Measure of Music
Feb 2024 Weekend Summary

 

The fourth annual music tech & data conference & workshop, Measure of Music took place Feb 24-26, 2024, presented by Audiense. There were 91 project participants, 36 speakers, 6 weekend staff members, 27 mentors, 24 judges, 17 sponsors, and over 2100 spectators. Spectators watched the 14 talks and panels while hackathon participants had 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 Audiense, Chartmetric, jump.global, Songkick, The Orchard, Luminate, ONErpm, BandLab, and The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC). Our Career Fair was sponsored by Jobs by ROSTR. Our location sponsors were BMAT Music Innovators in Barcelona and Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in Philadelphia. We had promotional & marketing support from Gig Life Pro, Industry in Spanglish, Keychange, Keychange US and LIVE OUT L!VE.

 

Measure of Music is a conference & community that is reflective of the world. Of those almost 2500 registrations that disclosed, 67% were people of color or indigenous people, 61% are a gender minority, over one third have a first language other than English, 27% identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, 51% are under 30 years old, 82 countries are represented and 22 time zones were represented.

 

With almost 200 people registered to participate, only 91 project/hackathon participants made it to the end. Our participants came from 18 countries and were teamed together to create their projects. This year we introduced the artist project track which paired teams up with an emerging artist to develop a data-driven comprehensive artist development plan inclusive of community, financial & marketing plans, a mailing list, and a website. Outside of the artist projects, participants were free to choose their own topics. Overall, the topics widely fell into these areas: Community & Fandom, which are projects focused on how fans & artists come together, and Integrations, Partnerships & Connections, which are projects focused on bridging the gap between different parts of the industry such as brands & artists or aiming to enhance a user’s experience with music.

 

Our winning team this year included a member of last year's third place team, Julia Perla. A quarter of participants this year have been involved (spectator, previous participant, etc.) with Measure of Music in at least one of the previous years--a testament to the strength of this community. Our first-place team presented a project called "Homestage", a platform for local and independent venues to book artists through search and recommendations. Our second-place team presented an artist project focused on the artist beee-on-uh, focused on her upcoming EP release Overkill. Our third-place team presented a project called "Fansync", a platform empowering artists to understand and own their fan data.

 

We also had two locations for project participants to meet in-person to collaborate with their teams. Our location sponsors were Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, offering up space on their Philadelphia campus and BMAT, offering up their Barcelona office space. Each location had two teams collaborating on-site Saturday & Sunday.

 


Hackathon Participants in Philadelphia

 

We brought back our networking expo which allowed both participants, spectators, and contributors to connect. New this year, we brought music communities to join our networking expo to meet potential members and spread their mission. The community booths were held by Industry in Spanglish, Girls Behind The Rock Show, Girls Who Listen and RAMPD. The full networking expo included the community booths, sponsor booths, company & artist career fair booths (with the artist career fair focused on artist finding team members & support). Our career far companies included The Orchard, Kobalt Music, Creatvty Arts, Audiense, and Jobs by ROSTR, the latter also was our Career Fair sponsor. Our career fair artists were Daniela, Jastin Arts, CZAR, Bree-on-uh. We also included virtual speed networking and free flow virtual connecting to start or end each day.

 

Our content for the weekend consisted of three high level themes. Day 1 was our tech day. Day 2 focused on connection & progression with topics around career and artist development, in addition to our startup showcase. Day 3 focused on research & community.

 

Day 1's tech day explored key tools & tech in the music industry with a presentation from Chartmetric, Songkick, Audiense, BandLab, and Luminate. Luminate's talk was co-presented by their Research Manager, Grant Gregory, a previous Measure of Music participant who sights Measure of Music as key to landing his role. Audiene's presentation focused on how artists can incorporate data-driven insights from their social platform into their marketing & audience development plans. We closed Friday with a keynote discussion with venture capitalists Bruce Hamilton & Bianca Ambrosini about investing in music tech startups and what it takes to launch your own idea.

 

To start Day 2, we had our startup showcase where early start music tech startups Softside, Mage and Smart Vinyl got to share their company with the Measure of Music community. Simultaneously we had our hands-on tech workshop focused on Afrobeats & Analytics. Our keynote discussion with Temi Adeniji (MD, WM Africa & SVP, WMG Special Projects, Warner Music Group), discussed career progression and artist development a theme that ran through the rest of the day with our panels on investing in artists & executives, direct-to-fan marketing, artist growth & acceleration, and experiential music.

