Is it me or did the holidays creep up on us this year?I guess they always do. The sprint from Labor Day to Turkey Day is a time to fire on all cylinders, and that’s exactly what I did. I landed back in New York last night and I’m staring down the barrel of what this weekend has become: a whirlwind of love and excitement.It’s crazy to think that, because of Covid, we haven’t seen many loved ones in over 18 months. The Friendsgivings are going to be amazing this year and I'm thrilled to see official festivities returning. Welcome back, Macy’s Parade. You are on my bucket list.Then there’s the shopping. What’s on your Black Friday list? And more importantly, who will be your Small Business Saturday go-to? Kudos to Amex for making this a priority for their brand ethos. Amex is one of my favorite brands in the world because of activations like this. In many ways, small businesses are the soul and spirit of our retail economy.Sunday is the first night of Chanukah, so we can take a commercial break and dance the horah one time. Yes, I’m accepting airdrop NFTs! 🕎 😉 In all seriousness, with supply chains down, NFTs are going to have an awesome use case this holiday season. So be the hip uncle and give a gift that shows you care: tickets to a livestream show on Dreamstage (Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, The War on Drugs) or one of your favorite artists’ Web3 creations from One Of.Cyber Monday is the real day to shop deals in my book. Even if Amazon is trolling your purchases and studying your habits, it’s still a 30-35% markdown.Whatever you do Thursday through Monday, make sure you go big on Giving Tuesday. I’m counting my blessings, no doubt. If you care about empowerment and entrepreneurship, consider supporting the Global Resolution Project, where I sit on the board.Here are some great artist initiatives to support as well:RihannaClara Lionel Foundation
CLF supports and funds education initiatives and emergency responses to natural disasters, focusing on the effects of climate change and advocating for policies and systems to improve the quality of life for communities across the globe.
Founded by Rihanna in 2012 CLF supports and funds groundbreaking, effective education and emergency response programs around the world.
Lady GagaBorn This Way Foundation
Born This Way Foundation, co-founded and led by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, supports the mental health of young people and works with them to create a kinder and braver world. Through high impact programming, youth-led conversations and strategic, cross-sectoral partnerships, aims to make kindness cool, validate the emotions of young people, and eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health.
Shawn MendesShawn Mendes Foundation
Founded by Shawn Mendes in 2019, the Shawn Mendes Foundation focuses on “youth-related causes” in areas like children’s healthcare, sustainability, mental health, human rights, anti-bullying and education. Provides Wonder Grants which are designed to help young activists with big ideas, but insufficient resources, launch or complete innovative projects across a range of fields including music, film, human rights, education, science, environment, and technology.
Miley CyrusHappy Hippie Foundation
Founded by Miley Cyrus in 2014, the Happy Hippie Foundation’s mission is to rally young people to fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBTQ youth, and other vulnerable population
You know how it goes. By the time you blink, Christmas and New Years will be here. Enjoy this time, family.
Much love,
BEATS
2022 Grammy Nominees: The Complete ListThe 64th annual Grammy Awards is here! Check out the complete list of 2022 Grammy nominations on Billboard. Who are you rooting for? (Billboard)
Supply Chain Pain: Sonos Can’t Make Enough SpeakersCount Sonos among the companies struggling to keep up with demand: Executives of the smart speaker maker revealed during an earnings call Wednesday that they expect the company's revenue to go down this holiday quarter because of ongoing supply chain issues. (Protocol)
Yesterday Once More: Algorithms Are Changing How We Experience NostalgiaTimbral variety in pop music had been decreasing since the 1960s, after using computer analytics to break down nearly half a million recorded songs by loudness, pitch, and timbre, among other variables. This convergence suggested that there was an underlying quality of consumability that pop music was gravitating toward: a formula for musical virality. (Real Life Magazine)
NFT Music Rights Startup Royal Banks $55M Investment Led By a16z CryptoLess than three months after announcing a $16 million seed round led by Founders Fund and Paradigm, NFT music rights startup Royal has raised another major round of funding, banking a $55 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto investment arm. (Tech Crunch)
