The third annual music tech & data conference & workshop, Measure of Music took place Feb 24-26, 2023, presented by Audiense and SoundCloud. There were 95 project participants, 40 speakers, 8 weekend staff members, 27 mentors, 23 judges, 15 sponsors, and over 2700 spectators. The number of spectators grew by almost 1000 people from year two. Project participants watched the 16 talks and 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 staff throughout the weekend and data, project ideas (and prizes!) provided by sponsors. Our sponsors this year were SoundCloud, Audiense, HIFI, jump. global, Feed Media Group, TuneCore, Chartmetric, Musiio, The Orchard, Luminate and BMAT Music Innovators with promotional support from Queer Capita, The Digilogue, Women in Music and shesaid.so.
Measure of Music is a conference & community that is reflective of the world. Of those almost 3000 registrations that disclosed, 70% were people of color, 57% are a gender minority, over one third have a first language other than English, 18% identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, 52% are under 30 years old, and 92 countries are represented.
The 95 project/hackathon participants came from 17 countries and were teamed together to create their projects. Participants were free to choose their own topics but overall, the topics widely fell into these areas: Live Music, Fandom & Community, International, Metadata & Playlisting. Our winning team this year included a member of last year's second place team, Aaron Dutschmann. A quarter of participants this year have been involved (spectator, previous participant, etc.) with Measure of Music in one or both of the previous years--a testament to the strength of this community. Our first-place team presented a project called "Collaborata", an A&R Analytics tool to help facilitate international artist collaboration. Our second-place team presented a project called, "From Streams to Seats", a way to understand the optimal concert venue size using fan data. Our third-place team presented a project called "commUNITY", which is an app to build community & engage with fans without using multiple digital platforms.
New this year, we had two locations for project participants to meet in-person to collaborate with their teams. Our location sponsors were HIFI, offering up their Brooklyn office space and BMAT, offering up their Barcelona office space. Each location had two teams collaborating on-site Saturday & Sunday.
This year, we also brought back our networking hours which allowed both participants, spectators, and contributors to connect. New this year, we opened the career fair to artists for them to seek help with projects or look for new members of the team. The full networking activities included speed networking sessions, the company & artist career fair, sponsor booths and watching startups seeking advisors, co-founders, funding & more pitch. Our career far companies included Nettwerk Music Group, Black Lives in Music, RYLTY, Audiense and SoundCloud. Our career fair artists were UK based artists Vicky Pasion and Lex on the Decks and the startups that pitched were Groover, Measurevent, Your Music Marketing, makromusic, Royalti.io, merchro, AfroCharts, Josplay Inc, RealCount and Offstage.
We were able to bring back a past participant to discuss her time and provide advice to the audience while we had two previous participants as part of the tech day programming. Grant Gregory, co-presented on global music trends in his new role as Research Manager at sponsor company, Luminate, he sighted Measure of Music as key to landing that role.
The rest of the programming for the weekend included Day 1's tech day exploring key tools & tech in the music industry with a presentation on Google Data Studio & Machine Learning, plus speakers from Musiio, Audiense, Chartmetric, Luminate and a panel on crowd-sourced data with Last.fm, Genius & Discogs. Day 2 explored the business of the music business starting with a keynote fireside chat with Downtown Music Holdings' Chief Marketing Officer, Molly Neuman exploring topics of overlooked roles in music, diversity & inclusion, and the continued importance of grassroot marketing. The rest of the day included panels on Rankings & Charts, Selling Artist Catalogs, tools & team members needed for Artist Development & Marketing, and a Panel of research on Black Women in Music, Wellness & Workout Music, and Black R&B Groups. Our final day was about community with panels on with a keynote discussion with Grammy winner producer, Ebonie Smith, and panels with speakers from TuneCore, SoundCloud, Boomplay & more on the growth of non-Anglo music and Sub-Genres & Community discussing how fandom fosters community.
As with previous years, we had no all-male or all white panels. In fact, our speakers, participants & spectators were majority-minority in both gender and race. Contributors came from major music, media and tech companies ranging from major players to startups from across the world including the Universal Music Group, ASCAP, Sony Music Entertainment, BBC, BMG, Nielsen, Atlantic Records, Believe, Forbes & more; while participants ranged from those with little to no tech experience to people that have worked in music, tech & data for years with just over a third of participants under 25 years old.
This year, due to our sponsors, we were able to raise $39,500 which allowed us to offer payment to our speakers and weekend staff and to provide a cash prize to our hackathon winners. Measure of Music Conference & Workshop will return next Winter.
[WINNER] Team 9 - Colaborata
A&R Analytics Tools Facilitating International Artist Collaboration
Team: Aaron Dutschmann, Larry Merwyl D Almeida, Rashmi Carol Dsouza, Saskia Allan, Trust Gberesuu
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[SECOND PLACE] Team 17 - From Streams To Seats
Understand Optimal Concert Venue Size Using Fan Data
Team: Aoife, Chase Miller, Matthew Nardone, Michelle Heckert, Qianyi Yang, Roxana Ren
View Presentation
[THIRD PLACE] Team 16 - CommUNITY
An App To Build Community & Engage With Fans Without Using Multiple Digital Platforms
Team: Hayley Villanueva, Julia Perla, Madeleine Varda
View Presentation
