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Q&A: Wyatt MarshallWhen you think "MBA" you might picture a highly analytical numbers person who loves to examine the gears of a business. When you think "journalism degree" you might picture an intrepid fact-finder who relentlessly turns over stones. When you think "metalhead" … it's possible you're now picturing Beavis and Butthead.
Or you could stop exhausting your imagination and have a conversation with Wyatt Marshall. Since 2018 he's occupied a number of positions at SoundCloud—nearly all of which had the word "data" in the title—and he has now been the director of music intelligence and analytics there for two years. And it doesn't take much imagination to instantly see how those three elements of his qualifications make perfect sense when blended for the purpose of his role. He'd be no good at his job if he didn't love digging into data and spreadsheets, and he wouldn't know what to do with the information he extracts from the data if he didn't have a journalistic storytelling instinct. The metalhead part, well, Wyatt doesn't resemble Beavis or Butthead in the slightest. But his passion for music is what enables him to connect with the listeners and creators who use SoundCloud.
Here, he tells us about the ways data is essential to digital music, but only when used in combination with human intelligence.
At a high level, I generally say I try to keep the pulse of the SoundCloud platform. That includes making sense of what’s happening musically from an editorial, storytelling angle of the kind that makes for good music journalism.
It helps to underscore that SoundCloud is more than just a place to stream music. It’s a place where listeners come to find their new favorite artist before they’ve broken into the mainstream, and it’s a place where budding artists can find inspiration, upload their first track and have it exist alongside tracks from the biggest names in music. In many cases, fans are artists and artists are fans, and they express their feelings toward the music they discover with the social features built into SoundCloud—likes, reposts, shares, and so on, which produces data.
So as a two-sided platform that’s fueled by both artists and fans, we want to understand what’s resonating with listeners, and how artists are using the platform and finding inspiration from one another and how they’re building communities. As the director of music intelligence and analytics, I try to make sure we’re keeping up with all the exciting things happening on the platform.
Because it’s relatively new, there’s a lot of room for novel thinking to take place. Watching the interplay between understanding what’s resonating with listeners and what’s inspiring artists has become increasingly important. I’m sure as the landscape continues to shift, with new modes of music-sharing and creation, we will all have to continue to stay on our toes.
I think we’ll see more emphasis on understanding fandom and identifying who is going to take the leap from casual listening to more tangible support. Data-driven A&R research is going to get stronger and stronger. But it isn’t all just numbers, and those who will do the best here, I think, will be those who bring a true appreciation of music and musical and cultural context and expertise to bear.
Data can help you understand what’s striking a chord musically with different listeners in different places, it can tell you what kinds of features help turn people on to new artists, and a lot more. We’ve all seen the discourse on the economics of streaming, so I think we all realize how important it is to understand the difference between casual listening and fandom, and what signals indicate real fandom. That understanding uncovers deeper connections between fans and artists, and makes for a richer and more rewarding experience for both.
What continues to fascinate me is the depth of discovery, and how small pockets of artists experimenting with diverse sounds can cast aside preconceived notions of genre and song structure and build fanbases that grow over time. Next thing you know, a small community that caught your attention for one reason or another is suddenly the next big thing.
As you go exploring, you discover incredible music, things you never knew existed. As a listener, you can chart a path from dark trap to Vinahouse and hit about 50 other totally different sounds along the way. Many artists who are uploading boundary-pushing music are forming communities with like-minded artists on the platform. Another thing that’s been cool to observe is how certain sounds have traversed international borders. Sounds can take hold in one place and subsequently catch on with artists who reside in another country, and you can sort of watch the spread of highly specific sounds and styles in real time.
While data signals can point us toward tracks or artists that seem to be seeing greater activity than others, and maybe other data can give an indication of quality or sonic characteristics, there’s no accounting for taste. Music hits you and me in different ways, and it takes human ears and brains to pick up on the emotional connection that draws us to music in the first place. I don’t think data can predict the impact that music will have on the individual, especially when it comes to exposure to different sounds that are novel to a listener. I’m a metalhead, and an algorithm based on my listening habits as a middle schooler couldn’t have predicted that a chance hearing of Amorphis would have led to the lifelong connection it has.
I’m no expert here, but I personally believe it’s going to play an increasingly huge role both in trend and predictive analysis, and we’ve already seen a great deal of coverage about AI in music creation, playlisting, and more. With audio fingerprinting AI can give curators the tools to more effectively sift through millions of tracks to find the songs that most perfectly fit a given sonic palette or mood. In terms of personalized algorithmic playlisting, we’re going to see playlists that pick up on sonic traits and moods that fit our listening habits with greater and greater uncanny nuance.
