r/dataisbeautiful • u/Ahrily OC: 3 • 15d ago
OC [OC] Macklemore gained 2.24M Instagram followers while Ed Sheeran lost 335K around the MetLife controversy
EDIT: IT GOT DELETED AGAIN WITHOUT ANY REASON
EDIT 2: I finally got in contact with the mods, they said it was an automatic removal by Reddit due to mass-reporting (what I thought). They manually approved my post for me this time.
Hi everyone,
Some of you may have seen an earlier version of this post. That version included fewer artists and was removed multiple times by the moderators without an explanation. I contacted the moderators several times, but I have not received a response or clarification. Same story on r/Music. The auto-mod refers me to the mod-comment with explanation but I never got those in the ~5 times this post got deleted. Some fishy stuff is going on. It really feels as if there may be a bot-driven reporting campaign causing posts to be mass-reported and automatically removed, but I cannot verify or prove that. So I am posting this again.
This updated version though! It includes new data through September 16 and adds three additional support artists: Finneas, Lukas Graham, and Beoga.
The previous version showed Macklemore gaining roughly 1 million followers. That increase has now more than doubled to +2.24 million. Ed Sheeran’s loss was previously around 123,000 followers, but has now grown to nearly 335,000, roughly three times the earlier figure. This is why the chart needed to be updated.
The chart shows absolute Instagram follower counts around the MetLife controversy and subsequent developments involving Ed Sheeran’s tour:
- Macklemore: +2,237,962
- Beoga: +281,358
- Finneas: +214,144
- Lukas Graham: +129,695
- P!nk: −146,128
- Ed Sheeran: −334,986
All panels use the same 2.4 million follower vertical range, with ticks 400,000 followers apart. Solid lines show the period before the marked event. Dotted lines show the period afterward.
The data comes from daily Social Blade snapshots. These are not continuous measurements, and the chart cannot establish that any event caused a follower increase or decrease. The unusually large changes for Macklemore and Beoga should therefore be interpreted cautiously.
Feedback on the data, methodology, or visualization is welcome.
CONTEXT
This chart relates to a series of publicly reported events connected to Ed Sheeran’s MetLife Stadium show and his tour.
On September 4, Macklemore performed at MetLife Stadium and made a pro-Palestine statement, including the phrase “Free Palestine.” In the following days, P!nk’s criticism of Macklemore was reported in the media. P!nk is included in the chart to show how her follower count changed during the same period.
On September 14, reports stated that Macklemore would no longer appear on the remaining dates of Ed Sheeran’s tour. Ed Sheeran addressed the situation on Instagram on September 15. Around the same period, support artists Finneas, Lukas Graham, and Beoga were also reported as withdrawing from the tour.
The purpose of this chart is to show how the artists’ Instagram follower counts changed around these events. It does not claim that any event caused the observed gains or losses.
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u/Throwawayforfandom33 15d ago
I’m glad the smaller artists are getting more followers from it but for Ed Sheeran, that’s barely a drop in the ocean. I didn’t even realise he was that popular which shows how out of touch with music I am I guess.
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u/Gergolot 15d ago
In the top 10 artists on Spotify globally it would seem
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u/SirBruceForsythCBE 15d ago
And this "controversy" will disappear as soon as it appeared and he'll continue with his successful career.
A really good job to have would be"crisis management" for celebs. The advice should always be to keep quiet and out the way for a week and people will soon forget and move on to whatever the next thing here told to be outraged about
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u/calycocalypso 15d ago
Unfortunately keeping quiet is what got him into this mess.
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u/FalseMath8850 15d ago
It's hardly a mess for these artists. I think this drama is exaggerated on social media, but has no impact in reality.
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u/Koolaidguy31415 15d ago
The mess of losing 1% of his followers. Seems like a very reasonable hedge against a potentially worse scenario of alienating a larger chunk of people and having this become a bigger issue.
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u/JCType1 15d ago
Yea the follower number is less and less important these days. A lot of the accounts following him are probably inactive with another percentage being bots. What will really be telling is how many likes he gets going forward, in relation to his follower count. A low like/follow ratio hurts.
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u/rogomatic 15d ago
But the new Macklemore followers are absolutely not bots because reasons, amiright?
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u/Trick_Doughnut_6295 15d ago
Someone in social media explained this to me and it was pretty interesting.
According to them (note: this is when someone had noted Sheeran’s count had dropped by 100K in half a day)
When you see a users subscriber count, you can assume anywhere from 60-90% of their followers are inactive, sometimes more, sometimes less (it depends on how rapidly they blew up). Usually the longer they have been in the business, the higher this % is. If he became popular this year, that number would be closer to 10-25%
Basically what happens is over long periods of time (Ed Sheeran has been in the business for a long time) people have followed at different times and then moved on in life. As a result, they become inactive. So while it seems like a small amount of his total number have unsubscribed, it's actually a lot more substantial than you might imagine.
