About Us


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The name Earbender was one of Mike Watt‘s suggestions when I asked him what I should name my indie radio promotion firm in the early 90s (his others were “knee-breaker” and “arm-twister”).  The Earbender “whelk shell” logo was created by Roger Dean in the mid-00s.

Earbender.com began my transition from radio promotion/artist development into the social-tech side of music business.  My intuition was that it would be the main way music would be marketed in the future.  The history, techniques and mores of the music business I knew would need to adapt to the new modes of listening.  So I set out to learn the techniques used in “the data part of the music business (or the reverse).”

“Not an easy pivot” and other negatives along the way, but why not try?  There was nothing to go back to!  And, as JFK said, “we choose to go to the Moon, not because it’s easy but because it’s hard.”;  “technology won’t wait” and “because it will be the greatest test of our abilities.”

As it turned out, a lot of math and data was already part of my thinking from working in promotion, and statistics from being a baseball fan.  For example, I created Venn diagrams that compared the radio footprint of albums I was promoting with our chart competitors to help direct my team’s efforts.

In 2010, I was accepted to Columbia University‘s Technology Management program, where my thesis was a music search engine that provided recommendation based on contextual, intelligence-based data, and presented as images.

Earbender Analytics is a small team that I lead on a project basis.  The firm specializes in creating data – driven strategies to support all aspects of the contemporary music business.  Past projects/solutions include predictive analysis, report development, data visualization and implementation of business intelligence systems.

We use SQL, R, MicroStrategy, Tableau, Excel and other business intelligence applications to help your data tell a story.  My “soft skills” have helped me collaborate with programmers as a team leader and with users alike through the design, development and training phases of data projects.

It took a long time to get here, but if I can do it, you can too.

As Edward Tufte said, “if you’re not doing something different, then you’re not really doing anything at all.”