Glenn McDonald

Glenn McDonald is a software engineer, algorithm designer, music evangelist and former long-time Data Alchemist at Spotify, the world’s biggest music streaming service. From the 1990s, he was one of the earliest and most prolific explorers of how to use data to understand and amplify our collective and individual experiences of music. His work at the US music-intelligence startup The Echo Nest helped bring about its 2014 acquisition by Spotify, which put him at the algorithmic heart of streaming music and the listening habits of 500 million people. His website Every Noise at Once has an unprecedented computational map of the world’s music genres, and a large and growing variety of other tools for exploring music and joy. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.