More Monkey Business With Music NFTsA second ape-adjacent music project, Ape-In Productions (AIP), was announced. Helmed by Timbaland, who produced the first track, “Goin' Ape Shit," the AIP shrewdness (that what you call a group of apes) responsible for AIP includes Versuz co-founder Gary Marella, cannabis entrepreneur Clement Kwan, and Andrew Rosener and Jonathan Tenenbaum of MediaOptions, a company that makes its money “acquiring and selling high-value domain names” (The Cadence Music)
Why Rap Billboards Are EverywhereIf you happened to be driving through a busy intersection in a major American city this September, you might have seen a cryptic message from Drake. Leading up to the release of Certified Lover Boy, dozens of billboards began popping up around the country, dropping hints about who would be featured on the album. (Complex)
Did Technology Kill Underground Culture?This desperate need for timely content, combined with the means to distribute it globally, meant that nothing could remain hidden for very long. As a result, potential subcultures were deprived of the very thing they needed most — to be left the fuck alone. (Russ Josephs)
The Music Industry Can Feel Like Playing The Lottery For Musicians. But Those Building Communities on Twitch are Getting Rewarded.It’s no secret that some Twitch streamers are making a lot of money on the platform. This was highlighted, albeit unscrupulously, by alleged hackers last month when a list revealing those Twitch creators earning millions of dollars leaked on a 125 gigabyte torrent file. (Music Business Worldwide)
Spotify’s 15th Anniversary: It’s Impact on the Music IndustryThe noughties were characterised by a doom and gloom mentality that permeated the higher echelons of the music industry. Peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms such as Napster and Limewire had a devastating effect on recorded music revenues, and music industry execs weren’t too happy about this. Piracy ran rampant – leading to a mentality that music shouldn’t be paid for. (Amplify)
Tidal is Investing in Direct Artist Payments, a Step Toward Fair Streaming PayoutsTidal and DistroKid, a popular independent music distributor, teamed up last week to introduce a direct artist payments system. This partnership foreshadows a larger pivot from Tidal toward experimenting with streaming payout models that are thought to distribute funds more equitably to musicians who don’t get millions of streams on any given day (AKA, people who aren’t Taylor Swift or Lil Nas X). (Tech Crunch)
Fan Study, Merch Edition: Your Music and Merch Are Better Together, and We Have the Data to Prove ItTens of thousands of artists on Spotify list merch in the Offers section of their artist profiles, so we dug into the data and analyzed how hundreds of millions of listeners engage with merch. Our data shows that the way fans listen to your music may just hold the key to stepping up your merch game. (Spotify for Artists)
UMG Reportedly Modifying Artist Agreements to Prevent Taylor Swift-Style Re-RecordingsThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that publicly traded UMG “has been effectively doubling the amount of time that the contracts restrict an artist from rerecording their work.” This “standard rerecording restriction” previously spanned the later of five years from the delivery of the final contracted work or two years from a contract’s expiration. (Digital Music News)
Postmates and Khalid Present a Musical Experience That Fans Can TasteMusic can do a lot more than just inspire movement; it can also be tied to a fully sensory experience. And for Khalid, music does just that. Now, with some help from food delivery service Postmates and health food retailer Erewhon, the Grammy-nominated singer created a unique experience for fans by creating music that you can feel—and taste. (AdWeek)
BYTES
If you haven’t already, check out this Song Exploder podcast that welcomes Hans Zimmer to talk about his scoring in the movie Dune. Zimmer discusses his concept of a “sketchbook” and talks about his work on the song “Paul’s Dream.”
Check out this amazing discussion on livestreaming with Ric Salmon (CEO at Driift), James Sutcliffe (Global Head of Music at LiveNow), Edo Kovarsky (VP, Growth & Monetization at Stage11), Gideon Gottfried (Pollstar), and Michelle Munson (CEO and Co-founder of Eluvio). The group discusses the rise of livestreaming, where it is now, biases against livestreaming, and what the future holds.
Reddit is shutting down Dubsmash, its short-form TikTok-like video platform, on February 22, 2022. The company says after February, Dubsmash will no longer be available for download in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Currently downloaded apps will stop functioning on the same date.
On November 19th, BT officially dropped his new album as part of his project Metaversal. The project started as a “living piece of art” on the blockchain and eventually became a programmatic blockchain experience. If you haven’t already, give his new album, Metaversal, a listen.
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!