John’s Story
Beginnings
I dedicated myself to a life in music after seeing Bruce Springsteen at age 13. This meant learning and experiencing as much as I could - guitar, concerts, records, cassettes, t-shirts, magazines, stickers - and sharing my opinions with other kids.
College Radio
When I got to Stony Brook, I immediately joined WUSB, the college radio station. I was eager for a bigger platform to learn from the other kids and the older DJs (in those days they wore satin radio jackets!) and share my passion for a wide variety of genres. By this time I was into reggae, free jazz, hip hop, funk, prog rock, space/ambient, and so much more.
In the spirit of the Rolling Stones, who said they created the group to popularize Muddy Waters, I felt like I could help expose some cool music to some cool people. I knew that the route to do this was much bigger than one college radio station. It would be through all the college radio stations. As this exciting marketing channel solidified through the 80s, I continued on in artist development, working at numerous labels on over 200 projects in all different genres. Some of these acts are true parts of music history, like Nirvana, Elvis Costello, Sonic Youth, Tricky, and Arthur Russell.
Shifting tides
By 2000, tech was gaining ground on traditional college radio, subverting its place as an avenue for discovery to young adult audiences. Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, and Pirate Bay decimated revenue for labels overnight, cutting the loss leading college radio budgets. As consolidation began shrinking the scene around me, I knew I needed to pivot.
Luckily, one of the sharpest college radio people I ever met, Dan Patterson, approached me with an idea. He had been doing a podcast in the early 00s and convinced me that I needed a new tech-enabled approach to my promo job. My blog Earbender.com was born and became a tool to expose artists and promote my consultant work.
Data and Columbia
The tech-enhanced services I was offering gave my consultancy a boost. But social media and the need to create content on a regular basis was as intense as being a promo person, if not more. I began to think about the infrastructure behind these social media services. Why is Facebook free? How come Gmail and Twitter are free? I found an answer: DATA.
I realized if I could learn something about data, it would be valuable to the music business, no matter how long it took. With my new way of working records as proof of concept, I applied to Columbia University’s prestigious Technology Management program, designed as an MBA for tech/startups with the goal of re-creating the music business, starting with myself.
At Columbia, my thesis was a music search engine driven by graphic representations of album covers. Exploring database tech and data visualization, I spent the remaining time at Columbia designing the app. My academic supervisor on the project gave me a special opportunity, hiring me at the fashion company where he served as CIO.
It was a strange and challenging situation, but my three-year stint at Tory Burch LLC was instrumental in learning how learning how an IT/Business Intelligence department works. I spent time doing incredibly hands-on work with databases, reports, troubleshooting, and designing dashboards.
Moving Back Into Music
After a few years in retail/supply chain analysis, I decided it was time to go back to music. The visionary manager and label head Allen Kovac is the first person who hired me to do data in music at his company Eleven Seven/Better Noise. Within a very busy year, we created a cloud database, automated data acquisition from DSPs and created their first streaming sales reports and visualizations.
feel like we need some sort of concluding portion here