Charts by clicking on the bullet point list icon beneath "Home" on the left side of the Music Connect home page. It will automatically show this week's Billboard 200, but there are hundreds of charts to choose from and analyze from Adult Alternative Airplay to World Music On-Demand Audio Streaming.
Some charts, like Billboard 200, allow you to filter by genre (Americana/Folk, Christian, Rock etc.), and all of them can be saved as Excel spreadsheets by clicking on "Export" at the top right of your screen.
Market Share
The Market Share section of Music Connect shows what percentage of the album and track sales (Including streaming audio.) market each record company owns. It has data from the past nine years. The four main market share groups are the "Big 3" music corporations (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group) and "others", which are independent labels like 4AD, Kill Rock Stars, and Matador.
You can also look at the market share of imprints and sublabels, like Atlantic Records, Arista Nashville, Cash Money etc along with the market share of record labels under the Christian Music Trade Association (CMTA).
All of the market share group reports can be saved as an Excel spreadsheet by clicking on "Export" at the top right of your screen.
