Students Alán Hensley and Laura Shand from the global entertainment and music business master’s program reflect upon the seventh of the Music Business Seminars, where they were able to listen to Chris Carey during his talk ‘Big Data’.
Last week we had the distinct pleasure of hosting Chris Carey, an acclaimed economist and insight specialist, for our Global Entertainment and Music Business Seminar to give a lecture on big data analytics. Initially, one may find it odd for a music school to ask an economist to give a lecture on statistics and analytics, but soon into the lecture it becomes easy to discern the useful application for such knowledge. It would be safe to say that most of us Berklee students wouldn’t list math or statistics as our favorite academic areas of study, in fact, the two subjects wouldn’t make most of our top 5 lists. The thought of even doing a regression analysis pushes most of us students to instead devote time honing our musical craft with our instruments or fortifying our techniques in the studio. The rationale is that if we perfect our artistry, statistics and complex math may never have to be part of our career. While a quantitative analysis of music preferences in Europe may not be in the foreseeable future for most Berklee students, Chris Carey quickly opened our eyes as to why we should consider learning about one of the increasingly influential areas of the music industry. Chris’s lecture illustrated that data analytics is a growing sector in the music industry that is rapidly shaping the business environment and how organizations react to the market.