Music industry executives gathered in London yesterday as part of moves by BPI – the trade body that represents music companies – and Musicmetric to enhance the sector’s digital skills.

Just as technology has become the driving force in music consumption, digital channels also now play a key part right across the entertainment business. 

The event was held at BPI’s South Bank HQ, with Musicmetric, the digital music analysts, exploring how to read fan demographics and fan locations and how to discover which artists’ tracks are being most played or talked about.

The Digital Data Training Session tackled some of the fundamental issues around knowledge, skills and everyday working to help improve business decisions and speed up processes.

Musicmetric development director, Alex Crickmay outlined some of the ways that collecting and analyzing large amounts of social media data could help better inform marketing:

“By seeing in real time which channels fans use to consume music, it’s possible to more effectively reach out to them”, he said. 

Geographically specific data – obtained by aggregating information from Twitter and other web platforms – is another fast-emerging route to finely target fans and identify markets not previously on the radar.
One example given was Billy Bragg, who discovered he had a large concentration of fans across Eastern Europe despite not having previously promoted his music there.

Because information such as site data can be tracked using an ISP, it’s possible to highlight where music audiences congregate. By looking at the Web footprint of P2P data, marketers can see where potential income streams could come from based on fans’ appetite for music.

In 2012, British music fans streamed audio tracks more than 3.7 billion times, according to the Official Charts Company, while digital album sales rose 14.8% to 30.5m as CD album sales declined 19.5% year-on-year to a total of 69.4m units.  

Speaking at the event, Jeremy Silver, executive chairman of Musicmetric, said:

“The term “big data” is misleading. Small amounts of data are what you need to make critical business decisions. Musicmetric distills down to key points, the huge amounts of online social data revealing consumer engagement with artists and bands. Making business decisions with greater speed and greater accuracy by utilizing data you can trust is a key competitive advantage.”
 
Chris Tams, director of independent member services at the BPI, added:
 
“While many larger companies have the means to invest in the opportunities that are growing around digital all the time, that’s not always the case across the whole music sector.  BPI is committed to supporting every corner of the industry, and I’m delighted that we’ve been able to host this very first training session by way of shining a light on a world that for some can be quite challenging. 
 
“The great thing about digital technology, once you understand how to harness it, especially the rich data available to you, is that it can actually offer you a hugely cost effective way of growing your business. Basically it can help to create a level playing field for many smaller independents who can’t match the budgets of larger organisations.”
 
Some of the specifics covered included:
 
·     Comparing an artist’s digital sales, streaming, social media  and piracy data to reveal a true picture of    online impact 

·     Benchmarking a campaign against an existing or previously successful artist

·     Understanding how to read fan demographics and locations 

·     Learning how to discover which of an artist’s tracks is being most played or most talked about on which networks

·     Discovering whether gigs, TV appearances or other things are driving fan growth

·     Seeing which social networks an artist’s fans prefer. 

·     Informing smarter choices about where to place advertising based on where fans are both online and in the real world

·     Using the footprint of P2P data to see where potential income streams could come from based on fans’ appetite for music.