I was writing about music and a variety of other topics as a journalist before I went to business school, and when I was putting together my application essays I wrote about how I wanted to connect would-be-fans with cool, underground music that wasn’t served well by streaming platforms. That was rooted in my work as a journalist and as a fan. At SoundCloud I quickly became aware of the need to see things from a big data point of view, though, and I found that there was room to plant guideposts rooted in music expertise into the data to help better make sense of it all.
The need for music contextualization applies to both someone analyzing the back end of a DSP and to a listener navigating an app. I think cultural context and storytelling really helps bring music alive, and helps move someone from being a casual, passive listener to becoming a fan of an artist or genre. So I try to sit at that intersection of analytics and editorial contextualization as often as possible.
When I’m not in my SoundCloud chair, I’m far, far from scientific in my discovery methods. I write a metal column, the Black Market, over at Stereogum where Ian Chainey and I highlight our 10 favorite metal tracks every month, so I’m constantly looking for new metal. For that, I’ll dig around on Bandcamp, where metal has a really strong community, there are some YouTube channels that are really useful sources, and I’ve got a stack of promos landing in my email every day that I could never hope to keep up with. It may sound a bit basic, but a good band name will catch my attention, and so will album art—metal has such a strong visual language, and if a band nails the look and vibe, they’re onto something, so I’ll give it a listen and am usually not disappointed. It’s hard to beat the feeling of stumbling across a new gem that clicks within seconds and will stick with you for months and years.
The Pleasure of Deadlines According to Annie ZaleskiAnnie Zaleski is a writer, editor, author, and music curator who's been lending her considerable talents to TBC since 2017. But she was honing her craft professionally for close to two decades before that (and she points out that her fervent energy for writing dates back at least as far as elementary school). She wrote a book on Duran Duran's Rio (2021) as well as Lady Gaga: Applause (2022), and other titles are in the works. Annie is profoundly passionate about and fluent in rock, pop, punk, and New Wave music, among other genres, and without breaking a sweat can throw down 16 reasons why her hometown, Cleveland, is truly the only place that could be the home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Here, she told us about her accomplishments, challenges, dreams, and nightmares.
The 33 1/3 series book I wrote on Duran Duran's Rio. (Available in two editions!) It's a long, complicated story: I pitched the book in 2007 and 2009, to no avail, and finally wrote a better proposal in 2018 that was accepted. I started working on it in late 2019 and spent the first very fraught part of the pandemic at home, doing interviews, research, and writing, and finally finished it in fall 2020. I labored over the writing, the word choices and arrangements, the editing and copyediting because I had been wanting to write the book for so long—helping to place Duran Duran's music in the greater canon was deeply important to me. I'm enormously proud of how it turned out and that people like it!
Time management. Projects with hard deadlines are preferable, since then I can plan better, but I often have projects with long deadlines (or amorphous deadlines). Trying to balance short- and long-term deadlines is tough for me because things keep getting pushed off. That old saying about assignments expanding to fill the time you have is so deeply true. My best solution is not to overschedule, because that's when I tend to get overwhelmed—it's definitely a work in progress.
That there's enough work to go around—so operate from a mindset of abundance, not scarcity.
Back in the 2000s, I said yes to a job working as the music editor at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. I moved to the city knowing absolutely nobody, just my soon-to-be co-workers, into my first real full-time day job out of college. In hindsight, I marvel at how much confidence it took for me to make such a bold move. But years later, that job has continued to pay dividends for me professionally and personally—and I'm so grateful for taking it and for everything I learned.
As far as saying no—years ago, I applied for and was accepted to grad school for journalism at UC Berkeley. I opted not to go because it would've been very expensive. While I sometimes wonder what might have happened had I moved to California, many very good things happened because I didn't go, so it was ultimately the right decision.
Biggest fear: having assignments and opportunities dry up and editors stop emailing. Ultimate dream? To write a book that makes the New York Times best seller list.
The K-pop group IVE, the forthcoming albums from Hannah Jadagu and Laura Cantrell, and my current favorite jam is Julia Jacklin's "I Was Neon." I was also marveling just this morning about how spoiled I am to live in the Cleveland area, because we have an abundance of amazing college radio stations—four or five come in clear enough for me to listen when I'm driving around. So I've been flipping between those lately, too. Watching: new season of Single Drunk Female, the Brooke Shields documentary, and finishing up the second season of Girls5Eva.
David Bowie, because I find him absolutely fascinating. I'd ask him what he's reading.
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