Legendary Motown-era talent executive, Suzanne de Passe, once told me, “it’s important to do good, especially as you are doing well.” This is one of the reasons I love the 4th quarter. The charity galas are kicking into gear and I'm glad to have the opportunity to give back. There’s no better feeling than partying with a purpose.Last night, The Foot Locker Foundation, Inc. hosted its 19th Annual “On Our Feet” fundraising gala at Chelsea Pier to benefit their educational initiatives and the other programs supported by the Foundation. It was my first time attending this unique event where the dress code is black tie with sneakers!Since its inception, the Foundation has always been firmly committed to giving back to the communities it serves. Its mission is to inspire and empower youth culture by creating, developing, and supporting innovative educational programs that encourage health and well-being through physical activity. Through its contributions, leadership and effort, TFLF strives to help young people achieve their goals and succeed in life.Here are some other charities and events I’m honored to support this season:Jazz Foundation: This organization supports jazz & blues musicians in need of emergency funds by connecting them to performance opportunities in schools and throughout their communities. I love this organization. On Saturday night I had the pleasure of attending their annual loft party, which featured some of the best jazz musicians around. Shout out to Bonin Bough and his 92-year-old jazz musician father, Martin Bough. Even though the event is over, you can still donate to the Jazz Foundation here. (p.s. Martin Bough’s photography is having a renaissance. I highly recommend you take a walk down this beautiful memory lane.)Sing For Hope: The Sing for Hope foundation provides custom painted pianos throughout NYC parks and neighborhoods each summer. Their goal is to spur community access to the arts. The pianos are then donated to local schools, hospitals, and community centers in what is considered the largest outdoor art installation of its kind. SFH has a fantastic and inspiring founding team and board. I also believe there is a big opportunity for brands to connect with SFH. They’ve had massively sussccesul campaigns orchestrated with brands like Mini Cooper in the past. Their annual gala is Monday, October 28th in NYC: https://singforhopegala2019.splashthat.com/Pencils of Promise: This event is always one for the books. I wrote about my experience last year at their 10th annual celebration. This year’s event takes place on November 4th at Ciprinai’s on Wall Street and will honor Trevor Noah & Lil Jon: https://gala.pencilsofpromise.orgResolve Gala: This one is particularly special to us because we are sponsors and, for the first time, members of the advisory board! The team behind this is nothing shy of amazing. Wyclef, the world’s greatest entertainer, is going to light the stage on fire and Funk Flex is DJing the afterparty at The Box. How good does that sound!?! The event is November 14th at the Altman Building in NYC. Tickets are here and they go up in price next week. Hope to see you there!!
BEATS
Marketing 2020: Strategies Creators Can Implement To Separate Themselves From The CrowdAmongst all this noise and content saturation, a creative’s marketing strategy has become just important as the quality of work that they are putting into the market. So how can creatives, artists, and brands break through the glass and make their premium content rise to the top?(LinkedIn)
Young Thug Calls On HBCUs For "Hot" Battle of The Bands Challenge Have you seen Young Thug and Gunna's recent performance of "Hot" on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon yet? Well, you should go do that if you haven't. The slime brothers brought out members of Temple University’s Diamond Marching Band to provide a horn arrangement for their So Much Fun collaboration. (Hot New Hip Hop)
Five Brands That Partner With Musicians Sponsorships, partnerships, influencer ads, these can all feel like elusive opportunities for musicians, but make perfect sense for both parties. Established musicians see high engagement rates and follower counts across social media platforms and have the perfect audience that many brands spend all their time trying to penetrate. (Symphonic Distribution)
What's a Music Company Worth? Comparing Tencent's UMG Deal to Other Label Investments Music companies are hot investments again -- but the bargains are becoming hard to find. Sellers of record labels and music publishing assets are reaping the benefits of a music business that’s being transformed by subscription streaming services. The industry's total revenue from recorded music doesn't yet match its highs in the CD boom. (Billboard)
Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake & More Invest Millions in Virtual Reality Startup Sandbox VRHong Kong-based virtual reality startup Sandbox VR has closed an $11 million funding round, bringing the company's reported total to $83 million in 2019 following a Series A round earlier this year.Led by Craft Ventures' David Sacks and Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, the funding round includes Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Will Smith and Orlando Bloom among a celebrity-packed group of new investors. (Billboard)
