Career Move: Web Analytics to Music Industry?

I was recently contacted by an old friend from Omniture with an interesting proposition. Richard, who was one of the star developers at Omniture, had put together a prototype for a company he is working for. They had been having some success and he told me a little bit about what they were doing. After signing an NDA and getting more information, I was extremely intrigued and it only reinforced my notion that analytics can solve almost any problem and will be used in very innovative ways in years to come. This company has a very intriguing business plan where using analytics they can solve the ills of the music industry. He was looking for someone to support their business development team from an engineering perspective, which I had a lot of experience doing with the Genesis program at Omniture. It also meant managing a small team to employ rapid development techniques. Very interesting and looking back on my Career at Omniture these were some of my favorite things to do (work with BizDev and create rapid solutions).

Personally I never saw myself working in the music industry, but who doesn’t like music and who wouldn’t want to be close to the industry that inspires the world every day? This is also one of those opportunities that contain the two ingredients needed for extreme potential; it is manifestly important and it is nearly impossible. Manifestly important to both society and artists; artists need to get paid and society wants them to be paid (just not from their own pocketbook). Nearly impossible because of the complexities of working this out with partners and customers. I can’t get into specifics, but expect good things to come from the music industry in years to come.

In short, I will miss doing the traditional web analytics with HP, but this job offer shows me that the analytics industry extends well beyond the online web site and offline business intelligence. For me it feels like the internet is just starting to experiment with crawling. I’m amazed by the potentials that are presented every day.

I’ll still spend some time on the yahoo user’s group for web analytics and follow #measure on twitter. Once you are in analytics I think it is hard to change that mindset.