Measure of Music
Feb 2021 Weekend Summary



The first Measure of Music Event took place from February 26-28 with 68 participants, 28 speakers, 18 judges, 26 volunteers & mentors and 915 spectators. Project participants watch 12 talks & panels while having just 48 hours to put together a music data project that they presented to the judges and their peers with the help of mentors and volunteers throughout the weekend and data, project ideas (and prizes!) provided by sponsors.


Presentations included focused on A&R and artist development with presentations about collaborations, emerging artists like Joy Oladokun and badly, plus much more; Market & export analysis with presentations on Afrobeats, Amapiano, Nigeria and Spain, plus more and Live & Platform analysis with topics covering livestreaming, touring, and memories and mood.


Our winning team presented on Live Streaming while second place team discussed tracking music trends through cities and the third place team created a marketing plan on artist Joy Oladokun.


Speakers and participants were majority-minority in both gender and race and when combining judges, volunteers & mentors represented 21 countries across 12 time zones and an age range spanning 30+ years. Contributors came from major music and tech companies across the world while participants ranged from those with little to no tech experience to people that have worked in the field for years.



Daily Recaps

We kicked off the event a day early by granting everyone access to Slack on Thursday night! People started introducing themselves. By Friday, we kicked things off with David Mahieux (Warner Music France) doing an intro talk to Google Data Studio. Followed by speakers introducing APIs for Last.fm, Genius, Spotify, Chartmetric. Speakers were Sarah Ransome, Evan Gilgenbach, Josh Brown, Victor Phung (respectively). As the content for the evening concluded groups were announced based on skills and time zones.

Definitely some apprehension in the virtual air for a few people a bit overwhelmed by the tech day but Christine did her best to talk a few people out of dropping out (interestingly enough, 2 of the people Christine spoke with on night 1 that were feeling anxious ended up being in the top 3 winning teams). Then everyone was off to work with mentors (and sponsors & speakers!) helping out throughout the evening and into the next day. Slack chatter was happening while people worked.

Day two kicked off with Cherie Hu discussing the future of music (accordingly to our post-event survey, an absolute participant favorite session!). We followed that up with panels on Modern Music company with panelists Aibee Abidoye (Chocolate City), Ankit Desai (Snafu Records), Maria Gironas (Venice/Q&A) and Moderator, Christine Osazuwa (Warner Music Group) which explored topics of data, disruption and diversity of employees and artists. This led into the Measuring Marketing panel with panelists Lars Ettrup (Linkfire), Nadia Morozova (TikTok), Parker Reyes (Toneden) and moderator Alex Brees (un:hurd) with explored how data impacts qualitative and quantitative marketing. Finally, we ended programming for the day with our Fans & Finances panel with panelists Tom McNeill (Patreon), Valerie Angulo (Paperchain), Linda Portnoff (Tangy Market) with moderator Britnee Foreman (Exceleration Music) which was a discussion on how artists are finding alternative (or even just faster) revenue sources with the help of data.

This was a day that really spotlighted just some of the amazing options available in the music industry and how data plays an important part in all those roles. By this point, the participants were busy but motivated by the talks and the amazing mentors that guided them in their projects. Teams felt especially honored to have the speakers pop in to give more context after their talks. We heard that Aibee from Chocolate City certainly had a hand in inspiring some of the emerging markets presentations.

The mentors were certainly having a fun time as well, extending their hours of availability to help more people. As one mentor said: "Wow, if all of the attendees are like the group, I've just had then I'll be out of a job in a few months’ time!"

Crunch time! We kept content light on the final day as participants were certainly feeling the pressure. We started off the day with a keynote talk from UK Music's Paulette Long, OBE & Ammo Talwar, MBE who discussed diversity, equity and inclusion in the music industry framed around the data they acquire for the UK Music DEI Report they recently released. We followed that up with the Future of Work panel featuring data consultant Teneika Askew, Kirsty Jones (Warner Music Group), Monika Hewavitarne (Harmonics Operations) and moderator Erica Bone (Warner Music Group). Questions were a bit quiet this last day as teams scrambled to finish but we heard amazing feedback from the talks for those that watched in real time or took the opportunity to watch back later.

Then finally, the moment we had all been waiting for: presentations! Though 287 people applied to participate, but the time the weekend started we were down to a little over 100 people and by the time the weekend ended only 68 people actually presented a finished project! This speaks to the perseverance, diligence, and determination of these amazing group of diverse people from all over the world.

The presentations ran back to back in 3 simultaneous rooms live streamed to over one thousand people with industry experts from tech & music judging each presentation. Those judges choose the winners from each room who went on to present again to everyone involved! Upon their conclusion, judges and all those watching were able to weigh in and vote.

The winning teams were announced and they went on to win prizes provided by our sponsors that include: Premium access to Last.fm, Linkfire, Viberate, Byta, Soundcloud, Toneden and Chartmetric, swag from Patreon, Genius and Last.fm, a team meetings with the co-founder of Paperchain (Daniel Dewar) and a Digital Music Marketing Premium course from The Digilouge.

Post event, the weekend Slack channel was opened to all 1000+ people that watched, participated, or helped throughout the weekend!



Winners

  • First Place: Team 7 - How to make your livestreams count | Team Members: Jeremie Joubert, Maeve de Bordons, Charlie Torrible, Henrik Björlin, Philip Watson
  • Second Place: Team 8 - glimpse.io: Tracking Music Trends Moving Through You City | Team Members: Shannon Moore, John Analoh, Nicolas Basoalto Reyes, Rokas Kucinskas, Vivian Larbi
  • Third Place: Team 16 - Bringing Joy to the World: A Marketing Campaign for Joy Oladokun | Team Members: Klara Chang, Miriam Koch, Andrew Tran, Abigail Yohannes


The next Measure of Music Event will be announced soon, as will info about how the Measure of Music community will continue to grow & evolve.

Weekend Content

Round 1 Presentations Playlist
Final Presentations & Winner Announce Playlist
Publicly Available Talks & Panels
Presentations & Links

Winning Teams
  1. Team 7 - How to make your livestreams count | Download Presentation
  2. Team 8 - Tracking Music Trends Moving Through You City | Download Presentation
  3. Team 16 - Bringing Joy to the World: A Marketing Campaign for Joy Oladokun | Download Presentation
Other Presentations

How We Did It Series


About the Founder

Hey, I’m Christine Osazuwa.


I’m a first generation Nigerian American living in London as an immigrant working at a major label in music, marketing & data.

I started this because I get dozens of messages every week—from people wanting to do the same, people that never knew jobs like that existed and most importantly, people that have never seen someone that looked like themselves doing it.
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