Did you know that artists only get paid if you play a song on a music streaming service such as Spotify for more than 30 seconds? These new trends are changing the way the creative process for musicians. But, a company called Entertainment Intelligence (Ei) is also changing the way the music industry collects, views, and utilizes data. Ei is unique in its ability to seamlessly blend information, including social, playlists, sales, and consumption data from a limitless number of sources, tracking and analyzing information at breath-taking speed. Charts are helpful if you’re part of music’s top 10%, but what about the other 90%? Public data analytics dashboards look cool, but what do they really tell us? Music data analysis experts Entertainment Intelligence (Ei) have established a whole new approach to help artists and labels see where they stand with fans--and to guide them to better marketing and creative decisions in a global music market. Using a large body of granular data, it has generated a powerful set of Indie Benchmarks (iB) that offer actionable insights to independent labels, artists, agents, and marketers on par with the internal tools used by the majors. “Charts are an artifact of the physical retail era when we only really cared about how many units were moving out of the store,” notes Ei founder Greg Delaney. “Data like total overall sales or follower counts are of extremely limited use; how many people go and unfollow an artist or playlist, for instance?” Ei founder Greg Delaney joins me on my daily tech podcast to share the story behind the company and how they are helping artists. Greg is an innovative and versatile technologist with experience across a wide range of industries, from banking and finance to transport, entertainment, and manufacturing. Having established, run, and sold a number of start-ups, Greg explains how he is now using his experience to help other small and growing businesses evolve through technology. I learn how Ei uses listener-level data direct from DSPs like Apple and Spotify, anonymizes them across its client base, which includes labels like Concord, Domino, and the Secretly Group. We also explore how they apply machine learning to uncover relevant audience patterns and peer artists, creating truly useful benchmarks for independent music professionals.