16 Music Week 07.12.12 VIEWPOINT DATA MANAGEMENT


“With an increased number of formats,


and the wider global spread of music, came another


massive increase in data in the form of


rights and associated territories, all


changing over time” NEIL ALLCOCK, DELOITTE


www.musicweek.com


Drowning in a galaxy of data? Music executives can learn a lot from The City, says Deloitte DATA


 BY NEIL ALLCOCK, MUSIC ANALYTICS PARTNER AT DELOITTE, THE BUSINESS ADVISORY FIRM


ABOVE Technophile: Deloitte’s Allcock says technology is the key to turning numerical nightmares into data dreams


in data in the form of rights and associated territories, all changing over time. From a technical perspective, what you now


O


n a recent visit to New York, I went with my family to the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum


of Natural History. Upon entering, a voiceover by Whoopi Goldberg tells you how the stars have multiplied over time into countless billions. Above us was a sea of stars, and you’re prompted by Whoopi to count each individual light, a task that becomes easy to lose track of after a few seconds. The analogy may be a bit tenuous, but the


music industry has experienced a similar phenomenon in data. Initially, organisations in the music industry


would collect very few pieces of data, often held on paper or printed on the recorded product. Clearly, the advent of the computer has


changed much of that. As a result, databases started to spring up, collecting that same data electronically and linking it to other related data sets, such as writers or artists. Still plenty left on paper, however. The increased number of formats would add


to that again, be it tape and CD, and more significantly from a data perspective, digital. With these formats, and the wider global spread of music, came another massive increase


end up with is multiple dimensions of one particular data asset, more appropriately known as a song. To evaluate how many data items there are in total, you have to start putting these dimensions together. For example, one song with 30 key data fields might be played out in 10 ways, in 100 different territories, with different owners over time. Of course, there are multiple versions of the song. Just on repertoire alone, linking the sound


recording to the work, you could probably end up with hundreds of millions of data records, and several billion related data items in all sorts of different places around the globe. But, it doesn’t stop there. One feature of digital is its ability to measure


usage. Most internet service providers, search engines or apps will collect data, anonymised or otherwise, whereas music subscription services will log usage on a daily basis. This creates huge files of data; in fact, in a single month, one major subscription service could create a billion lines of usage. Add to that the song-related sales data from


digital services, the streaming information from internet content publishers and the digital playlist data from venues, amongst others, and you end up with billions more data records and multiple billions of data items. Why is this important for the industry? Every single one of those data items should be used in the calculation of how the money flows to whoever should receive it. The difficulty here is clear, since handling this amount of data is hard for any industry. Stock exchanges and financial institutions provide good


examples of how to manage significant data volumes. After the digital change many years ago, these groups made their systems fully automated. Out of these industries and others, helpfully,


has come a series of technologies that can manage, process and present data in a way people can understand. Organisations and technologies are also popping up all over the music industry looking to help relevant businesses deal with the data management issue. Such solutions can now include automated


song tracking, data standards development, multi-territory databases, music specific modules in reporting and analytics, rights management and automated data quality and cleaning tools. The answer not only lies in the technology,


but also in the ability to present it back in a way that makes sense. While the tools to do this have been around for a while, sitting over the top of data warehouses and the like, one often needed a degree in computer science to figure out how to write a report on the data, never mind configure the information and fill the warehouse. Not so now. Analytical tools are so powerful


and user-friendly that music business people can easily start to interrogate the mass of data and create strategies and financial projections based on facts rather than informed guesses. To begin, you have to get the data clean and


accurate, and not be afraid to link other data sources. However, once you’ve done it, the universe becomes as clear as Whoopi’s welcome to the solar system. Even my children could understand it.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48