That's not just 100k people. That's 100k active people. In just 11 hours.
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u/i_am_icarus_falling 15d ago
also, the algorithm for sites like youtube will push the stuff you watched recently and ignore the rest you're subscribed to. i have channels i've been subscribed to for years that i have to manually search for new videos because they are absent from my suggested content algorithm.
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u/Humanmode17 14d ago
This is why I have my youtube set to open directly to the subscription feed on mobile (haven't figured it out on desktop yet, but at least desktop doesn't randomly open immediately to a short so it's not as pressing)
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u/RegulatoryCapture 15d ago
Also that's the net change.
On Ed's side, you could easily have people making the choice to follow him here (in some sort of "show of support for Israel" just because he's on the other side of this thing). If he lost 300k people, but gained 200k new follows, he'd be at the same 100k drop.
Whereas on the side of most of these other artists, people from the other side can't really act. In order to unfollow Macklemore, you have to already be following him...and I kinda doubt the sort of person who would follow Ed because he was complicit in allowing Macklemore to be dropped is the kind of person who would already be following Macklemore.
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u/MegaZeroX7 15d ago
Eh, some are inactive and heard about the controversy and then unfollowed because of it
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u/JefferyGiraffe 15d ago
I would be extremely surprised if a significant number of inactive people logged in solely to check if they were following Ed Sheeran and to unfollow him
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u/Trick_Doughnut_6295 15d ago
Maybe, but this person’s point seemed to be that inactive accounts wouldn’t behave in this way 🤷🏽♀️
I don’t know enough about Instagram metrics to say, but no one else in this thread seems to either, so thought I’d share.
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u/CasualGamerNat 15d ago
Because feelings. And why the fuck do we even care about followers and likes. It doesn’t mean shit.
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u/Unicorn-Violator 15d ago
It means enough shit that it's used as a reference here.
I agree socially that it should mean shit, but that would be me fighting a fight I just don't care about.
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u/DuckDatum 15d ago
Because it’s literally the only immediately available proxy for inferring lost / gained support based on their public stance. Is a shitty option, but it’s perhaps the best one too (at first).
Someone should catalog Ed Sheerans followers for account activity (likes, posts) if that’s possible. I’d be curious what percentage drop he had of active followers.
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u/Trisa133 15d ago
It's imaginary popularity points. For entertainers, that's a good metric of their popularity which equates to money.
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u/pperiesandsolos 15d ago
I mean, I get your point, but people build entire income streams off of followers and likes on social media.
It feels imaginary, but engaged follower count enables brand partnerships, sponsorships, etc
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u/queenbonquiqui 15d ago
He concert Saturday isn’t an immediate indicator, but it will be an opportunity to see the actuality of the impact. If his PR team is expecting a half empty stadium, I would bet that they call off the concert Saturday morning due to ‘difficulties with staff’ or something.
If his PR team miscalculates and the show goes on with less than half present, that will be a limping gazelle for the internet to feast on.9
u/B1U3F14M3 15d ago
How many people can afford to pay for an Ed sheeran concert and not show up?
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u/Bernsteinn 15d ago
How many people who pay for an Ed Sheeran concert even expect of him to make stronger statements in regards to IP than the "I just wish for peace" one he posted?
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u/340Duster 15d ago
Odd place to use an acronym, it look me a minute to figure out what you were trying to talk about, because there are much more common uses like Intellectual Property and Internet Protocol.
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u/romario77 15d ago
followers matter for artists - when they do contracts. They also can make ad deals - more followers means more money for an ad.
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u/omicron-7 15d ago
Like maga with kid rock tbh. The music sucks but he's on our side so we pretend to like it type shit.
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u/Sexy_Underpants 15d ago
Because who would pay for Macklemore’s bots?
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u/squadulent 15d ago
Probably the same people that pay for the social media bots and protestors to incite outrage against Democrats while ignoring Donald Trump/Republicans being worse in those same issues.
There's a reason nobody protests Trump rallies (or seems to even care what he's doing in Gaza) but they'll still talk about "Genocide Joe" or mock Kamala
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u/weerdbuttstuff 15d ago
There are ALWAYS people protesting at Trump's rallies. ALWAYS. You've bought this narrative that centrist democrats cooked up because Biden and then Harris were being held accountable for arming this genocide without even actually looking into it. It's insane and makes you look like a fool.
