What Can Artists Learn From Tech and Tech Learn From Artists?

The Courtyard Presented by Rolling Stone at Sydney’s first ever SXSW is officially over. Now it’s time for the fun part: unpacking what we learned, who we saw, and what we’re most inspired by for the future.

At this year’s event, Twilio Segment, the #1 leading Customer Data Platform, took the Rolling Stone stage for a live panel. The topic? What can artists learn from tech and what can tech learn from artists?

It turns out, there’s a lot to learn.

An intimate crowd gathered near the stage under the shade of two giant leafy trees to hear industry leaders Liz Adeniji (Regional Vice President at Twilio Segment), Jaddan Comerford (CEO & Founder at UNIFIED Music Group) and Wayne Baskin (Co-founder Superhero) discuss the untapped powers of data personalisation and its potential to create real growth for music brands.

Stripping back the techy buzzwords, it’s really about getting to know your audience on a personal level – then using that knowledge to give them more of the content and services they actually want.

The ever-evolving music and entertainment industry thrives on its ability to connect with fans at scale. More and more, though, the question on everyone’s lips is: how do we make those connections more meaningful? And how can we use tech to do it in a more efficient way?

“I would argue that every company today is a data company,” Liz Adeniji told the panel. “Every business should make it their business to understand their listeners, their fans intimately.”

Unsurprisingly, when talking about how artists and brands can connect with mass audiences, the conversation moved to the biggest of them all – Beyoncé.

“[Beyoncé] has about 300 million followers. That in itself could be an entire continent,” Adeniji said. “How, if you are Beyoncé or a record label, can you know every single person on a 1:1 basis?”

It’s almost impossible to know what that many people want, right? Well, not if you have the right technology.

“Twilio Segment’s customer segment platform allows brands to answer 3 things: Who is my customer? Where are they? And what are they doing? Knowing that makes a really big difference in how you speak to that user on a 1:1 basis.”

One of the key takeaways from the Twilio Segment panel was how the data platform can help unlock first-party data and create better fan experiences. Through audience segmentation, the platform can allow brands to tailor marketing campaigns to individual preferences, behaviours and demographics.

In an era of data privacy awareness, the panel also spoke about the importance of ethical data collection. Twilio Segment provides tools for managing user consent and preferences. This allows users to opt in or out of data collection and specify their communication preferences.

Data governance is a crucial aspect, ensuring that data is collected and used in compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Twilio Segment offers features that help companies manage data governance effectively.

Transparency is equally vital, and Twilio Segment assists in managing it through consent forms and data usage notifications, keeping fans informed about what data is being collected and how it benefits their experience.

On the panel, Superhero co-founder Wayne Baskin explained how he uses Twilio Segment within his business.

“Segment’s a tool where we dump all our data into. It’s quite easy to set up. Then once it’s in Segment, you can take it across to all different places. We send ours to our CRM system, to our data warehouse,” he told the panel.

“The music industry needs to understand where the data is coming from. Because once you’ve got the data, it’s powerful.”

Clever data collection, management and implementation is changing the game in the music and entertainment industry. With Twilio Segment, the future of fan experiences is exciting and filled with possibilities.

Want to learn more about how Twilio Segment can help you drive more fan engagement, get more from your subscriber base and use your data more effectively? Check out the platform’s demo HERE.