Music Industry in the Big Data Era: Sociological and Marketing Research

The Big Data technologies and the potential of their application in the music industry are reviewed in the article. The main questions raised concern the perspectives of the Big Data usage in the sociological and marketing research, the audience data analysis and the musical preferences of the audience. The Big Data allow to discover new artists and to find new ways of stimulating the audience’s loyalty. The author attempts to answer the question: how does the Big Data change the music industry? The possibility of using the Big Data to forecast the audience’s behavior is being reviewed. The examples of the Big Data technologies usage in the marketing research for the music industry are exposed. The author underlines the importance of this technology for sociologists and market researchers and brings into the light the problems of the Big Data usage. The attention is drawn to the development of the new sphere of musical data science and to the necessity of broadening the professional competencies of sociologists and music market researchers.