How to Monetize Your Data

What if you were responsible for analyzing album, fan, social media, and merchandise data for more than a thousand musicians? That was the task that Naras Eechambadi faced in 2021, when he joined Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents current recording stars from Lady Gaga to Eminem, legends like the Beatles, and numerous up-and-coming artists. As the company’s first chief global data and analytics officer, he needed to find a way to make UMG’s information available to its many business units and partners. So he and his team compiled data from brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce sites, social media, marketing campaigns, emails, and a CRM system and used it to build a reporting and analytics tool called Fan Analytics, Marketing, and E-commerce (FAME), to help UMG’s partners, including labels and artists, identify growth opportunities.