Brief History of Relational Databases and the Music Industry

The importance of information systems and database management for the music industry has been accentuated in the digital age. In the advent of a streaming-first economy with siloed APIs, a data standard can help unify key processes in the music business, from accurate tracking of credits and royalty payouts, classification of artists and records on a streaming service to data-based discovery and audience analysis.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. While the relational databases date back many decades, it's widespread application in the music business is fairly new.

A database is a ‘self-describing’ collection of records that can exist over a long period of time. Databases and database management systems pre-dates the invention of the computer. The need to compile information and store the information has been essential to any process, commodity, activity, business for as long as human society existed, and further optimized with the introduction of technology. With the invention of computing, the concept of a database changed drastically, making it faster, more cost-effective, and easier to maintain.

The 60s, coinciding with the use of direct-access storage solutions, introduced the first generation of digital databases. These database systems were navigational, processing data from one pointer to another. Emphasis was on the processing of information rather than the structure of the data for ease of querying.

The 70s saw the conception of the relational database by E.F. Codd, a new model based on branches of set theory and predicate logic. A relational database introduced the collection of data based on the relation of one piece of data to another. In other words, relational databases was able to structure data into organized tables, which can be easily accessed based on the attributes in the tables.

The relational database can be defined by two terminologies:

1. Instance: table with rows and columns

2. Schema: the structure, indicating the relation, name and type of each column

In 1976, the subsequent invention of Entity-Relationship, proposed by P.Chen, coined the term Relational Database Management System.

In the 80s relational databases rose to prominence over hierarchical and network relationships with the boom of computer sales. SQL, or structured query language, became the standard. Over the last few decades, relational database have become the mainstay while the availability of supercomputing capabilities and storage capacities allowed the further development of new technologies for data storing, computing, and analyzing - compounding into the idea of “Big Data”.

While relational databases and big data has allowed new business models to flourish, and brought success to industries that have adapted and utilized these new technologies early, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, many traditional industries failed to adopt these new technologies and seize the opportunities at the same time.

Before the digitization of music, record labels followed a traditional method to predict the next “Big Hit”, one based on human instinct, to sign a record deal with an artist and put out their music in the form of physical sales or on-air broadcast.

With the development of streaming, Web 2.0, and internet technologies, these databases collected valuable information on records and artists that became a necessary tool to gain competitive advantages, target listeners strategically, identify global business opportunities, understand fans, harness digital marketing, advertising and more.