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Music's 'Moneyball' Moment: Why Data is the New Talent Scout (ft.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A&R, or "artists and repertoire," are the people who look for new talent, convince that talent to sign to the record label and then nurture it: advising on songs, on producers, on how to go about the job of being a pop star. It's the R&D arm of the music industry. [...] What the music business doesn't like to shout about is how inefficient its R&D process is. The annual global spend on A&R is $2.8bn, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, and all that buys is the probability of failure: "Some labels estimate the ratio of commercial success to failure as 1 in 4; others consider the chances to be much lower -- less than 1 in 10," observes its 2017 report.
Or as Mixmag magazine's columnist The Secret DJ put it: "Major labels call themselves a business but are insanely unprofitable, utterly uncertain, totally rudderless and completely ignorant." In the golden age of the music industry, none of that really mattered. So much money was flowing in that mistakes could be ignored. There was no way to hear most music other than to buy a record, and when CDs entered the market in the 1980s -- costing little to produce, but selling for a fortune -- the major labels were more or less printing their own money. But then came the internet: first file-sharing, then streaming slashed sales of physical music so deeply that the record business became a safety-first game.
Every label executive has always wanted hits, but these days the people who run the big imprints want guaranteed hits. The rise of digital music brought with it a huge amount of data which, industry executives realized, could be turned to their advantage. In his first public speech as CEO of Sony, in May 2017, Rob Stringer asserted: "All our business units must now leverage data and analytics in innovative ways to dig deeper than ever for new talent. The modern day talent-spotter must have both an artistic ear and analytical eyes." Earlier this year, in the same week as Warner announced its acquisition of Sodatone, a company that has developed a tool for talent-spotting via data, another data company, Instrumental, secured $4.2m of funding. The industry appeared to have reached a tipping point -- what the website Music Ally called "A&R's data moment." Which is why, wherever the music industry's great and good gather, the word "moneyball" has become increasingly prevalent.
Or as Mixmag magazine's columnist The Secret DJ put it: "Major labels call themselves a business but are insanely unprofitable, utterly uncertain, totally rudderless and completely ignorant." In the golden age of the music industry, none of that really mattered. So much money was flowing in that mistakes could be ignored. There was no way to hear most music other than to buy a record, and when CDs entered the market in the 1980s -- costing little to produce, but selling for a fortune -- the major labels were more or less printing their own money. But then came the internet: first file-sharing, then streaming slashed sales of physical music so deeply that the record business became a safety-first game.
Every label executive has always wanted hits, but these days the people who run the big imprints want guaranteed hits. The rise of digital music brought with it a huge amount of data which, industry executives realized, could be turned to their advantage. In his first public speech as CEO of Sony, in May 2017, Rob Stringer asserted: "All our business units must now leverage data and analytics in innovative ways to dig deeper than ever for new talent. The modern day talent-spotter must have both an artistic ear and analytical eyes." Earlier this year, in the same week as Warner announced its acquisition of Sodatone, a company that has developed a tool for talent-spotting via data, another data company, Instrumental, secured $4.2m of funding. The industry appeared to have reached a tipping point -- what the website Music Ally called "A&R's data moment." Which is why, wherever the music industry's great and good gather, the word "moneyball" has become increasingly prevalent.
With all this data, and history behind them, perhaps they could come up with some new talent that doesn't sound like all the other existing talent that's come before them?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
... wasn't already pumping out gingerbread men songs that all look and sound exactly alike, performed by artists that look and think exactly alike, and crush anything that doesn't fit their mold.
Check your premises.
John Niven's "Kill Your Friends" is a funny, satirical novel about an A&R agent. I have no idea how close it is to the situation in the "real" record business, but if you like an entertaining read about a bunch of backstabbing bastards you might want to give it a try - I read it years ago and enjoyed it a lot.
Data is not the next talent scout; at least not their data. It's a desperate attempt from a dying industry to stay relevant. They should send their scouts to find the bar where all the television network executives are listening to the world's smallest violin playing Hearts and Flowers.
Musicians like Lindsey Sterling don't need scouts to get noticed. YouTube, Spotify, and Pandora's algorithms will lift the superstars in a much more natural way then any record label ever could; even with their "data".
Let's not beat around the treasonous bush.
At the end of time, when the history of humanity is written, there will be a special chapter on the music industry and how it failed to effectively incorporate new technology into their business models. This goes back to the cassette tape (and probably earlier), where the music industry was caught flat footed when consumers were able to cheaply and easily copy music for their own use to Napster and digital distribution and now in terms of picking new artists.
The only thing the music industry has ever had that's up to date and efficient is their lawyers.
If the music industry learns to effectively use big data to figure out who to invest in, it will be interesting to see if they put their money in one hit wonders while leaving musicians that create timeless classics to rot on the vine. I suspect it will be the former. The good news is that the great bands will get their music distributed regardless of the big money and people will be able to enjoy their music long after the one hit wonders are questions on game shows.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
at least baseball has unions hear they rip off the artists even to the point of calling them both employee and independent contractors when it good to the label for ether way.
It's truly amazing you're able to utilize the captcha successfully even some of the time. Wow. You are just profoundly dumb.
registered users (even when they post AC) don't have a captcha
We will use telemetry and spying to make “forced hits”.
Isn't the same problem also exists in movie, TV show, sports businesses?
(Are they really know which one/who will be a success and which one/who will be a failure?)
This reads like a real sob story for the recording industry.
Lot's of industries that introduce consumer products have high failure rates. Look at potato chip flavors and even electronics.
Recording and distributing an album is not that expensive. The part that has become expensive is promoting it, mostly due to trying to use advertising to tell the public what to listen to.
Rather than pushing 1 sound they like thru they would probably be better served making 10 recordings of different things and give them all 1/20th the play and let take off what takes off.
Maybe digital distribution will facilitate this and data mining will let studios release good music discovered by the masses again.
they never wanted to develope talent, they always manufactured it.
music marketing is the same as chocolate bar marketing. there's only so much need for particular products, why would anybody want/need/choose yours?
talking chocolate an advert for kit-kat in the 1980s UK nailed the whole thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5EZdFc3i-M
For $4.2 Million I could give you A LOT of opinions of A LOT of bands, or a spreadsheet. Why, I could even hire a Millennial for that!
Musical talent isn't rare
There are millions of talented musicians who can't make a living playing music
Today's pop music isn't art, it's an artless, soulless industrial product, created by teams of trendmongers, marketeers, music writers, lyricists, arrangers, producers, engineers, choreographers and soon, computers running AI software; then tested with focus groups to make sure it sound good in the first 10 seconds.
As an artist, this sucks! It's the opposite of art!
We need to figure out a way for talented artists to make a living while making music they love
The US music industry and commercial radio sucks - the sh*t that is called music these days, with minor exceptions found here and there in various genres, is a far cry from the days of old when real talent created really good music. It's all POP and one-hit-wonders now - regardless of genre
You want to hear really good music? Try using the BBC iPlayer APP - or travel overseas - just returned from a trip to Greece - what a nice change to hear bitchin' new sounds every place I went instead of Ke$ha, J-L(ame)O and the rest... Oh man - I wish Tool would release some new music.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Supported a rapist. Disgusting.
We'll use an algorithm to only pick artists that sound exactly like other artists that have already been successful! And, oh great, we can also use the same algorithm to find artists that have been copying our artists and sue them into oblivion!