Hey, I’m Derek.

I build small, useful open-source tools and datasets at the intersection of culture, music, and data science. I care about consent-first data, clear licensing, and documentation you can run locally.

What I’m building

Entropy of Hip Hop: open research and code to measure lyrical novelty/entropy, with reproducible notebooks, baselines, and datasets.

BandMcNally: an atlas of the music that shaped us. Who played in what band? Where was the secret reunion? What did the flyer look like? Is there video?

Deep Cut Data: cultural datasets and utilities (local-first, scriptable, well-documented).

Why it matters

Open, reproducible tools make cultural analysis and archiving accessible beyond large institutions. I focus on work that’s inspectable, remixable, and used in the wild.

Your impact

Sponsorship helps me:

keep storage and occasional compute online
publish clean datasets and examples
carve out focused time to ship releases and docs

What supporters get:

• early links to releases and datasets
• roadmap discussions via GitHub Issues
• optional credit in READMEs
• occasional perks (short-run zines, pins/buttons, maybe a t-shirt—tell me what you’d love)

If you believe in practical, well-documented tools that respect creators and data ethics, I’d be grateful for your support.