Meet Entertainment's Future Leaders: Melanie Davis
Melanie Davis, 27 – Product Manager, Supply Chain, Songtradr
New Zealander Melanie Davis is one of a new breed of entertainment industry executives with a background in music technology.
Her work at Songtradr is focused on the company’s distinctive “platform-as-a-service” offering.
Songtradr is a music technology company with both B2C and B2B offerings. On the B2C side, Bandcamp operates as a marketplace where artists and labels can connect directly with fans, monetizing those relationships through digital, physical, and merchandise sales. Their B2B offering includes professional and creative services as well as a licensing technology platform that powers third-party music services through a series of API-based products.
She explains, "I work in the B2B part of the business, focused on providing a platform that meets our clients' music needs. For example, our media delivery API allows clients to access the media their users want to stream or download, while our metadata delivery (Events) API ensures they receive all the necessary metadata. We have a whole suite of different APIs, products, and interfaces that make up our offering.”
So what does she do?
"My role as a Product Manager is quite technical, centred on improving and developing features that meet our client’s needs,” she says, “it’s pretty simple at a high level: we oversee the product and prioritise work with the teams in line with the strategy for the product. But when you work with music, it requires much more abstract thinking than that, at the moment I am juggling some nuanced, industry-specific projects such as artist disambiguation.”
Mel is an enthusiastic member of ERA’s Future Leaders Programme. “I’m over the moon. It’s an amazing opportunity to be a part of a board for the first time. It’s so important to have different age groups and tenures involved in conversations like these. We are being given a voice and a chance to learn. I’m excited and grateful to ERA.
“I view this as an opportunity to deepen my understanding of the broader industry. My work is quite niche, so having a better understanding of the issues faced by the industry is going to help me in my role. I want to absorb and learn as much as I can.”
Your all-time favourite artist/track?
I’ll always boogie to “Dang!” by Mac Miller and Anderson Paak.
A new artist/track to look out for?
Anything released by Barry Can’t Swim has my attention!
The biggest issue facing the music industry?
Accurate creator and artist identification - Without it, many artists go unrecognized and unacknowledged for their work. While the music industry is taking some big strides to address this, there's still a long way to go. Greater awareness and global adoption of artist identifiers are crucial to improving artist recognition long-term.