Instructor(s)

Founder, Water & Music Cherie Hu

Cherie Hu is the founder of Water & Music, a research network for music and tech. She has been covering music and tech as a writer and editor for eight years, previously for publications including Billboard, Forbes, Pitchfork, and Variety. She has spoken as an expert commentator on CNBC and SiriusXM Volume; as a guest lecturer at institutions like Harvard University, New York University, Northeastern University, and Berklee College of Music; and as a panelist or keynoter at over 40 conferences around the world.

CEO of Music Tomorrow Julie Knibbe

With a near-decade-long track record building up innovative music & data products and leading product teams at Deezer and Soundcharts, Julie Knibbe established herself as one of the most prominent music data product experts globally. Having founded Music Tomorrow back in 2020, Julie has leveraged her product management expertise and network to quickly turn the company into one of the leading voices in music data and a go-to place for businesses looking to find a new way to work with music data.

Co-CEO, Symphony.live Maarten Walraven

Maarten Walraven operates at the intersection of music, technology, communities, and education. There are many different hats, from Co-CEO at Symphony.live to co-creator of the experiment in scene building, Wild Awake and from teaching at the University of Utrecht to being co-project lead for the Water & Music academy. If you want to follow his thinking, the best place is MUSIC x, the newsletter he co-edits.

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About the bootcamp

Co-Presented by Water & Music Academy and Music Tomorrow

Today, it’s hard to find a job in music that doesn’t involve working with data. Strategy, analytics, and operational proficiency around music data are quickly becoming integral components of the modern music-industry skill set — especially in the context of cutting through the noise and making sure music gets heard by the right people, at the right time.

At the same time, in the face of stubborn data fragmentation, shortening viral hype cycles, and new consumption channels popping up on a weekly basis, marketing remains one of the most difficult functions of the music business to get right.

Against this backdrop, we’re thrilled to offer Water & Music Academy 004 — a music marketing data bootcamp, in partnership with Music Tomorrow.

Academy 004 provides a comprehensive introduction to the state of music data, and the pivotal role it plays in digital music marketing. Over the course of eight sessions, we’ll walk you through how to develop a marketing plan, understand your audience behaviors, and benchmark your performance against your peers, using state-of-the-art data tools. We also delve into how emerging technology is reshaping music marketing strategy in real time, across areas like recommendation systems, marketing automation, and frontier tech spaces like Web3, VR/AR, and gaming.

By the end of this course, you’ll have the deep industry context, case studies, and tactics you need to integrate data into your music marketing in a smarter way, no matter what vertical of the music business you work in.

Who is this class for? 

People actively working with music data in their careers, with advanced beginner/intermediate knowledge of the music business.

Specifically, this course is designed for:

  • Music-industry professionals (especially artist managers and marketers) looking to expand their skill sets and elevate their day-to-day performance with data.
  • Founders, builders, and investors looking to build more innovative music data solutions that are empathetic to industry professionals’ needs and practices.
  • Data analysts in other industries who are looking to expand their music-specific data expertise.

At every step of the way, we'll combine nuanced insider context, an early-adopter pulse on the latest technologies, and an emphasis on practical applications for working professionals.

Structure & format

This course will be structured as a series of educational conversations built around data-driven case studies in music marketing.

  • Speaker series: Each session will include two featured speakers with on-the-ground experience using data to market music releases across the career and genre spectrum, plus a moderator from the Water & Music or Music Tomorrow teams.
  • Case studies: Discussions will highlight real-world problems — and solutions — in specific areas of digital music marketing, and what our speakers wish people would know before building out their marketing strategies. 
  • Readings: We’ll also recommend async readings and resources, for those looking to dive deeper into the topics from our live sessions.