How we count, in plain answers
This page answers the questions we are actually asked about how Ground Frequency counts: what a MiSFY Score is, what a rank does and does not mean, how venue events are counted, and what you may do with the data. Figures are as of 2026-09-02, issue 2026-W36.
Longer form, with the reasoning: methodology · editorial policy
ON THIS PAGE
What is Ground Frequency?What is a MiSFY Score?Does a higher rank mean a bigger artist?What are the audience tiers?How deep does each chart go?How do you count venue events?What does 'tracked room' mean?How is genre assigned?How often does everything update?Can I cite or reuse your data?Is there a data download or an API?What makes you write a piece instead of just charting?Can an artist, label or venue pay for coverage?Who writes the pieces?My artist or venue data is wrong. How do I fix it?Why do some artist or venue pages say they are not in search results?Why is my city not listed under scenes?What is Ground Frequency?
Ground Frequency is an independent data-journalism desk covering the world's live and underground music scenes. We track 22,081 venues in 109 countries and score 3,070 artists for momentum, publish weekly rising charts for both artists and rooms, and write pieces only when the data crosses a threshold set in advance. It is published by Pride of Misfits, Inc. and edited by Richard Song.
What is a MiSFY Score?
MiSFY Score is a momentum measure, not a size measure. It evaluates growth, consistency and acceleration across an artist's tracked channels — currently Instagram and YouTube, with Spotify and TikTok expanding. We publish the evaluation areas and the channels but not the weights, formulas or thresholds, so the score stays robust against gaming. A score of 85 or above is what we call the rising line.
Does a higher rank mean a bigger artist?
No. GF Rising ranks momentum only, so a 700-follower band can and does finish above a 400,000-follower headliner. That is why every charted row also carries an audience tier — a plain follower band, printed so a reader can tell which is which before reading anything into the ranking. The tier changes nothing about the rank.
What are the audience tiers?
Local is under 1,000 followers, Regional 1,000 to 10,000, National 10,000 to 100,000, Continental 100,000 to 1 million, and World above 1 million. World-tier artists are excluded from the artist chart entirely — an established star is not a rising one. Venues are not filtered this way, because an arena is a legitimate part of a scene's map.
How deep does each chart go?
Chart depth scales with coverage and never exceeds half the pool it is drawn from: at least 60 scored accounts run a Top 30, at least 40 a Top 20, at least 20 a Top 10. Below 20 scored accounts the chart stays closed rather than publishing a list that holds most of its own field. Signed-in readers see a further 20 rows below the published depth.
How do you count venue events?
An event counts when a tracked venue announces it with a confirmed date. The activity figures on this site are counts of those dated events inside a trailing 28-day window, per country or per city. It is a coverage-weighted signal of what our registry sees announced — not a census of everything that happens, and not attendance.
What does 'tracked room' mean?
A room is a venue in the MiSFY registry that has passed venue classification — it exists, it programmes live music, and it has a verifiable identity. Rooms carry their own chart, ranked on the growth of the venue's own audience rather than on who played there. Registry status is not an endorsement and does not affect coverage.
How is genre assigned?
Genre is evidence-based, never guessed. Performance data comes first — an artist listed in a show's cast or title, or programmed by a venue whose genre is established. Then how the artist entered our tracking, then an editor's call, and last self-declaration matched on fixed keywords. Where nothing supports a call we leave it blank rather than invent one.
How often does everything update?
Charts publish weekly, every Monday, for every scene we cover. The current issue is 2026-W36. Front-page activity counts and the room index move daily as the registry ingests. Written pieces do not publish on a schedule — they publish when a trigger fires and the subject carries enough verifiable record to write from.
Can I cite or reuse your data?
Yes. Data is published under CC BY 4.0 — reuse it with attribution and a link. Cite the frozen weekly URL rather than the live one: a live chart URL changes every Monday and will not say what you quoted it as saying. The format is: Ground Frequency. “<headline>”. GF Rising, 2026-W36. <frozen url>.
Is there a data download or an API?
Every issue ships as CSV and JSON at /data/, and every chart has an embeddable frame at /embed/rising/<country>/ that carries the week and the source with it. There is no REST API today. A machine index of the site, including the citation rule, is published at https://www.groundfreq.com/llms.txt.
What makes you write a piece instead of just charting?
A trigger set in advance: a chart debut, a rank surge or slide of at least 3 places, a score crossing the 85 rising line from below, or a scene's chart opening. Every trigger that fires is logged on its desk page whether or not it became a story, and we cap pieces at 4 a week across all desks. A quiet week is allowed to be quiet.
Can an artist, label or venue pay for coverage?
No. Coverage is never for sale and listing status never shapes coverage. Ground Frequency is operated by P.O.MFS, the company behind MiSFY, and that relationship is disclosed on every page. Whether an artist or venue is on MiSFY has no bearing on whether, or how, we cover them.
Who writes the pieces?
Richard Song is the founding editor and is responsible for editorial decisions, standards and corrections. Data Desk pieces are drafted from a locked extract of the numbers with AI assistance, then edited, fact-checked against that extract and approved by a human editor before publication. We do not publish invented bylines.
My artist or venue data is wrong. How do I fix it?
Write to [email protected]. We check the underlying data, correct genuine errors and log the correction publicly at /corrections/ with what changed and when. Corrections are attached to the piece or page they affect, and the record of the change stays up.
Why do some artist or venue pages say they are not in search results?
A reference page is offered as a search result only when it carries at least 3 rows of documented record — appearances for an artist, announced dates or matched line-ups for a room. Below that it is a few figures and a sentence. Those pages stay live, stay linked and stay open to crawlers; they are simply not submitted as results.
Why is my city not listed under scenes?
A city scene page publishes only when our registry holds at least 25 rooms in that city and 40 dated events across the trailing year. Below that the page would be a template with a different name on it. Coverage grows every week, and a city crosses the line the week its record does.
CITE THIS PAGE
Ground Frequency. “FAQ — how Ground Frequency counts”. 2026-W36. https://www.groundfreq.com/faq/
Figures are as of 2026-09-02 and move weekly. Data is published under CC BY 4.0 — reuse it with attribution and a link. How the numbers work