Big Data Failure: Teens and Music

October 13, 2014

How much data are available for teen demographics, popular music sales by genre and medium, downloads from iTunes and Amazon, the music trade associations, and myriad other sources. If there is one industry with data, lots of data, isn’t it the music business?

I read “No One Knows How Teens Listen to Music.” The information is surprising. I thought we lived in the world of Big Data. With flashy algorithms and lots of zeros and ones, the secrets of the universe are exposed. Business strategists and entrepreneurs would flourish. The world would be a better place. Isn’t that what Big Data marketers suggest?

Here’s a passage I noted:

Fast forward to 2014. Nielsen’s recent analysis of the music industry at large showed a six-percent decrease in digital music sales and a 32-percent increase in overall streaming. According to the company, these changes were largely… because of teens. As Martin Pyykkonnen, an analyst at Wedge Partners, told Yahoo last year, “Young people today don’t buy music anymore.” Except maybe they do, according to the Piper Jaffray report. Or maybe they don’t buy MP3s but do download them. Or maybe they don’t download them but do listen to them.

So lots of data about music and teens. We learn, “All the major surveys disagree. Maybe it’s a secret.”

Yep, Big Data delivers. Oh, how about those Ebola predictions?

Stephen E Arnold, October 14, 2014

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Analytics, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.