There’s a little company out there with incredible influence on popular music and you might never have heard about them. A dedicated team of researchers is spying on radio stations, listening and recording every title played. When I worked there many years ago, we didn’t really realize it was a technology company.
We just loved the work.
– Can you imagine getting paid to listen to music or watch MTV and VH-1 all day?
The company is now called Mediabase 24/7 and I was very fortunate to work for them when they were based in Michigan. Our team of researchers monitored radio airplay on four formats in about 65 cities across the US. Each week we published our data in a magazine (and later pioneered an online data service).
Like Billboard magazine, we tabulated ‘charts’. Only our charts were fact based, disrupting an industry practice known as “paper adds” which made other industry charts of the era unreliable slop, factually speaking.
Billboard was decidedly not happy about us.
Shortly before Mediabase relocated to California, I got a call from ‘the Billboard Guy’. He bragged about their new [AI like system] that used automation to count ‘musical finger prints’ from radio airplay.
“Genuine rockets scientists created this.” he said smugly. “BDS is going to dominate this business.”
I never really knew exactly why he called me: to boast and brag. Was it a warning?
I only knew this: Their ‘sh*t’ didn’t work.
I’d seen the data: hallucinations, missing elements. BDS was incoherent and incomplete. Our human researchers crushed their automation. It wasn’t even close.
~ We had more data, were more accurate and our charts were significantly more reliable.
10 years later, Medibase was still there.
~ I was working for Paramount Television, a division of MTV parent VIACOM. They never asked about my previous life as a music industry spy.
Probably because MTV was already dying.
20 years later, Mediabase 24/7 was, you guessed it– still there. Humans still identify songs on the radio [and other places]. The wiki isn’t clear on this point but Mediabase, now a small division in a corporate behemoth partnered with [or began using or buying– seriously, BDS –FIX your Wiki!] the BDS automation system [now called “Luminate”].
And Magic Happened.
Technology had improved the monitor collection process dramatically. And the talent of the small but very skilled team was able to leverage the BDS AI to achieve productivity increases of 10-12x {maybe more}. The company used this value add to expand into global markets and generate the kind of revenue we could only dream about in 1992.
Almost 30 years have now gone by and Mediabase Charts have displaced Billboard almost everywhere, including on the beloved radio show “American Top 40 Countdown” (now with Ryan Seacrest) created by Casey Kasem. MTV is a relic, stuck in an 80s trivia category known as “TVLand that Time Forgot“.
Life Lesson:
“Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”
AI didn’t replace the people— it empowered them. Technology improved, but the real game-changer was the fusion of human talent and AI. Now, AI is coming to virtually every industry. In a NYT Interview, Ben Buchanan, the former special adviser for artificial intelligence in the Biden White House forecasts that the time to “Artificial General Intelligence, may only be two or three [and not 10] years away.
The real stars of the next 30 years will use AI to leverage talent, skill and knowledge and not just to replace humans.
What are you doing to prepare for the next wave of disruption?