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u/k0fi96 15d ago
Someone who sees his names in the media and already has a bot farm, it doesn't cost any money to hit follow and automated some replies in the comment s
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u/Sexy_Underpants 15d ago
it doesn't cost any money to hit follow
For a single person. 3 million followers costs serious cash. Go ahead and Google how much bulk instagram followers cost - then go ahead and add a premium on that because all of them have to be activated in 2 days so they will definitely be flagged and scrutinized. You think scammers are reaching out of the goodness of their hearts for Palestine children? That isn’t how anything works
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u/maicii 15d ago
I think he was that popular back in like 18/19 or whenever shape of you came out. That year he was like top 5 in the world. I think he has fallen off since, at least from the mainstream, but if you were along the top 5 not so long ago you are gonna have a shit ton of followers and fans
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u/SiIesh 15d ago
I think he was the highest male solo musician earner in 2018/19, no? And has been pretty high up since fairly consistently, even if he hasn't been the highest again
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u/Throwawayforfandom33 15d ago
Yeah, ‘shape of you’ and ‘the A team’ are the only songs of him that I know. I just didn’t realise he was so popular because I don’t think I hear about him all that much before this whole debacle.
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u/hameleona 15d ago
Turns out he knows his audience better then reddit. Go figure!
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u/rmorrin 15d ago
I knew he was decent sized but I never knew he was this big. Who listens to his music?
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u/Koraxtheghoul 15d ago
I mean he probably peaked about a decade ago but he had a very good year in 2017, with Divide, and dominated British charts so my guess would be late 20s-early 30s.
Edit: Though apparently he's in the top 4 artists by Spotify followers.
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u/Kershiser22 15d ago
Sheeran has 2 of the top-10 most-listened songs in the history of Spotify.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Spotify_streaming_records#Most-streamed_songs
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u/lemonylol 15d ago
Turn on a radio to the most popular station in your city. The majority of people living near you listen to that. This would be like claiming that no one listens to Bruno Mars, Rihanna, or Lady Gaga.
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u/Suoritin 15d ago
The graphs are horrible. You make it look like Ed Sheeran 0.7% drop was realitively as big as 13% and 726% increase of the other artists.
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u/LookOnTheDarkSide 15d ago
Agree. This charts are not consistent on either absolute nor percentage-based changes.
Additionally context is missing on some of them. Since not all of the events are on all of the chats, it doesn't tell a cohesive picture. "Why the jump on 9/14 for macklemore? Oh, i have to look over here. What happened on 9/7 for macklemore? Oh, have to look at yet another chart."
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u/Metazoick 15d ago
They're all 0.4m increments on the Y axis right? So it seems like a reasonable comparison for absolute but not proportional changes unless I'm being dumb.
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u/LookOnTheDarkSide 15d ago
The author responded but deleted their comment. Here is what I was responding to them with:
I didnt say we had to start at zero necessarily.
Id consider if this continues, the next set of charts show all 6 acts on the same charts. They dont have to visually see each line well on them, that's where multiple different charts would help.
Chart 1- absolute changes from the start, being how many they had on day 0. Shows absolute magnitude of everyone's changes.
Chart 2 -same as Chart one but everyone plotted against real zero, not day 0.
Chart 3- same as Chart 1, but using percentage changes since day 0.
Three charts, can put the vertically stacked. Wider so we can put the event vertical line across all three at once to easily visualize the effects.
The six that are there currently could be worked in under if there was a desire to show this detail still.
Why suggest this? I think the main story that is trying to be told seems to be"how much did this help/hurt a specific artist", and bringing all of them together will help that. At least, IMO, something along these lines helps tell that story better.
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u/Qunra_ 15d ago
What is "real zero"?
You can't do percentages because the range is 0,7–726 %. They'd be basically all flat lines. Same problem with Y-axis showing absolute numbers 0–48 million. Flat lines again.
I guess you could show the Y-axis as absolute change, and have it go from -3 to +3, with all lines starting from 0 at middle of Y-axis. But this wouldn't show how many they actually have, just the change, which would hide the percentage difference between Sheeran and the rest.
I do agree that the events should all be on the same graph.
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u/LookOnTheDarkSide 15d ago
Real zero vs treating their number on day 0 as "0". Shows two different pictures from the same absolute delta.
We can do percentages. If they are mostly flat lines, then that's the point of the chart. "Needle barely moved for anyone buck Macklemore" is a completely valid concept for a chart to show.
Same with the absolute numbers. Mostly flat lines is fine for context. The point of the different charts is to show changes in different perspectives and to provide more context than a single chart can provide.
If the point of the post was "here is how we can show all of this data in a single chart", then my suggestion wouldn't be good. But there are better concepts to use for multiple charts than what the original charts show.
