America is well known for its thriving and glamorous entertainment industry. The movie industry, largely based in Hollywood, California, boasted over $11 billion in global ticket sales in 2015. Celebrities grace the covers of fashion and gossip magazines, and appear on the talk show circuit with such regularity that many are household names. It is an overlooked fact that there is a flourishing and often labor intensive amount of technical based functions that serve as a backbone for this beautiful and glamorous industry. The glitzy, luxuriously rich entertainment industry, with its movies, television shows, media agencies, and booming music industry, is still, first and foremost, a business. Behind the scenes there are many different details that keep the movie and music studios and theaters, internet shows and concert halls, showbiz and talent agencies, all running smoothly. Despite its seemingly unapparent necessity, data entry is a fundamental staple within the entertainment industry, and provides valuable information about trends, marketing, pricing, consumer favor, and social media.
Data Utilized for Technical Equipment, Marketing, and Trend Forecasting
Movie studios are all based within a technical genre of lighting, music and recording equipment, cameras, lighting, and complex computer programs and equipment that make all of these works together harmoniously. Information, though used and applied in thousands of different ways, is the seed that allows a movie to come to life. Sound effects, CGI, atmosphere machines like simulated wind and rain equipment, Teleprompters, and recording devices use information that allows them to produce the correct effect for their given purpose. For a sound effects machine, large scale recording devices are used to create different effects like dialogue, clapping audiences, or thunderous lightening, and data is used to introduce functions into the machine, and must be programed in a certain sequence. Data is coded and then entered into specific fields, essentially designing an array of custom sounds. Data can also be compiled from sound and music software applications, and is then used to determine how and where systems are updated. An example would be ProTools, an industry standard DAW (digital audio workstation), provides widespread data usage for sound artists, musicians, and industry studios.
For ticket pricing, data is compiled, categorized, and analyzed to determine pricing trends and popularity amongst different cities, movie theaters, and showtimes. Information gathered from these various examples enable individual and chain movie houses to price their tickets competitively, offer discounts for certain demographics or times, and understand which genres of movies bring in the most money for their particular location. Marketing campaigns can be customized for geographic locations, and their performance can be monitored through data analysis. Websites such as Internet Movie Database provide data that can be extrapolated into charts, tables, and graphs about a range of categories that help agencies, media firms, and studios learn how their movies will perform ahead of time, which also aids them in determining how to prevent expensive box office disasters.
Media firms, a large component within the entertainment industry, find solid success in their ability to combine static and real time data, and blend transaction and human language data, all in an attempt to discover patterns that might transform their business. Social media provides limitless data for companies to easily navigate through, collect, and study accordingly. With the sheer amount of social media platforms that are used by billions of people worldwide on a daily basis, media firms and other entertainment giants are utilizing the information being shared on these platforms in creative and innovative ways. Using advanced analytic software, media companies study the “engagement” data flooding social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to learn more about their consumers. This technique helps the entertainment companies pick up on trends, sentiment, even positive or negative opinions. Data is generated with every click of a mouse, and people visit different sites, upload data onto social media, or share links with other people.
The Surprising Data Usage Linked to Celebrities
Massive agencies, entertainment law firms, and management companies all use compiled data to learn how, when, and where to release movies and music, and to promote and market the celebrities linked to their respective companies. Data management is a necessity within this context, as payments, scheduling, contracts, and employees have to be meticulously handled for the sake of agency and celebrity reputations. This requires a detailed and organized means of creating detailed databases that manage everything from payments processing to scheduled television talk show appearance dates, and medical records of assistants to movie filming timelines. For management agencies and entertainment law firms, protecting the images, assets, and personal successes of a client means employing data analysts, data management teams, and similar data organizational laborers.
Also, as most celebrities do not fully manage their own wealth, assets, and marketing themselves, they typically employ an arsenal of personal assistants, stylists, marketing and publicity teams, agents, lawyers, and managers. This requires data management as well, for employing a varied team such as that mentioned above means that one must be in full, organized control of functions like any other business model. Paychecks, scheduling, NDA’s, and background checks are just a few of the possible pieces of information that pass by a celebrity’s team with regularity. Occasionally publicized are instances in which celebrities have personal effects or money stolen or embezzled by those in their team. Maintaining firm control of anyone in their personal circles can help protect against being taken advantage of by those who should be above reproach. Data management can help ensure that celebrities always have full security over their information, wealth, and all related data.
Creative Data Applications within the Music Industry
The Music Industry, a lucrative subset of the Entertainment Industry, has finally caught up to rapidly changing technology with the introduction of popular streaming sites like Spotify and Pandora. Data utilization is a fixture within this field, and is applied for everything from content management to market forecasting, much like it is for the movie studios and talent agencies. Interestingly enough, the music industry is now using data to come to a better understanding of both its customers and the music itself. Raw music, a form of unstructured data, can be easily digitalized and then used as a means of quantifying and analyzing valuable information. Streaming sites collect this data, including factors like vocalist gender, instruments used, rhythm speed, and background vocal style, and the information is studied by expert musicians. Musical data, like the aforementioned, allows algorithmic judgements to be made about what users want to listen to next, what music is popular where, and how often certain styles are played.
Automated classification technology, which is currently being used with great success by Spotify, utilizes data web mining, data analysis, and data classification to find very specific information about artists, recordings, user trends, and predicting Billboard favorites. Classifying music according to how users design their playlists, for example, reveals to music agencies and streaming sites how they should present their music, artists, and radio stations to customers. Choosing the best possible grouping for categories like music genres, artists, and similar music feeds, brings in money for contracted artists and bands. Also, it aids customers in navigating through available music more easily. As streaming services rely on paid subscriptions from customers, having a means to understand their listeners allows them to continue to bring in revenue and gain new subscribers each year. Creatively handling their vast and varied amounts of data enabled Spotify to jump from 10 million to 20 million subscribers over the last two years. Additionally, adapting to better satisfy the demands of their customer base helped make Spotify a fixture in the music industry, and is setting the pace for other streaming sites to follow their example.
Music concerts, festivals, and live performances bring in billions for artists, record labels, and concert venues each year. Finding ways for a paying audience to interact with artists and music at these live venues is a valuable informational tool for the music industry. New experiences draw in new crowds, which accumulates money. In 2015, attendees at Taylor Swift concerts were given LED bracelets that interacted with the music, creating a real time experience for fans to enjoy. This trend is gaining popularity with other music genres and big label artists, as well as trickling down to indie and smaller labels and venues as well. Data analytics is a driving force behind this sort of informational usage, and is proving to be an assisting factor for unknown or new artists to build fanbases and get their music heard.
Conclusion
The entertainment industry shows no signs of dwindling in revenue, or fading as a fixture within American culture. Data is a fundamental and consistent aspect of this booming industry, extending to all facets. Whether it’s a celebrity employee, a barrage of assistants, or a concert venue finding new ways to interact with their patrons, data usage is everywhere. Creatively and practically, data management is an entertainment standard that will continue to set the tone for the future of this artistic and profitable business. With persistent experimental and interesting utilization, data will prove to be the stimulus for numerous other leaps forward in the industry.
– DataEntryOutsourced
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