Advertising On Spotify Spotify has 200+ million active users, over half of which are free-tier subscribers. As we all know, the real price for the free tier is enduring ads throughout your listening experience. Most users find these ads to be the bane of streaming, and a lot of artists will stray away from using them because of this. (Symphonic Distribution)
Primavera Sound Festival Switches to Mobile-Only Ticketing to Thwart Scalping Barcelona music festival Primavera Sound has completely ditched paper ticketing. The move comes as a way to combat bots and scalping.The BBC reports that Primavera Sound is the first major music festival to move to mobile-only ticketing. The festival has partnered with the digital ticketing platform Dice to handle future Primavera events. Dice will also handle Primavera tours and the club night Nitsa at Sala Apolo in Barcelona. (Digital Music News)
Midland Turns L.A.’s Dormant Palomino Club Into a Honky-Tonk Brigadoon Would it be too much to ask Midland to give up its burgeoning-country-star status and move west to become the humble house band at a newly reopened Palomino club in L.A.? It doesn’t seem a lot to beseech for a good cause, however unlucrative it might be for the group’s fortunes and fame. (Variety)
How Indie Went Pop—and Pop Went Indie—in the 2010sOf all the upheavals in music over the last 10 years, perhaps none was broader or more permanent than the complete erasure of the borders around “indie music.” The twin financial and ideological barriers separating those two words began to collapse, brick by brick. (Pitchfork)
Marketing 2020: Strategies Creators Can Implement To Separate Themselves From The Crowd Getting exposure to creatives’ work has certainly become more difficult as the volume of content has increased exponentially across almost all mediums. For instance, consider the fact that more than 95 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram every day and on video platforms like YouTube, there are over 300 hours of video are uploaded to the platform every minute. (Hypebot)
New Metadata Standard Will Make Music Easier To Find Metadata is the grease that makes the music industry run smoothly. Metadata helps artists and labels describe their offerings; it helps digital music services organize their catalogs; and most importantly of all, it helps users find music. Earlier this month, the music industry standards body DDEX released a new metadata standard that’s likely to catch on where many other such efforts have failed. (Forbes)
The Golden Ticket: Artists Make Plays For More Control In Ever-Evolving MarketWith recent approaches to tackling ticketing conundrums – including The Black Keys’ underplay show at Los Angeles’ Wiltern that attempted to prohibit secondary sales and Tegan and Sara accepting donations to fill empty seats at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater that were purchased via the secondary market – the balance of power continues to swing between the secondary and primary markets. (Pollstar)
Report Outlines Economic Impact Of India Recorded-Music IndustryIndian music-industry body IMI and Deloitte have co-published a report on the ‘Economic Impact of the Recorded Music Industry in India’, which aims to quantify revenues generated from all the “formal partner industries” for which music provides the “raw material”. That means television, radio, live events including festivals, and ‘OTT’ audio-streaming platforms. (Musically)
Vertical Video Has Won So Much, Samsung Made a Concert Stage Optimized For Your PhoneNo matter what kind of music it is, the concert experience has always had its staples. You’ve got the people up front singing every lyric. You get a little audience-artist call and response. You’ve got those joy-crying as their emotions get the best of them. And those yarfing in the back corner after being overserved. (Fast Company)
BYTES
Wyclef Jean, who's had solo hits and with the Fugees, and produced hits for Destiny's Child, Shakira, and Carlos Santana came back this year with a new project, "Wyclef Goes Back To School." Every song is a collaboration with college-aged musicians—his way of giving back but also appealing to a whole new generation of kids.
A 23-year old singer-songwriter with an uncensored pen and brown-liquor vocals, Walker has become something of a patron saint for colored girls who've considered bossing up when heartbreak is too much. With the release of her official studio debut Over It, she made history last week by racking up the biggest streaming week of any female R&B artist ever.
Join Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author—on a meditation course for beginners and experienced meditators alike. Waking Up is for anyone who understands that meditation should transform one’s view of the world.
Bohan Phoenix was born in China’s Hubei province and immigrated to the US at 11. Today, Bohan is based in Brooklyn and Chengdu, he is an anomaly in music in both the American and Chinese music scenes; his inclusion of both Mandarin and English lyrics reflect his dual identity and aim to bring the gap between the two cultures he calls home.
This week's newsletter was carefully curated by the Nue Agency staff and our editor Rachel Meisner If you think we missed something this week or have any suggestions/comments for next week's newsletter, let us know!