Day In The Life: Karim Fanous, Head of Research at Music Ally
Blog by Michelle Lloyd under Finance, Law & Music Business, Music Training & Careers
Music Ally is a leading digital music business information and strategy company that has been providing publications, consulting, research, events and training to the music and technology industries since 2001. Meaning that Music Ally understands the relationships and the politics that drive the real-world activity within the music industry; backed up with a full complement of market data, consumer research, forecasting and trend insight. Their research is regularly quoted by major global news sources from the BBC to the Sydney Morning Herald, CNN, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. Karim Fanous is one of the people behind the facts & figures you read and, as Head of Research at Music Ally, he takes us through his typical day:
7:30am - It's Friday and I'm up. It's a bit late so what comes next will be a rush. I sit still for 5 minutes, then the rush begins. I check my text messages, email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram apps. Then I wolf down some cornflakes and make a poached egg and a cup of tea. How the egg turns out always reflects my mood.
All the while I'm reading. Reading is what keeps us ahead and I can never do enough of it. This morning I'm going over notes for my presentation. Usually I scour the online music and tech press: our Music Ally daily email bulletin, TechCrunch, the rest of my RSS feeds and the printed music industry press. I like to have a copy of the FT lying around too.
I haven't read this week's Music Ally Report yet. Usually I proof the final PDF on print day, but this week I was too busy so my colleague Rob did it. I make a note to read it on the weekend.
9:00am - I'm off, later than usual. I'm going straight to Bond Street to Lee & Thompson's offices to give a presentation to the National Film & Television School EPCRI students. It's not my everyday activity, but it's fun when it comes around.
The presentation is a culmination of everything I've been talking about for the last year: trends, data, interesting start-ups, economic and market concepts and marketing tools and campaigns. It's well timed – the new IFPI data will be released soon and I'll have to revise all the charts!
I really enjoy it. The students are engaging and interesting. They're from different disciplines including theatre, film/TV and even animation. Only a couple have music industry backgrounds. It's a creative industries entrepreneurship and production course and this is their music module. Martin Mills, founder and chairman of Beggars Group, is coming in to talk to them soon – I smile at that and feel lucky to be in such good company as a speaker!
12:00pm - Three fulfilling hours later and it's time to head east on the Central line to our office in Farringdon. I grab a sandwich and some crisps from Prét on the way. No time to sit and eat. I munch half on the tube and the other half in the office.
It's a full house today which makes me happy. Many of us are often out and about and our founders (and my bosses) Steve Mayall and Paul Brindley are in too, not out at meetings. Great to see all the Music Ally family in one place.
Banter ensues! It's Friday, which means full-album-Friday; a fun Friday habit we have. Each of us chooses one album and we all sit through it from start to finish whether we like it or not. I tend to push the taste envelope and have had a genius idea on the tube journey: Top Gun.
My colleagues are lucky, they don't know that until that point I had been considering Pallbearer 'Sorrow and Extinction', a heavy sound that I was instantly drawn to when I first heard it on Pitchfork a year ago. Something tells me I would have enjoyed it but that it wouldn't have gone down too well.
I'm head of research at Music Ally. My team and I work with clients across the music industry (and sometimes outside of it too). These range from industry bodies to tech companies, start-ups, labels and agencies; working on anything from deep research to product development, setting up partnerships, social media/marketing strategy and general consulting advice. We have a specialisation in digital at Music Ally. We keep ahead. Our cutting edge knowledge and experience in digital and all its neighbouring disciplines are what people come to us for. I'm proud to work with these companies, and to bring value to them.
This afternoon I'm catching up. We've just been to Midem and by:Larm and it's been a hectic month. We're launching a new data product called the Global Music Services Database (GMSD), so I check up on that and iron out a few bugs as well as follow up some leads and give out some demo logins.
It's a big undertaking, the GMSD: a granular database of information about digital music services all over the world. It currently holds more than 32,000 cells of YES/NO data describing more than 100 digital music services and that's just the start. We've been meticulously harvesting the data by hand (we'd like to try and automate some of that process one day but it's a tough proposition to achieve the necessary precision). We've built a searchable online interface and can also feed the data to clients via API.
We're also finishing a big research project today, so I jump in and do some last minute proofing and edits with my team. It's stressful and complicated. But this is what we do and I love it.
4:00pm - arrives quickly and it's time for a customary tea break and macaroon. It's always my round of the day. I take pride in my tea brewing! Tea club banter ensues. It's a big round.
6:00pm - We hit our deadline. The stress subsides, and the Top Gun anthem is playing in the background! We all start to leave and I head home for a quiet one. It's been a big month. I'm not at a conference abroad and don't have to do any major catch-up work this weekend. Time to relax, order that Ben Kweller t-shirt, listen to some music and watch some TV. "Cold beer and remote control" to quote one of my favourite Indigo Girls songs...
Tags
music ally, music careers, music industry, music business, music jobs,
