Realigning Priorities and Unblocking Business Units to Deliver a GAP Analysis as Technical Interim Product Managers for Utopia Music

The Client: Utopia

Platform creating a better World for Music

Utopia Music is a Venture Capital-Backed company based in Europe, with headquarters in Switzerland and offices in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The company's ecosystem uses artificial intelligence and data transparency to improve entertainment productions while tracking music metadata and attributing royalties. It was founded in 2016 solely for the music industry with the vision, ‘Fair Pay for every Play.’

Utopia allows Music Creators, Publishers, Labels, and Collection Societies to enable growth for the entire industry by allowing them to focus on their strengths. Reducing operative overhead, X-raying growth opportunities, and helping Music grow into an actual asset class, the company allows the Industry to finally become its best self. It is creating an ecosystem where music & tech foster creativity & joy.

According to PitchBook, Utopia has raised $7.56M in funding in 5 rounds. Utopia Music has been on an acquisition spree since September 2021, snapping up companies. It has acquired 8 organizations in total, its most recent acquisition was Absolute Label Services on Feb 24, 2022.

Mission(s): Interim Product Manager for SWAT and Hidden Dragon Mission

Utopia’s B2B customer wanted to partner with the company and get a GAP analysis for one of their Music Catalogs. There was no team for the mission, so Utopia created a temporary SWAT team with members from different Business Units to tackle this challenge.

Our Interim Technical Product Manager joined Utopia to represent the Platform team in the SWAT team. We’ve empowered and motivated the team to complete this on time (within a month) by realigning priorities and unblocking business units from the Platform so that Utopia can provide their B2B client with a top-notch and transparent GAP analysis report. As a result, this initiative received further sponsorship to continue.

How We Helped

Conducted Extensive Sessions to fix Station Mapping in Utopia’s Database

There were a lot of UK stations that were not mapped with their feeds in the Utopia Database and a few were not present in the database at all. We ensured that all stations were properly mapped to their correct feeds and showed the result in a .csv file.

Improved Cross-Functional Communication

We sensed a lack of communication among different teams hence we created channels for every task with all the stakeholders who were required to work on that task. We orchestrated the priorities in the channels to make sure everyone was aware of their work and could unblock each other.

Reframed Problem Statements for Stakeholder’s Understanding

The initiative's scope was not defined in a way anyone could read and comprehend. So, to ensure that all the stakeholders were well aware of the goals, we developed an internal plan mentioning the goals and the tasks in a way easily understood by anyone new to the topic.

Other Mission: Hidden Dragon

  • We created a brand new team for another mission for Utopia Platform. It is a subset of the platform, Royalty Management, commercial, and Customer Operations responsible for discovering, proposing, and managing the foundational steps to launch a successful pilot.
  • It’s also a Cross-Functional Team (XFN), hurdling many business-critical touch points with access to the people, data, process, and tech that will enable rapid discovery and results.
  • After gathering the requirements, we have started to define the goals and responsibilities of all the stakeholders involved in the pilot mission.
  • So far, we have improved the data quality by cleaning it and collecting the missing metadata from different authentic resources (radio station data, song metadata, etc.).
  • We automatically gather data for the B2B Client to help them become more data-driven in their strategies. They visualize these in a user-friendly dashboard.
Dashboard view for Coverage Data

Delivered Outcomes

💡 Improved the team’s morale through regular communication, which helped them own their tasks.
💡 Defined clear goals, roles and responsibilities.
💡 Removed dependency by unblocking teams on time.

In the Client's Own Words

Space Crew of this Mission

Product Management Consultant
VP/Director/Head of Product
Associate Management Consultant

For Clients: When to Hire Us

You can hire us as an Interim/Freelance Product Manager or Product Owner

It takes, on average, three to nine months to find the right Product Manager to hire as a full-time employee. In the meantime, someone needs to fill in the void: drive cross-functional initiatives, decide what is worth building, and help the development team deliver the best outcomes.
If you're looking for a great Product Manager / Product Owner to join your team ASAP, Product People is a good plug-and-play solution to bridge the gap.