 

Our final day was about community with a keynote discussion with artist & manager duo YolanDa Brown and "T" Oyelola plus a music research panel exploring music industry gatekeepers, Bangalore as a music city and music industry trends from Chartmetric. We closed Day 3 with our hackathon projects.

 

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, Warner Music Group, Samsung, Mavin Entertainment, The Orchard, SoundCloud, UnitedMasters, The BPI & more; while participants ranged from those with little to no tech experience to people that have worked in music, tech & data for years with less than a quarter of participants under 25 years old.

 

Hackathon participants were provided with data from sponsoring companies Songkick, Chartmetric, Luminate and Audience. In addition, friends of Measure of Music, Afrocharts offered up additional data. Hackathon and artist prizes were provided by all sponsoring companies with additional prizes from friends of Measure of Music, i am the publicist, Your Music Marketing, makromusic, and makromusic for Artists.


This year, thanks to our sponsors, we were able to raise $38,500 which allowed us to offer payment to our speakers and weekend staff and to provide a cash prize to our hackathon winners and the artists involved with our artist project track. Measure of Music Conference & Workshop will return next Winter.


2024 Press: Music Week, Music Ally, Hits Daily Double, GUAP, Gig Life Pro, Diversity Tech, Record of the Day, Trapital

 

Winners

[WINNER] Team 6 - HomeStage
A platform for local and independent venues to book artists through search and recommendations.
Team: Pia Rodriguez, Priya Kuruganti, Felicity Wu, Julia Perla, Suzy Shailesh, Jade Boudreau
View Presentation

 

[SECOND PLACE] Team 12 - Overkill (Featured Artist: Bree-on-uh)
A full campaign for the EP release for the recording artist Bree-on-uh.
Team: Matthew Kurr, Joseph Heininge, Casey Seagriff, Chaunta Sharp, Brianna Calcagno
View Presentation

 

[THIRD PLACE] Team 9 - FanSync
FanSync is a platform empowering artists to understand and own their fan data.
Team: Francisco Gonzalez, George Arubi, Caroline Guske, Manny Rivera, Krisha Jhala
View Presentation


Playlist of Our Project Artists
Other Presentations (in no particular order):
  • Resonet: Dating-style app connecting applicants and recruiters to each other.
  • Glocalization of Music: Supporting Local Sounds
  • Moodify: An app that generates a custom playlist for users based on their mood and current activity
  • BrandBeats: A smart platform that aligns brand narratives with the perfect soundtrack.
  • ArtistryFusion: A tool to help identify potential brand partnership opportunities for musicians and vice versa.
  • Vicky's Pasion Project: A focused marketing strategy & website redesign to grow desired target audience. [Artist Featured: Vicky Pasion]
  • SuperFan Era: Leverage deep fandom data through community creation
  • FanSync: FanSync is a platform empowering artists to understand and own their fan data.
  • GigGraph: Mapping Your Fans, Charting Your Tours: Data-driven approach to mapping out where an artist's fans are and planning tours accordingly.
  • Adam Srae: The Sunflower Superstar: A release and marketing strategy for his upcoming releases for 2024. [Artist Featured: Adam Srae]
  • Gamer Groove: An alliance and collaboration between video game streamers and music artists
  • Inventing Isadore Noir: With a passion for tech, sustainability and marginalized people, Isadore Noir is the next RnB star. [Artist Featured: Isadore Noir]
  • KIM of Diamonds: Love from Malawi: Using roots as a way to branch out! [Artist Featured: KIM of Diamonds]
  • Touralytics: Predicting the success of artists' live tours based on social media metrics
  • Standout: Facilitating meaningful artist and fan connections through tiered fan engagement data
  • Famplify: Creating Community in the Underground: A community-based platform for fans to engage on a closer level with indie artists.
  • Growth Using Patreon: Analyze how the use of Patreon increased Spotify Monthly Listeners for artists.

Watched already & want to feedback? Please fill out our survey!

Weekend Content

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

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 in strategy at a live music & travel tech startup.
 
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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