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Making beats for the future | Featuring Timbaland

Gabie Boko and Timbaland sitting down for an interview
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Gabie Boko
Gabie Boko
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I have my sights set on #NetAppINSIGHT, aka the tech festival of the year, taking place September 23–25 in Las Vegas. My teams and I are moving at full speed to prepare for this electrifying event, where our customers and partners come together to meet with the best-of-the-best industry-leading experts in tech. 

Each year has something extra special in store—last year, I interviewed a pretty cool guest: Timbaland. He’s a 21-time nominee and four-time Grammy Award winner, music producer, artist, and founder of future-forward programs and projects. He also knows a thing or two about fusing data technology with winning beats. In talking to Timbaland, I found that there’s a lot of similarity between what he’s doing and what we do every day at NetApp. I want to tell you all about it. 

Innovating for the future

Timbaland made it clear to me that staying relevant in the music industry requires constant exploration of new sounds, instruments, and techniques—especially because the music industry has changed dramatically in recent years due to the growth of streaming services, social media, and digital music stores. 

Artists also have access to a staggering amount of data that they can analyze to identify their next big hit. And this data can be used to optimize their marketing strategies. Trends come and go quickly, forcing many artists to keep experimentation and agility top of mind.

One of the reasons why Timbaland is so great at what he does is that he prioritizes innovation: He’s all about pushing boundaries, experimenting with new ideas (like adding cricket and animal sounds to his tracks), and challenging the status quo. As The New Yorker said in 2008, songs produced by Timbaland “didn’t seem to operate by any of the rules. Where other producers were starting to rely heavily on vintage synthesizer sounds, Timbaland added tabla drums. When other producers began to copy his chattering hi-hats, Timbaland shrank his beats to almost nothing.” This is still true today, as he continues to experiment with new sounds and has even tapped into writing books and founding a music tech platform, Beatclub.

My tech-savvy friends, the same approach applies to us! In the ever-evolving tech industry, we embrace emerging technologies, anticipate market trends, and adapt faster than a chameleon on a rainbow. As my fellow marketers know, it’s essential to navigate uncharted territories and see everything through a customer-centric lens. After all, groundbreaking solutions and ideas are born from the minds who dare to think differently.

It’s all in the data

Timbaland and marketing professionals share a fundamental truth: Data plays a crucial role in understanding our audiences and making informed decisions. According to the Institute of Data, the music industry is using data in many ways. These include predictive analytics to identify patterns and help artists predict audience demand and preferences; targeted advertising based on listener behavior; and personalized music recommendations through natural language processing to provide users with personalized recommendations and playlists.

Similarly, in the tech industry, data and analytics are quite literally our superpowers. Many of our customers have massive amounts of data, and our intelligent data infrastructure technology makes it possible for them to optimize their workflow and fuel their creativity. For example, our customers at DreamWorks Animation generate over a petabyte (yes, you read that right—this is equal to 1 million gigabytes) of data per film alone. By harnessing the power of data insights, we also identify emerging trends, understand customer preferences, and optimize our products and services to blow our customers away.

Moving forward with AI

AI isn’t a buzzword anymore. We’re in it. It’s the AI era and it’s here to stay. Timbaland was far ahead of his industry when he implemented AI as a tool for music creativity. As a savvy entrepreneur, he even launched an AI startup that could give stars like Biggie “life after death.” Other music artists are also using AI to supplement their creativity, capturing desired styles and sounds or visualizing new sound compositions.

Many of our customers and partners at NetApp are also using AI as their paintbrush. For example, we enable our customers at Pong Yuen to improve decision-making with AI-driven simulations and to solve real-world challenges in the metaverse. NetApp® AI solutions are enabling users to copy complete datasets in just seconds rather than hours, scale AI securely, and maximize performance to make better-informed, faster decisions, thus setting the gold standard for AI infrastructure. Simply put, data fuels AI. NetApp fuels data. 

Join us at NetApp INSIGHT 2024

With 90% of all the data in the world having been created in the last 2 years, innovative data solutions have become the new standard for success for businesses of any size. This is one reason why hosting the NetApp INSIGHT® event has become something I look forward to every year, and 2024 is no different. 

I can’t promise that you’ll see Timbaland again this year, but we do have a full lineup of inspirational guests, speakers, and activations planned. Read NetApp President César Cernuda’s blog for a full lineup of what to expect at NetApp INSIGHT this year.

The countdown is on. You won’t want to miss this—register today. 

See you in Vegas! 

Watch my interview with Timbaland for the full conversation here:

Gabie Boko

Gabie Boko is the Chief Marketing Officer at NetApp. She has spent over 22 years in the technology industry and led transformations in senior marketing roles for companies including Cognos, SAP, Sage and HPE. Her experience has focused on connecting customer success to innovative experiences in software applications and cloud services, digital marketing and websites, customer storytelling, product UX and events. Born and raised in Alaska, Ms. Boko is an avid outdoors person, wildlife photographer and advocate for protecting our natural resources and rural communities.

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