I helped uncover how America's biggest radio network broke its promise to Taylor Swift

As an Insights and Analytics Editor at Business Insider, I'm always looking for interesting trends hidden in overwhelmingly large datasets. I had the exciting opportunity to look through three years of Taylor Swift's radio airplay data with the incredibly talented storyteller Jack Newsham to understand if iHeart Radio, America’s biggest radio network, kept its promise to America’s biggest performer, to only play ‘Taylors Versions’ of her music. Our investigation was published on Business Insider, showcased on the homepage, and sent out as a push notification.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI

The Process

  • I formatted +90 Excel documents of Taylor Swift Airplay data from ACRCloud into a format that we could analyze

  • I used my understanding of advanced Google Sheets equations to find insights in the data, including how many times original versions were played when Taylor’s Versions were available, which songs were most misplayed, when the misplays happened, and so on

  • I worked with talented editors to improve the story through careful edits, interactive graphs, and custom imagery

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