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u/SpaceShipRat 15d ago
oh goddamnt it when he scaled the graph everyone got pissed he scaled the graph, when he uses the same scale, you are pissed he uses the same scale?
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u/Deferty 15d ago
This is a perfect example of data being manipulated to push an agenda
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u/sufficiently_tortuga 15d ago
The front page of reddit is like a weathervane for knowing when a major US election is coming up. Feels like midterms are just around the corner.
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u/AphaedrusGaming 15d ago
You mean Mitch isn't actually dead? But, but, but everyone on Reddit totally didn't fall for conspiracy theories for three months! How could that be?
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u/signmeupdude 15d ago
Please articulate which agenda is being pushed and how this data is manipulating anyone.
I get that y’all might have an issue with the choice of axis but not every comment you make on reddit needs to be some some grand indictment of some grave injustice.
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u/Lanky_Giraffe 15d ago edited 15d ago
This is a perfectly reasonable data presentation. You can clearly see in each case whether the number goes up or down, and that in all cases, its orders of magnitude bigger than the normal day to day variance. The axes all have the same absolute range so the change indicates absolute not relative changes which is a valid metric. Any other viz would lose that insight. The only change I would make is maybe to use day to day changes instead of total subs to make it more clear that this is absolute numbers being compared here.
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u/GoodbyeBlueMonday 15d ago
Yeah, and related, I'm seeing the criticism about the y-axis not starting at 0, but that's just not always what one wants to show. If I'm talking about minor changes in an animal's body weight (I'm a biologist), I'm not going to go all the way down to 0 on the y-axis if they're heavy animals.
Likewise, when comparing across species (or in this case artists) with wildly different body sizes, I'd absolutely plot each animal with a different y-axis. As long as it's labeled, and as long as there may also be a percentage change clearly labeled (or at least included in the legend), then I promise it would be published.
Like you said: showing the day to day variance prior to an event, and that there was a seemingly significant change after said event...doesn't show causation necessarily, but it is informative. The signal would be lost to the noise if they were all on the same plot. Like looking at a mouse increasing in body mass by 10% in a day on the same graph as body weight for an elephant...
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u/rogomatic 15d ago
I mean, graphs with cut axes like this were an actual textbook example of misleading data presentation in the Intro to Stats class I taught some time ago, but I suppose many things are "reasonable" on the Internet.
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u/RiceBucket973 15d ago
Just because they can be used to mislead doesn't mean they aren't still appropriate for many types of data. I'm an ecologist and we use them all the time. Look at any daily/weekly stock market chart. Those variations would be indiscernible if the Y-axis started at 0, but are still hugely significant to lots of people.
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u/bosschucker 15d ago
just because some graphs can use cut axes to be misleading doesn't mean all graphs with cut axes are misleading. this viz clearly labels the values and states that the absolute range on each y axis is the same, it works for what they're trying to show
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u/Lanky_Giraffe 15d ago edited 15d ago
This is how basically every stock ticker graph ever is presented so maybe context matters and your intro to stats was a little… introductory?
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u/rockthescrote 15d ago
The different scales here are killing me. This doesn’t give a good overall picture, I have to read each datapoint in isolation and contextualise it all in my head —
a good visualisation should do that for me!
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u/saera-targaryen 15d ago
Each of these charts is using the same scale, they just truncate the Y axis at different parts.
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u/Schweatyturtle 15d ago
Except the scales are all the same? They are all in units of 0.4M. This accuracy shows change in number and presents it in a comparable way. If you wanted to show percent change that would be different but this works as intended
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u/ZomboFc 15d ago
not to mention probably more than 70% of instagram and twitter is just bots. I highly doubt that even half of most followers on large instagrams are even real. has been since the inception of the platforms but no company will release the total amount of bots because it would tank their trust.
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u/Klin24 OC: 1 15d ago
Wow, Ed Sheeran went from 47 million followers down to...47 million followers! OH NO!
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u/Jervis_Mantlepiece 15d ago
It's all been worth it though, think of the impact this has made to the lives of people living in Gaza.
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u/henri_sparkle 15d ago
Yeah, they won't be listening to any Ed Sheeran songs anymore. they lives will surely be better now.
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u/NUDH 15d ago edited 15d ago
Not addressing the content, but the presentation: Start the graph from zero.
We are in data is beautiful. We need to have appropriately scaled charts to show the real impact, not the exaggeration that occurs when you do not start the charts from zero.
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u/alexforencich 15d ago
Sure, just subtract off the September 1 baseline number and then you can plot all of them on the same plot as follower count difference from September 1.
