History
A decade
in the data.
From entertainment-data infrastructure to brand-facing cultural intelligence. The short version of a longer story — a working timeline we’re still writing up.
KWL beginsdraft
Founded to build entertainment-data infrastructure — measuring what the world listens to, at scale.
The data yearsdraft
Years of daily worldwide chart history and a growing audio corpus accumulate — the foundation everything since is built on. (Detail to come.)
The audio freeze
Spotify deprecates its audio-features endpoint. The licensed historical corpus stays intact; forward-going features become an in-house build.
The pivot begins
KWL turns the entertainment-data infrastructure toward a higher-value question: reading culture for brands. Pre-registered tests of the music→economy bridge are designed.
Phase 1 — published, and honest
The pre-registered forecast test fails its criterion; we publish it. But the descriptive mood proxies validate (tempo × savings-intent r = −0.52). The descriptive product is born from a failed prediction.
Cadence
The relaunch as a cultural-intelligence company. Phase 2 (brand/category + powered nowcast) is run and published — also negative — confirming the descriptive, receipted path. The France edition goes live; search-intent, genre, news-themes and brand-activity layers come online.
France to revenue, then the world
Ship the paid France edition, then roll out market by market — the pipeline is built to extend.