Smart Insights: how un:hurd turns your streaming and social data into your next move

By Sam Blackie, Head of Growth at un:hurd music

Last updated: 8 October 2026

Key Takeaways

• Smart Insights in un:hurd reads your streaming and social data together and tells you the next move in plain language, so you don't have to piece together what each dashboard means on your own.
• When you sign up and connect Spotify, un:hurd connects the social and streaming profiles it can find for you. If it can't find any straight away, it keeps searching for 24 hours and connects them automatically.
• Smart Insights counts your fans per city across all your connected platforms and flags when a city passes a milestone. Katya's London fan count passing 500 led to her supporting Parra For Cuva at the Roundhouse.
• Your daily summary leads with your biggest highlights and opportunities, and you can act on them with the social ad tool (Spotify, Meta, TikTok and YouTube, with no ad account of your own) or a Planning Cycle.

Smart Insights is the part of the un:hurd app that reads your streaming and social data together and tells you what to do next in plain language. Connect your Spotify when you sign up and un:hurd pulls in your other platforms, counts your fans city by city and flags the moments worth acting on.

Checking Spotify for Artists, Instagram and YouTube one at a time and working out what they mean together takes time most independent artists don't have. Smart Insights does that step for you, then points you to the un:hurd tool that turns the insight into a campaign or a plan.

What Smart Insights tells you

Smart Insights gives you the next move your data points to, written as a recommendation you can act on. It reads your streaming and social numbers together, so a single insight can draw on what's happening across several platforms at once.

Your daily summary brings this together. It summarises your data and leads with your biggest highlights and opportunities. Mr Eazi's daily summary, for example, puts his Shazam numbers first, because Shazam activity is one of the clearest early signs that a song is building momentum.

Four Smart Insights and what to do with each one

Each insight comes with a suggested next step inside un:hurd. Here are four you might see.

• Your Shazams spike overnight. A jump in Shazams means people are hearing your song somewhere out in the world and looking it up. Smart Insights suggests a geo-targeted ad in the city where the Shazams are highest, so you reach those people while they're still curious.
• A track's Spotify Popularity score is climbing. Smart Insights tells you the score and that a higher score makes Spotify more likely to recommend the track through playlists like Discover Weekly. The suggested move is to pitch that track to playlists in the next few days.
• Your fanbase in a city passes 500. That could be enough people to sell out a small show. Smart Insights suggests building a Fan Hub email capture page for that city, so you have people to tell as soon as you announce a date.
• Your follower growth doubles in a week. If your followers on TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram or Facebook are growing twice as fast as usual, Smart Insights suggests starting a Creative Planning Cycle to plan content that gives the new followers a reason to stay.

How un:hurd connects your streaming and social platforms

un:hurd connects your platforms for you once you've connected Spotify at sign-up. It finds the social and streaming profiles that belong to you and links them to your account, so Smart Insights has your full picture from the start.

If un:hurd can't find any of your profiles straight away, it keeps searching for 24 hours and connects them automatically when it finds them. If nothing has connected after that, or you want to add a profile it missed, message un:hurd's live chat. You can ask Woody there or speak to the un:hurd team.

How Smart Insights tracks your fans city by city

Smart Insights counts your fans in each city across all your connected platforms and flags when a city passes a milestone. Because the count covers every platform you've connected, it gives you one number for your audience in that city, which you can use to decide where to play, where to aim your ads and where to focus your promotion.

When a city crosses a milestone, Smart Insights tells you and suggests what to do about it. For a wider look at reading city, listener and follower data, see How to Use Music Analytics to Grow Your Independent Career.

Example: how Katya turned 500 London fans into a Roundhouse show

Katya's daily summary on 25 September 2026 showed her London fan count across her connected platforms had crossed 500. The same summary showed her Spotify monthly listeners at 15.2k, up 3.3% over seven days, and her YouTube views at 200.1k, up 1.4%.

Smart Insights flagged the London milestone and recommended a live show there. Katya is now supporting Parra For Cuva at the Roundhouse in London on 17 October 2026, and she's using a Live Planning Cycle in un:hurd to build awareness of the show. You can follow her on Instagram at @katyatheartist.

Turning an insight into a campaign with the social ad tool

Once Smart Insights flags a city or a song worth backing, the social ad tool lets you run a campaign around it. The tool builds and runs campaigns on Spotify, Meta, TikTok and YouTube, and you can pick simple targeting or set more specific targeting yourself. In advanced targeting you can aim the campaign at the city Smart Insights flagged or choose any other locations you want to reach.

You don't need your own ad account on any of those platforms to use the social ad tool. You choose the targeting, and un:hurd handles the setup on each platform.

Putting the next step into a Planning Cycle

A Planning Cycle turns the move Smart Insights suggests into a plan you can work through. Planning Cycles build a marketing plan around your time and your goal, across five plan types (release, business, live, creative and socials), and walk you through each task in order. Katya used a Live Planning Cycle for her Roundhouse date. You can see how Planning Cycles fit into the rest of the app in The New un:hurd: What's Changed in the Rebuilt App for 2026.

A habit that works with any analytics tool

Whatever you use to check your data, write down one action for each insight you decide to act on and put a date next to it. When the date comes round, look at the same number again to see whether the action moved it.

The short version

• Smart Insights reads your streaming and social data together and tells you the next move in plain language.
• Connect Spotify at sign-up and un:hurd connects your other profiles for you, searching for up to 24 hours if it can't find them at first. The live chat can add anything it misses.
• Smart Insights counts your fans per city across your platforms and flags milestones, like Katya's London fan count passing 500.
• Act on an insight with the social ad tool or a Planning Cycle.

Connect your Spotify at app.unhurdmusic.com and check your daily summary for the first insight worth acting on. When it flags a city or a song, start a Planning Cycle to turn it into a plan. Membership is £12.99 a month with one £6 playlist pitch included each month, or £69.99 a year with 12 pitches included (worth £72).

About the author

Sam Blackie is Head of Growth at un:hurd music, where he works on how independent artists find, use and act on their data across the un:hurd app.