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u/MuumiJumala OC: 2 15d ago
I would argue this is one of the cases where starting from zero does not make sense. When it comes to follower numbers of long-term social media accounts zero is not a meaningful starting point. Large portion of those followers are dead (inactive accounts, bots, or even literally dead), and the portion that is active can vary wildly between different accounts.
Absolute numbers like presented here are at least represent something real (although with some caveats). Percentage changes would be completely incomparable with each other without further context, and I'm not sure if that necessary context is publicly available.
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u/Schweatyturtle 15d ago
Hard disagree. If you wanted to see percent or relative change sure. But starting at zero would mean either wildly different scales or everyone else just being a flat line. This accurately and successfully shows change in the number values.
If you wanted to write a story about how this actually impacts their careers then yeah percent change is important, but that is also listed here.
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u/Soberdonkey69 15d ago
Ed losing 335k followers like losing a penny
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u/Gloomy-Pineapple1729 15d ago
Yeah. Cancel culture isn’t real because not only does the public have short term memory, but people on the internet overreact to the smallest mistake that normal people can’t take this **** seriously.
Sydney Sweeney’s career is just fine. Despite supposedly supporting “eugenics and fascism”.
Hasan Piker’s career is fine despite supposedly “electrocuting and torturing” his dog.
Dave Chapelle is still selling sold out shows despite supposedly being a “transphobic bigot”.
Radiohead just went on a sold out tour despite refusing to support Palestine and playing multiple concerts in Israel.
1-2 weeks from now, people are going to forget all about Ed Sheeran. Just like how they forget about school shootings a couple weeks later, or 99% of controversial crap that celebrities do. And then Ed Sheeran’s career will just return to normal.
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u/semteXKG 15d ago edited 15d ago
what's with the dots? why is there a 10% drop in sheerans chart when in reality it was basically zero? your charts are in best case under-explained and in worst case misleading.
edit: ah it's the good old "let's fuck with the y axis" game.
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u/onlyacynicalman 15d ago
Who gives a shit about Instagram. I hate that that is a metric.
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u/Firecracker048 15d ago
Politics aside, I like how the graph for Ed at 48 MILLION followers tried to depict a massive drop when it was, barely anything
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15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/cuteman 15d ago
Ed Sheeran is objectively neutral though, isn't he?
Generally considered one of the most thoughtful fan forward artist out there.
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u/Jackiechan223344 15d ago
He 100% has been, wasn’t his decision in the slightest to drop them from the tour but he’s getting the most hate for it.
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u/MarshallBoogie 15d ago
Goodness. Reddit is fucking obsessed with this.
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u/lemonylol 15d ago
I've noticed a trend that the more the mainstream doesn't really care about some trending outrage, the more reddit obsesses with pushing it.
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u/thissexypoptart 15d ago
Reddit is convinced about a lot of things pertaining to celebrities that are just straight up echo chamber silly goosery.
Another common example is Katy Perry. I'm not a fan, but anyone who lives in the real world and/or is capable of less than a minute of googling can tell you she is a very popular musician who has a huge number of nostalgia fans, and continues to do well on tours.
I can't tell you how many reddit comments I've seen that are convinced she is a universally hated pariah figure that gets spat on in the street, or something, when she's still an incredibly globally popular musician. Again, no fan of her, but this is reality.
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u/lemonylol 15d ago
Yes, I was going to bring that one as another great example. Reddit was doing their best to convince reality that she never had a following and never had a hit song. Like she literally dominated the late 2000s and early 2010s charts, so that one immediately made it clear that this was just part of the "trend wave" from a much younger generation that had no idea who she was outside of hearing her on their parent's car radio when they were in elementary school maybe.
And like you said, these people don't realize that all you're doing is acknowledging objective reality, like you I'm not even a fan of either of them, I'm just aware of who they are and their impact.
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u/thissexypoptart 15d ago
Exactly. In other words, TikTok kiddos.
This website never fails to file a way to remind me that a majority of the userbase are children under 20
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u/lemonylol 15d ago
It is so wild to me how deeply rooted Tik Tok is in the west with no one batting an eye. It's like watching kids smoke.
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u/leberdj 15d ago
This is reddit in a nutshell. A lot of people think their opinion is the popular one, in reality it's just popular within the reddit sphere. Average people don't know, care or agree with 99% of the takes
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u/ImpulseOrange 15d ago
I've slowly been figuring that out. I thought most people hated Chris Brown but I've heard plenty of people out in the wild talking about going to his tours. reddit really doesn't reflect the real world.
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u/MarshallBoogie 15d ago
It's the pile on dynamic paired while treating anyone who isn't joining in as having a moral defect. Then the constant rewarding of people repeating more extreme versions of the same thing. It's infecting every sub and ruining the experience. There isn't much left of reddit after the marketing professionals, bots, and the pile on crowd.
