Get Better Stats with This
Luminate Alternative

1. Database

Both platforms have extensive artist databases, however, unsurprisingly, it’s not (just) the size that matters. Data integrity, specifically accuracy, consistency, and reliability of data is a prerequisite for music professionals to make accurate, informed decisions.

Viberate: Every Entity in the Music Industry

Next to every artist and track on Spotify, as well as over 12M Spotify and Apple music playlists, this Luminate alternative also analyzes all other relevant entities of the music industry, namely labels, venues, festivals, and events. All profiles are carefully curated to ensure the maximum level of data integrity.

Luminate: Millions of artist, albums and tracks

According to their own resources, Luminate currently analyzes millions of artists, albums and tracks, however the exact number remains unknown. They claim to analyze data from 500 verified streaming, retail and airplay sources, which include DSPs, record labels and even retail stores, which makes it rather unclear what kind of information the analyzed data actually contains.

2. Features

Being among the industry’s leading platforms, both Viberate and Luminate provide a wide variety of data. While they do share some similar features, there are distinctive differences between the two that can tip the scale for users with specific data needs.

Viberate: Industry’s Most Powerful Artist Chart and More

While both platforms provide charts and artist-related features, this Luminate alternative extends way over the limits of aggregated data.

• Their artist chart is indisputably the most powerful chart in the industry. It ranks every artist by their overall music and social media performance. Users can narrow down their selection by applying advanced filters and sorting options.



• Viberate’s artist analytics offers the most complete overview of an artist’s performance, including channel-specific analytics and synthetic indicators for easy tracking and comparison.
• ​​An artist’s promotional potential can be further assessed with a channel-specific drill-down of engagement and top-performing content.
• Users can follow the playlist performance of every artist and pinpoint the right playlists for the genre and mood with a comprehensive chart of editorial and user-generated playlists, as well as in-depth playlist analytics.



• With the use of audience analytics, users can assess an artist’s regional relevance through geographical distribution, and reach the right audience for releases and other promotional campaigns with a gender and age breakdown of every artist’s fanbase.
• With the compare feature, users can compare career trajectories, streaming, fanbase growth, engagement, demographics, key markets, etc. for any two artists side by side.
• Viberate also offers cross-channel stats of every track. Users can benchmark its performance with the track chart.



• Users can identify potential gig opportunities based on an artist's country, genre, fanbase size and location as well as their career stage with a customizable list of venues and festivals worldwide.
• Last but not least, users can also tailor their dashboards to monitor exactly the metrics they’re interested in and save time creating business reports, including CSV exports.

Luminate: Unmatched Global Trends Data

Heavily focused on global trends, Luminate offers a variety of in-depth analytical features.

• Luminate’s homepage consists of trending country-level release data (artist, track, album and EP data).
• Each artist and release is equipped with limited metadata.
• Artist dashboards show activity over time and activity by location both in chart and grid form. Data can also be exported into a CSV file.
• Artist dashboard can be filtered by different parameters, such as streaming and sales, and viewed in different fully customizable timeframes.
• Luminate provides a few proprietary charts with expandable track cards and limited filters.
• Luminate’s unique feature is their trends and genres analysis tool that provides an aggregated analysis of both sales and streams.
• Similarly to Viberate, Luminate now allows you to build and export customized reports.

3. Target Audience

While both represent constituent parts of the music industry, artists and other industry professionals, such as a&rs and marketers, often have very different data needs. We’re looking into how each of the platforms serves both of these groups.

Viberate: Two Products for Two Very Different User Groups

Viberate addressed the needs of the two user groups, namely artists and other music professionals, by developing two very different products. Viberate for Artists focuses on the artist’s first-party data, which provides them with the most accurate data available. It’s accompanied by social media stats for a complete overview of their performance. Artists are also able to analyze playlists and pitch their tracks for placements.

On the other hand, Viberate Analytics enables music professionals to get a complete overview of the music industry, discover new artists and compare them among themselves, use different a&r and reporting tools, analyze other entities such as labels, venues and festivals, analyze the state of music in individual countries, and explore over 100 genres and subgenres.

Luminate: A Single Layout for Everyone

Luminate claims to be a platform for artists, artist managers and record companies, however, their very complex analytics deals mostly with global and country level trends and less with artist or track-level data. They fail to provide both first-party data and in-depth artist-level analytics that could be valuable to artists, their managers and record companies.

Considering other groups of music professionals that could actually benefit from more complex data, there are many other relevant entities, such as labels, venues and festivals, that are missing from the platform.

4. Ease of Use

Even a great set of features won’t go far if their use is overly complicated. A great user interface will enhance usability, ensure intuitive interactions, and significantly impact user satisfaction and productivity.

Viberate: Superb Interface According to Users

Viberate prides itself in a clean and modern design with an intuitive interface. Artist pages are extremely well organized and provide for a comprehensible flow of information. Both artist pages and charts are completely customizable, with charts allowing for several different custom views that can later be applied as needed. Users can easily navigate through the platform, find features, and access data. The latter is visualized in a way that appeals not only to analytics-savvy users, but also to those who tend to find numbers overwhelming.

Luminate: A Calming Experience

Luminate’s muted user interface promises a swift and seamless user experience. However, the latter does come with a steep learning curve. The use of space, color scheme and typography soon becomes hard to read and interpret. Consecutively, onboarding can feel quite overwhelming. Charts allow for customization, which enables users to focus on relevant metrics. While the overall user experience is not off-putting, it does require an adjustment period before task performance becomes a routine.

5. Pricing

Comparing two similar yet different platforms in terms of pricing isn’t just about finding the cheapest option - it’s about finding that sweet spot where cost high-fives value. Both platforms provide different pricing options depending on the user’s role in the industry.

Viberate: Two Different Products at Different Price Points

Each of Viberate’s paying plans enables access to a completely different set of features, developed for each of the two target groups, namely artists and music professionals.

Viberate Analytics Premium, available for €19.90/month, gives the music professionals access to Viberate’s entire database, charts with a&r filters, compare function, and all other features. A 2-day free trial is available without entering any credit card details.

Viberate for Artists Pro, available for as little as €2.99/month, enables artists to connect their streaming channels and monitor all their first-party data together with social media stats, all in one platform. Additionally, they can pitch their tracks for playlist placemats and use their ready-made website. Artists can try out Pro free for 7 days, without entering their credit card.

Luminate: One-Plan-Fits-All Solution

Luminate offers one plan currently priced at 295$/month (with a yearly commitment), which is limited to qualifying users only. They are offering an undisclosed courtesy discount to non-qualifying users.

Considering their target group of artists, artist managers and record companies, the price is set relatively high compared to Viberate and other competitors.

Luminate is currently the most expensive music data provider on the market.

6. Support

When faced with an obstacle, swift and helpful support can make all the difference. But that’s not all that defines great user support. Features need to be presented and explained in a way that enables users to easily find and use them to accomplish their tasks.

Viberate: There at Every Step of the User Journey

Viberate’s customer support is available to everyone at no additional cost. Live chat is open during office working hours and a prompt email response is guaranteed at all other times. An informative help center is located directly on the website.

After choosing their role in the industry, users are funneled into one of the tutorials, demonstrating role-based use cases and best practices. This is followed up by a series of educational emails highlighting different features and their use.

Luminate: Knowledge Base and FAQ

Luminate’s user support is reduced to short knowledge base articles and a collection of FAQs. While they are actively prompting the users to provide feedback, they are reluctant to provide detailed in-depth tutorials or live support. Since the product is relatively complex, users would benefit from a more informative onboarding explaining different features, followed-up by a series of use case-describing emails.