Found this via Digital Copyright Canada – Terry McBride, NettwerkMusicGroup,

So “Cause” and “Data”, why is this so important to a brand and thus so important to our Artists? In today’s world many fans expect their musical Artists to support causes that reflect what they themselves relate to; view it as supporting a cause through osmosis via the Artist. Such causes can be common things such as fair trade or greening. Or in the case of an Artist like Radiohead, simply a musical style; or State Radio a social stance. In today’s world of instant news and search, the ability of a fan to find out loads of information on an Artist is quite easy, thus the chance to dislike an artist is also easy… Whether we like it or not what you stand for these days is as important as the music for music fans, especially Uber fans. So what causes do you think are key to attracting you to a Musical Artist?

So why is data valuable? Well as in the early days of BDS and Soundscan, data when viewed properly allows one to see patterns of interest that can be monetized in many different ways. Nettwerk in the early days was one of the first companies to correlate data and micro market records on a city-by-city basis. Many Artists such as Sarah and BNL owe their success to such an approach. So looking at Myspace what is valuable data on an Artist page? I, for one, would say that the number of friends is not valuable, yet the number of times a song has been played is. Especially in some cases the second of the four tracks listed. We have found that which ever song is listed first, can actually impact digital track sales. I also think that scanning fan comments can also be valuable as it crowd-sources a general feeling towards the Artist. What other points of Data do you think are key to gleam from something like Myspace? read more …

I spend lots of time looking at science, social science, qualitative data and quantitative data, but had not thought of data form the music scene. Of course there is data, of course it has a purpose, and of course it is critical to the industry!