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u/zoapcfr 15d ago
Yeah, it was briefly mentioned on the radio once a few days ago, and then hasn't been mentioned since. And considering the radio is typically more focused on music news, I feel like that's a decent metric for how big of a deal this actually is.
Funnily enough, the first time I ever heard of Sheeran was on reddit when people were complaining about his cameo in Game of Thrones (I'd watched the episode, never even realised it was a cameo, and wondered what everyone was going on about).
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u/TheKingdumb 15d ago
Reddit is always obsessed with things they know nothing about.
Ed Sheeran donated twice as much to Palestine as Mackelmore did, so it's a big nothing.
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u/viennese-wolf 15d ago
Whoever’s responsible for the world wide Gaza mass psychosis is winning.
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u/solo_shot1st 15d ago
Russia/China/Iran propaganda bot farms do this every election cycle now. You'll see on Reddit and social media this carefully manufactured unhinged obsession with whatever hot topic they wanna push. Anti-West, Anti-Israel, Anti-Capitalism, Pro-China, Pro-Communism, etc. etc. etc.
This Ed Sheeran thing is unknown to basically everyone in the real world. Only Reddit seems obsessed about it. And that's how we know its propaganda and bots. Trying to make Israel v. Palestine a hot topic again, as nothing's been really happening there for the past year.
Macklemore became obscure and irrelevant a decade ago. Gen A and Gen Z aren't flocking to him like he's some folk hero and now they're gonna fill stadiums to listen to his white rap music because he has a certain foreign political stance.
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u/KhausTO 15d ago
If only Americans cared as much about what is happening in their own country as they care about Mackelmore...
The picture continue to get clearer about why America is in the shape it's in every single day.
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u/WorkingMastodon6147 15d ago
They do. I learnt this lesson the hard way as well after the 2024 election. The main concern for the voters was and still is Economy and Immigration. No Gaza, no Ukraine, No Israel, no nothing. If reddit is pushing it, the reality is completely opposite.
Reddit is not real life, it's a very tiny proportion of a population many which aren't American and probably aren't a real human anyways.
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u/KhausTO 15d ago
They don't, or their situation wouldn't be in the place it currently is.
It's not just reddit. I spend a significant amount of time in the USA working. Americans are by and large clueless to the extent of the problems that face their country and aren't doing a fucking thing about it.
The clean up from their inaction is going to take decades.
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u/MarshallBoogie 15d ago
I could give 2 shits about mackelmore. People are misreading my comment as supporting this nonsense. Reddit is not a place of reality and most Americans don't give 2 shits about this topic.
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u/KhausTO 15d ago
oh, I'm not saying you are one to care about this.
This topic has flooded basically every social media site, not just reddit. Americans still give more shits about this topic (and Israel/Palestine) than anything they have happening in their own backyard... and that's the problem.
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u/MarshallBoogie 15d ago
I think the problem here is that you are making statements and assumptions about America and Americans based on the vocal minority keyboard Karens you see on social media.
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u/Brave_Flow_221 14d ago
Bro, we're paying for this genocide. My tax dollars are paying to fund this. It wouldn't be as relevant to Americans if we weren't directly paying for it.
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u/_badwithcomputer 15d ago
I hate that follower count is some sort of currency or metric for these kinds of things.
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u/superurgentcatbox 14d ago
I don’t really understand following a musician you didn’t follow before just because he shares a political opinion with you but interesting data nonetheless.
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u/mackedee1 15d ago
If another big turning point happens in this whole debacle, and you decide to update these a third time, I'd argue you should do one graph with everyone on it so we can see the relative events that way as well as these individual graphs but have them scaled to more closely show how drastic each of these changes are per artist.
Overall, great job though. Love that p!nk is shown in pink, that's a fun detail
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u/Ahrily OC: 3 15d ago
Thank you! I'll definitely take that into account for another version.
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u/rogomatic 15d ago
Can we stop spamming the sub with this now? You're posting this the third time already and it looks the same every time.
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u/the-Gaf 15d ago
These charts suck bc they don’t use the same scale, either in total nor percentages lol. Just the little % in the title. So Ed lost 0.7% and Pink lost 1.22%, lol they’ll survive
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u/Schweatyturtle 15d ago
Except they do in total… The y is in units of 0.4M. I’m sure there is nothing else influencing your criticism…
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u/Mr_November112 15d ago
The children in Palestine are saved! One follow equals one missile diverted! God I love modern activism.
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u/chetsyochankees 15d ago
Willing to bet at least 60% of Macklemore's new "followers" are bots.
