The Data Dilemma: When Enough Is Enough
I recently had a conversation with a label executive about databases. One database had more than 10,000 concert venues while another had almost 15,000. Which one was better? Some of his label colleagues wanted even more. "We want to know about every place that any punk band ever played an all ages show," they argued.
In this age of massive databases and search engines it is possible, almost easy, to create lists of information on any subject. But does more data mean better data?
Which is more useful – every venue or every active venue? Which fan inf do you want to capture – the one who stumbled on your web site once or those that listened to three songs all the way through?
It is tempting to say that we want to know about every venue and convert every potential fan. But the reality is that we each only have so much time to do anything of value with the data we’re capturing. We are stretched too thin; pinging from project to project. More than ever, quality is more important than quantity.
With great data comes great responsibility. Knowing what data to use and how to use it effectively is the name of the game. Measuing, tuning, benchmarking and remeasuring are ubber important. But as you said “quality over quantity.”
Direct marketers be warned… using data in the wrong way can be creepy.
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/07/03/personalized-emails-are-creepy-not-effective/
Good point Dave and your company does a great job of helping music marketers and bands do it.
Although lots of data is good I think the quality of the data is just as important. I’ve seen database listings for “venues” here in Omaha that I have heard of maybe one show at ever and it was 8 years ago. Its a fine line to walk between more and quality data but once you find it you should hypothetically be at the point of highest business productivity.
As the cost of reaching those increasingly marginal customers decreases, I think the argument for reaching them becomes stronger every day.
Historically, some of the strongest and most united communities exist outside of mainstream, some of them just so.
Data is useful if it is relevant. This means it must be:
• Recent
and
• Accurate
It must also be able to be interpreted properly by the recipient. An example would be a venue learning from Pollstar that a band drew 400 people at their last show (not bashing on Pollstar, just using it to illustrate a point). But were they the headliner? Was there a drink special that night? What night of the week was it? How was it promoted and by whom? How long ago was the show?
If the recipient doesn’t know how to interpret/investigate the data, it can lead to the wrong conclusions. All else equal, more data is better, but it must be the beginning of the investigation process, not the end.
I agree with Jed. Data is useless unless it is relevant. And the difference between a good decision and bad decision comes from knowing how to interpret data.
In that sense, I see no reason why those databases shouldn’t be around the 70,000 venues JamBase lists, as long as the information is accurate and detailed. Ticket sales by themselves don’t tell us much.
I guess the argument is diminishing ROI vs. Long Tail.