MIDDERMUSIC Data publishes original analysis of music and entertainment using public, openly licensed data. We don’t run surveys, buy panels or estimate numbers we can’t check. Every figure we publish can be traced to a public source, and we publish the data alongside the finding so anyone can check it.
Where our data comes from
We only use sources whose terms allow analysis and republication, and we record the license for every dataset we use. These are the sources we may draw on across our studies. Each study’s method section names the ones it actually uses.
- Wikimedia pageview data: daily page views of Wikipedia articles, published by the Wikimedia Foundation under a CC0 license. We use Wikimedia’s “user” traffic, which excludes views Wikimedia identifies as spiders or automated traffic. That filtering isn’t perfect, so some automated views may still be counted.
- Wikidata and MusicBrainz: open databases of artists, releases, awards and dates (CC0).
- Official statistics: consumer price data from the UK Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence) and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain).
- Published industry figures: reports from organizations such as IFPI and the Recording Academy, cited as individual figures with attribution.
We don’t republish chart data or other material we don’t have the right to reuse.
How we check our work
- Source: every number traces back to a saved, dated copy of the original data.
- Reproducibility: a second person reruns the analysis from the raw data and gets the same result.
- Fair comparison: we set minimum sample sizes and exclude cases where another event clearly explains the result, and we say how many cases we excluded and why.
- Careful wording: we describe what the data shows, such as what happened after an event, and we don’t claim one thing caused another unless the evidence supports it.
- Headline check: the exact claim in every headline appears in the published data.
What our data can and can’t tell you
Wikipedia page views measure attention: how often a page was requested. They count views, not unique people. It doesn’t measure listening, streaming or sales. English Wikipedia leans toward English-speaking readers, so where a country matters, we use the matching language edition. Each study’s method section lists its own limits.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we correct it on the page, note what changed and when, and update the downloadable data. To report an error, email will@middermusic.com.
Using our research
Our published data and charts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You’re free to use them, including commercially, as long as you credit MIDDERMUSIC and link to the study page.
Who we are
MIDDERMUSIC Data is run by the MIDDERMUSIC editorial team.