Data Scientists at Work

CHAPTER  13

Victor Hu

Next Big Sound

Victor Hu is the Chief Data Scientist at Next Big Sound, an online music industry platform that tracks artist popularity and profitability and fan behavior across social media, radio, and traditional sales channels as reported at a granular level by record labels. Next Big Sound currently follows hundreds of thousands of artists across more than thirty Internet and social media platforms, assessing current popularity and future trajectory. Reaching that dual assessment is not an easy task. The growth and fragmentation of music audience communities, the increased speed and immediacy with which fans engage with artists via social media, and the intricacies of sales channel data all pose challenges in terms ...