Nielsen Launches Audio Data Management Platform

Nielsen today announced that Westwood One, America’s largest radio network, has selected Nielsen Marketing Cloud and its advanced data management platform (Nielsen DMP) to launch the first-ever audio DMP.

This ushers in an era of highly specific radio audience targeting. Advertisers can now make sharper buying decisions across Westwood One’s over-the-air radio and streaming audio channels, which reach almost a quarter of a billion listeners weekly across all U.S. media markets.

“Purchase-based marketing is now a long-awaited reality for our advertisers, and proudly a first-mover advantage for Westwood One,” said Suzanne Grimes, EVP, Corporate Marketing, Cumulus Media and President, Westwood One. “Radio now offers specificity of audience alongside the biggest reach in media. We are embracing Nielsen’s big data capabilities to enable our advertisers to identify and reach their best customers across every radio format we offer at an extremely high degree of accuracy.”

Glastonbury Social Sharing Will Use 40 Terabytes of EE Data

Phone firm EE has said it will be setting up the “most powerful temporary 4G network seen at any UK event” for this month’s Glastonbury Festival, where it is the “official technology and communications partner” no less.

All that power is necessary because of all the live streaming nonsense that has become popular on the social networks in the last year. EE reckons that fad means more content will be digitally streamed and shared from Worthy Farm than ever before this month, with 40 terabytes of data likely to be used across its 4G network.

Read Article: CMU

Music Data Should Not Become ‘Part of an Arms Race’, says PRS CEO

Addressing PRS members and the wider industry at the society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), he said that sharing intelligence and working together are essential to ensuring ‘the right people are paid the right money as fast and accurately as possible’.

As recorded music returns to growth, it has attracted both venture capital and private equity investors, Ashcroft explained.

‘Music properties, companies servicing, or owning musical assets and rights, are once again fashionable acquisition targets’ he continued.

Read Article: M Magazine

How Data is Transforming the Music Industry

Fifteen years ago, Steve Jobs introduced the iPod. Since then, most music fans have understood this has radically changed how they listen to music.

Less understood are the ways that raw information – accumulated via downloads, apps and online searches – is influencing not only what songs are marketed and sold, but which songs become hits.

Decisions about how to market and sell music, to some extent, still hinge upon subjective assumptions about what sounds good to an executive, or which artists might be easier to market. Increasingly, however, businesses are turning to big data and the analytics that can help turn this information into actions.

Read Article: The Conversation

Gracenote Unveils New Data Products Spanning Video, Music and Sports

Gracenote is launching new entertainment data products developed specifically for next-generation converged media platforms and services. The all-new Gracenote connected databases for Video, Music and Sports enable global entertainment providers and smart device makers to leverage industry-leading Gracenote data and IDs to power advanced voice and text search, intuitive user experiences as well as more personalized media recommendations.

The ways people experience entertainment today are dramatically different than just a few years ago. For example, movies and TV shows are now available from multiple services and watched on many different internet-connected devices.

The modern music experience is increasingly about streaming individual tracks and playlists and less about buying albums. Sports fans are now accessing real-time highlights and playing along with fantasy services across various platforms and apps. The next digital entertainment evolution converges all of these experiences together across platforms and services.

 

Pandora’s Next Big Sound Creates ‘Moneyball for Music’ With Big Data

Alex White grew up surrounded by music—his father is a professional cellist and he’s played in several rock bands.But while interning at Universal Music Group, he recognized that using CD sales to sign bands and influence sales decisions was an outdated strategy in the age of streaming.

So he and three Northwestern University classmates launched Next Big Sound, a Moneyball-style big data tool for the music industry. The company’s free software analyzes metrics like social media traffic, streaming statistics and listener demographic information to determine artists’ influence and popularity.

Read Article: Observer

Ever Wondered Where Exactly Those Spotify Playlists Come From?

As a senior editor for Spotify, James Foley’s job involves listening and curating music to an audience of mostly one (at a time). His job did not exist 10 years ago.

Once internet access became commonplace and speed reliable at the turn of the century, it enabled an audience that flocked to illegal channels of poor-quality MP3 downloads via shady web-based services. People did so out of habit and convenience rather than any moral shortcoming.

The sharks got there before the legal players and it looked like the music industry had missed the boat.

Enter the technology innovators. When Spotify, the Swedish-based music streaming service came along, it answered a question that was beginning to be asked – how to serve streaming music legally with ease, speed, good design and functionality.

Read Article: Irish Times

Three Reasons to Appreciate Spotify’s Latest Data-Driven Ad Campaign

As well as talking about global and political events, the campaign is also super personal. It draws on data to pick out the (often questionable) music listening habits of its users, with tongue-in-cheek commentary for added humour.

A personal favourite is the Justin Bieber-inspired billboard that says: “Dear person who played ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day, what did you do?”

Other billboards are incredibly localised, mentioning the listening behaviour of local residents, such as: “Dear person in the Theater District who listened to the Hamilton soundtrack 5,376 times this year. Can you get us tickets?”By referencing the surrounding area, it is also effective for targeting and creating a deeper connection with a key demographic.

Source: Econsultancy

WPP, Spotify Forge Global Partnership

WPP’s Data Alliance and Spotify have entered into a global partnership whereby the two companies will collaborate on data and insights, creative, technology, programmatic solutions, and new growth markets.As part of the agreement WPP has access to the listening preferences and behaviors of Spotify’s 100 million users in 60 countries.

The multi-year deal enables WPP and its clients to glean insights from the connection between music and audiences’ moods and activities, according to the holding company, which could enhance campaign planning and potentially lead to more relevant creative work. “Music attributes such as tempo and energy are proven to be highly relevant in predicting mood, which enables advertisers to understand their audiences in a new emotional dimension,” the firm stated in a release.

Source: MediaPost

With Daily Mix, Spotify Taps Algorithms to Make Infinite Playlists from Your Favorite Tunes

Are you a Spotify user who has a list of favorite bands and songs, but do not have the motivation to find and organize all of them into useful playlists?

Today, the streaming company is launching a new service called Daily Mix that is partly aimed at you. Tapping into your own history of albums and tracks that you have listened to on the platform, Daily Mix brings together a selection of these alongside a few new things to create long, “bottomless” playlists of music to keep you listening.

As its name implies, the playlists change every day, and range in number between one and six, depending on how prolific you are on Spotify.

Source: TechCrunch

Flipagram Partners with SoundHound to Add Any Song You Hear to Your Videos

Flipagram, the largest mobile video creators network, and SoundHound Inc., the leading innovator in voice recognition, natural language understanding, and sound search technologies, today announced a cross-platform integration, including the first Flipagram “Create Music Video” partnership.

As Flipagram’s premier integration partner, SoundHound has added “Create Music Video” buttons within SoundHound song pages, allowing fans to create Flipagram videos from music identified or searched for using the SoundHound app. This also enables all Flipagram users to explore SoundHound’s artist, album and song information and related content, providing a richer experience for audiences of both apps.

Spotify Music Data Tracks Millennials

As music streaming services become more popular with millennials, data on listening habits could offer brands the key to deeper insights on mood, motivation and buying intention, according to a leading executive at Spotify. Speaking at the recent Mumbrella 2016 event, Jeff Rossi, Global Director of Business Marketing at Spotify, encouraged brands to avoid making assumptions about millennials based on age and instead focus on behavioural insights that offer more effective targeting.

Source: warc.com