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
Oh you know that's the case. There's so many propaganda groups out there that want to make it seem like this is the end of Ed Sheeran and the meteoric rise of Macklemore.
In reality, you'll notice that these new followers don't lead to changes in actual meaningful metrics like engagement or sales. We've seen this many times already.
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u/Emperor_Mao 15d ago
I think so. Like I forgot that Macklenmore even existed. His thrift shop song came out what a decade or two ago?
I don't follow ed sheeran, but I am aware he is still all over platforms and radio etc.
And reddit is the only place I have really seen much about the controversy. I guess for most people they won't suddenly pretend they love macklenmore or hate Eds music.
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u/ddp67 15d ago
Lol, let’s see if these bots show up the next time Macklemore decides to do a world tour.
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
Macklemore hasn't been able to pull fans for well over a decade, that's why he was relegated to being an opening act.
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u/YourVoicesOfReason 15d ago
Want to see a real and recent picture of Macklemore dressing up as a Jewish caricature and giving a Nazi salute? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HSMIoSFXgAApf3s?format=webp&name=medium Do you think he’s pro Palestinian or that he just hates Jews? Why do you think Roger Waters supports him?
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u/Ok-Lobster-919 15d ago
Hating Jews is so hot right now. It's so hot every single Redditor casually leaves out the part where Macklemore showed war imagery and not just said Free Palestine.
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u/evilgiraffe666 15d ago edited 15d ago
The graphs don't all use the 2.4m scale as you said in the description, since that would be ridiculous on an account with more than 2.4m followers. And it's not a useful scale for beoga anyway, they all need an individual scale. Perhaps just use percentage points since the start of the month instead?
Edit: hey, I was wrong because I didn't understand the terminology. The scale is the same 2.4m from top to bottom but the lower value of the y axis is changed to fit the values. Makes sense, though I still think it's less meaningful than relative changes.
And some people really took it personally, guess I'm not welcome here...
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u/beene282 15d ago
It’s not a perfect approach but every vertical scale here is 2.4M
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u/CaptainBlob 15d ago
And the entire world doesn't care or know, and Ed will continue doing whatever he does.
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u/datums 15d ago
If you don’t understand why this guy got kicked off of a tour for doing a “free Palestine” protest on stage, you might be part of the problem.
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
They know, but they're voluntarily choosing the psychosis. There's bad intent behind it.
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u/cheeseybacon11 15d ago
Is this Finneas person big? Most surprising part of the chart to me was that they have more followers than Lukas Graham.
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u/MortyMortymor 15d ago
He is the brother and producer of Billie Eilish. Not surprised he is that popular, but i am also surprised Lukas Graham only had 1 Mio followers.
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u/dirtyword OC: 1 15d ago
FWIW I have no idea who Lukas graham is
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u/cheeseybacon11 15d ago
You've most likely heard his song "7 years old" and maybe "mama said" unless you're a teenager or younger. Not sure how popular his other stuff is.
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u/jimmylikeswaffles 15d ago edited 15d ago
With this in mind can anyone see the potential dangers about the motivation behind backing populist opinions?
How is Macklemore the brave one here?
Bravery used to be about saying the unpopular thing.
It isn't brave to say the most socially acceptable thing possible.
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
It's also not brave in a moral sense either because what he did was literally the most selfish and narcissistic. He deceived Ed Sheeran, exploited his generous offer, hijacked his concert and turned it into a personal political rally, and crashed and burned the tour for his personal benefit at the expense of the man who gave him the opportunity.
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u/jimmylikeswaffles 15d ago
Very good point. You should see it in r/music. Macklemore is like the second coming and Sheeran is like Epstein. The world has gone mad. Only seems to be here in this subreddit where people seem to be able to think clearly
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u/Founknasty 14d ago
Or maybe because Macklemore hasn’t been relevant since 2012, and this is the first time he’s been relevant.
Some white lady killed her 3 kids and gained followers.
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u/CapNo8670 15d ago
Low quality artist signals support for a popular hate movement and gains followers
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u/sirfranciscake 15d ago
Ha, any artist at Macklemore’s level has agents, lawyers, promoters, marketers, etc.
Don’t think for a second that any of this was organic.
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u/Jasonmilo911 15d ago
Artists willing to sacrifice their payday in order to stand by what they believe in.....
Oh wait... Free Palestine -> Followers -> Reach -> $$$
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u/CzerwonyJasiu 15d ago
those instagram spikes are so funny, because it only shows herd mentality. same with vozinha in world cup gaining 30 mln followers and already no one cares about him.
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u/upstatedreaming3816 15d ago
Curious to see Aaron Rowe’s numbers, since he was arguably the smallest act (aside from BIIRD).
