Executive Summary
The largest music-based entertainment and media company in the world undertook a large and complex data initiative to standardize and scale customer data and marketing operations across its regions, labels, and artist teams.
Operating within a highly decentralized model, the company needed to balance autonomy and control, addressing data ownership, segmentation, permissions, compliance, and operational efficiency.
The goal was to deliver a reusable, multi-marketing customer data platform (CDP) architecture that scaled globally while maintaining strict governance. After a minimal viable product (MVP) launched in the U.S., Canada, and France, the framework expanded globally using the same codebase. The system now supports over 350 CDP users in dozens of countries worldwide.
Treasure Data AI & Professional Services team provided guidance throughout the project lifecycle, from defining data strategy and technical setup during pre-implementation to offering sustained post-implementation support.
Key highlights:
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Strict data segregation with controlled data commingling.
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Supports frequent onboarding and offboarding of labels and artists.
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Enables scalable segmentation, automation, and compliance-first governance.
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Rolled out a single reusable CDP codebase across the U.S., Canada, France, and additional global markets, now supporting 350+ CDP users across dozens of countries.
Challenges
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Labels, artist/bands, and regions all operate differently and have unique needs, including different tech stacks, resulting in major tool migrations and integrations.
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Data dependencies on different IT groups and owners, often working in silos.
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Legacy CDP had created tech debt. Lengthy stakeholder management was required to understand and address incorrect legacy KPIs & reporting.
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Managing high-frequency onboarding and offboarding of artists and labels while maintaining data integrity and segmentation consistency across 900+ CRM systems.
Business impact
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Removed operational bottlenecks and enabled reusable segmentation and automation, accelerating launches for artist releases, tours, and major campaigns.
Why Treasure Data?
Treasure Data was selected because it could handle the structural and operational complexities of the global company. The Intelligent CDP supports complex hierarchical data models for parents, labels, and artists, and enables strict identity governance and segmentation controls ensuring data is protected and usable.
The architecture scales across regions, offering flexible models that the company can build on instead of starting from scratch. The platform provides strong support for compliance, concurrency handling, and automation. In addition, native integration with advertising and CRM systems enables marketing to activate audiences easily.
Compared to alternatives, Treasure Data offered greater flexibility for bespoke processes, stronger profile unification, and better support for large-scale, multi-tenant CDP implementations.
Implementation and measures
Architecture & environments
The initiative created a single shared development environment, separate QA environments in the U.S. and EU, and separate production environments for U.S. and EU servers, with a reusable codebase across all markets.
Segmentation & governance
Standalone segment structures were built for the parent company, labels, and artist teams with automated permission controls to ensure consistent access governance. 1,200 parent segments included events, tours, and major campaigns with controlled commingling for participating artists and strict isolation for non-participating artists.
Operational complexity
Implemented processes to maintain segmentation consistency across markets and teams and built bespoke concurrency controls to manage data ingestion across 900+ CRM systems. The CDP also managed a high churn of artists and labels with automated onboarding/offboarding processes.
Advertising & event tracking
CAPI integrations for Meta and TikTok enable the capture of ad clicks, and website behaviors (page views, cart abandonment, purchases). CDP behavioral intelligence feeds back to ad platforms for optimizations.
Benefits
Quantitative Outcomes
- Rolled out a single reusable CDP codebase across the U.S., Canada, France, and additional global markets, operating reliably across U.S. and EU production environments with no cross-region data leakage. Over 350 CDP users across dozens of countries are now supported.
- Achieved a 3x increase in CRM-attributed sales, with higher open rates, purchase rates, and AOV across CDP-powered CRM campaigns, resulting in a record year for CRM revenue.
- Delivered 32% average reduction in cost per engagement (CPE) and 7×+ ROAS across CRM and paid media activations.
Qualitative Outcomes
- Established a consistent CDP architecture while preserving autonomy for labels and artist teams within a highly decentralized organization.
- Enabled a self-serve, DIY model for marketers, reducing dependency on central teams while maintaining governance guardrails.
- Built a scalable, multi-tenant CDP foundation positioned to support advanced personalization, automation, and AI-driven insights across the company’s global artist ecosystem.
