Independent music intelligence
Everyone argues about the music business. We measure it.
RapCanon publishes first-party research on how music actually works: what a stream pays, who owns the masters, what a deal really takes, and which records the numbers support. Every dataset is open. Every method is published. No access to protect, so no punches pulled.
Flagship study
Every André 3000 album with rapping on it is a bootleg
He has two official solo albums. One is flute, one is piano, and neither has a rap verse on it. The five album-length releases under his name that do contain rapping are all catalogued as unofficial, assembled by other people out of verses he gave away. Read from MusicBrainz release status, cross-checked against a lyric database.
Why this exists
The people who cover this industry depend on it for access.
That is not a conspiracy, it is a business model. An outlet that needs the interview cannot publish the number that embarrasses the label, and after enough years of that the coverage quietly stops containing arithmetic at all.
We have no access to protect and nothing to lose by counting. So we count: payouts per stream by platform, ownership chains, deal structures as they are actually written, tour economics from the opener's side. Then we publish the spreadsheet.
What we will not do
- Sell a position in a ranking, at any price
- Publish a figure we cannot source or reproduce
- Run a number without its sample size and its limits
- Quietly change a published claim without dating the correction
What we cover
Six beats, one method
Each beat is a standing research line with its own dataset, not a topic tag. Every plate is drawn from the shape of that line's own data.
The numbers, kept current
Standing reference tables, updated on a published cadence rather than written once and abandoned. Each row links to its source and carries the date it was last checked.
| Reference table | Covers | Rows | Cadence | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per-stream payout index | Streaming platforms | — | Quarterly | Scoped |
| Masters ownership chains | Catalogue sales | — | On event | Scoped |
| Deal-term decoder | Recording contracts | — | Annual | Scoped |
| Rap lexical density index | Hip-hop catalogues | 120 | Quarterly | Corpus running |
Rows marked with a dash have no published figure yet. We would rather show the gap than fill it with an estimate.
Dispatch
Drake's FOMO tracklist: 17 titles, 5 outlets, no two lists agree
An hour of new music in a free film, then private on YouTube. Every song, who reported it, and whether lyrics or a release exist.
UMG needed Drake to prove someone knew. Now ignorance "wouldn't be a defense"
The label's 2025 motion against Drake and its 2026 lawsuit against DistroKid, quoted side by side from the filings.
Open by default
Take the data. That is the point.
Every dataset publishes under CC-BY 4.0 with its method attached. Use it in your own work, your own story, your own argument. Attribution and a link back is the whole price.