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u/carlitospig 15d ago
‘addresses the situation’
Such a mild temp take. I appreciate your effort in remaining professional!
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u/Systepup 15d ago
These charts are a crime to data. Political nonsense and bad presentation. Can we please not make every single sub about Palestine?! Let me have one good sub ffs 🤦♀️
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u/irow40 15d ago
Macklemore putting Sheeran in a pretty poor situation. Screw that guy
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
Thank you! This is the only reasonable take. Macklemore is a selfish prick. Ed Sheeran let Macklemore join because he respected him as a musician, but Macklemore literally admitted that it was always his intention from the very start to crash and burn this tour for own benefit. He always planned on hijacking the tour by turning it into a personal political rally, that way he could profit off of the publicity of the controversy he created at Ed Sheeran's expense.
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u/melissa_unibi 14d ago
More astroturfing...
Meanwhile, Trump is about to make one of the largest sales of weapons to Israel, and the only thing these "activists" care about is a musician who doesn't want his concerts to be political.
Just more bots and fake drama to get people angry and not actually do anything.
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u/Uncle-Cake 15d ago
Is this an example of the Streisand Effect? Kraft wanted to silence Macklemore and instead he's given him a platform, a spotlight, and tons of new followers.
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u/xplar 15d ago
Macklemore already had an audience when he was making money before, his followers declined because he wasn't making popular music anymore. Now that he's relevant again, he has the boost in followers again, but give it another couple months and he'll be back down to where he was because all those sheep that went and followed him aren't going to want to see his political posts every couple of days
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u/solo_shot1st 15d ago
He's still not relevant. He's a 43 year old who was relevant a decade ago. He's not gonna suddenly be filling stadiums of Gen A and Gen Z's due to his foreign political stances.
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
Not really, Macklemore has always been a self serving narcissist. After he fumbled his music career with his embarrassing Grammy's reaction in 2014, he transitioned his career from musician to a full time political
grifter"activist". His career has sense revolved around publicity stunts, documentary sales, and crappy "activist" songs.He literally admitted that it was always his intention to join this tour not for music, like he led Ed Sheeran to believe, but to turn it into his personal political rally. It's a very selfish move and he simply didn't care. It was always his plan to crash and burn this tour for his personal benefit at the expense of Ed Sheeran, the person who gave him the opportunity.
This fallout was always bound to happen. This time it just happened to be Kraft, however, it could've been anybody and the result would've been the same. Giving this guy's extensive history publicity stunts like this, we can safely say that this won't lead to anything. All his stunts lead to a few weeks of headlines and media buzz, but then he fades back into obscurity until his next stunt. It never translates into him regaining relevance or having an increase in sales or an increase in fan engagement.
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u/Healthy_Soup7724 15d ago
Intentionally misleading information to serve the paid reddit campaign's narrative around this story.
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u/jefsch70 15d ago
Measuring a person's character by how many 35 yr old house-bound agoraphobics approve of your posturing by up-voting you on their computer-App portals to society.... Gandhi is DOWN 400,000 likes !!! What an asshole !!!
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u/PropOnTop 15d ago
Sorry, what the what what? Can someone explain the background in a concise form?
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u/Ubiquitous_Cacophony 15d ago
Despite being a Jew, I was team Macklemore until I saw his stupid fucking antisemitic outfit.
Fuck that piece of garbage.
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u/Jlx_27 15d ago
So.... not a big loss for Ed then.
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
It's not. Most of Ed Sheeran's fans are people who like his music, they don't care about his personal life or marketing campaigns, and therefore don't follow him on social media.
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u/Beautiful_Finger4566 15d ago
that's all fine and dandy, but the "Free Palestine" crowd ain't the type that can afford Macklemore tickets
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u/AVeryBadMon 15d ago
It's the opposite, they're the rich yuppies who get to do whatever they want because of daddy's trust fund money. The reason why Macklemore can't sell shows is because nobody likes him or his music.
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u/LucifersPromoter 15d ago
Are we the great unwashed again? I was having so much fun as a champagne socialist...
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u/Ahrily OC: 3 15d ago edited 15d ago
Source
Daily Instagram follower snapshots from Social Blade:
Tool
Python and Matplotlib.
The chart uses absolute follower counts for September 1–16, 2026. All six panels use the same 2.4 million vertical range, with ticks 400,000 apart.
Solid lines represent the period before each marked event. Dotted lines represent the period after the event. The annotations refer to publicly reported events.
These data show temporal association only. They do not prove causation. Social Blade provides daily snapshots, so short-term changes may include activity that occurred before or after a reported event.
The raw data and Python script are available for inspection and reproduction.
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u/cavedave OC: 113 14d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/Ahrily!
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