E351 Chris Blakey, Senior Director of Data Science & Kristian Fryer-Kelsey, Head of Data Products at Universal Music Group

Today's guests are Chris Blakey, Senior Director of Data Science & Kristian Fryer-Kelsey, Head of Data Products at Universal Music Group. UMG is the world leader in music-based entertainment with a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising and audiovisual content in more than 60 countries. Featuring the most comprehensive catalog of recordings and songs across every musical genre, UMG identifies and develops artists, and produces and distributes the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music in the world.

With 12 years of experience at UMG, Kristian heads the team behind the app Universal Music Artists. He creates the strategy and execution of UMG’s UMX data product suite, four products that service UMG’s: Artists (UMA), Labels (UML), A&R’s Discovery of Unsigned Artists (UMD) and a Financial view (UMC). Chris has also spent 12 years working for UMG and has played an integral role in the core team that has driven change throughout the business, ranging from designing and building full analytics platforms to finding custom solutions to unique business problems.

In the episode, Chris and Kristian will talk about:

The work they do with Universal Music Group,

Problems they are solving within music campaigns & marketing,

An insight into their data product suite UMX,

The market response to their innovations in the industry,

The working culture at Universal Music Group, and

Day-to-day life within the Data Science & Analytics team