Last week, MLB concluded a remarkable season with a new champion.At the beginning of the season, MLB made some changes that performed very well for the game, including the addition of a pitch clock and larger bases. According to ESPN, game time is down while all the things that make baseball fun are up. Batting average was up six points from 2022, batting average on balls in play was up seven points to .297, and on-base percentage was up eight points to .320. We also saw an increase in runs per game and stolen base attempts, while average attendance jumped a whopping 9.15%, the biggest one-year increase across the league in 30 years.The World Series, too, was phenomenal. Yes it didn’t rate that well but it was certainly an epic story for the sport. The Texas Rangers were crowned world champs for the first time in franchise history. The Rangers were not expected to go that far and it was an exciting playoffs all around.The unsung (or, perhaps, widely sung) hero of the World Series, however, was the oft-maligned band, Creed. That’s right, the Rangers have been cranking Creed before games, a ritual that began at some point in the second half of the season. As the team was going through a bit of a slump, the Creed smash, “Higher,” found itself at the center of locker room morale.Over the summer, I read a great book about ‘exponential potential’ called Bending Reality. There’s something so powerful about rituals and superstitions. They create an energy inside of you that is expansive and contagious. The locker room ritual of listening to “Higher” is a great example.Pitcher, Andrew Heaney, talked about the song earlier this week, noting that when the Astros overtook them in the American League West standings, the Rangers started “having fun and playing Creed before games.” Explaining further, he said, “it was just a random thing that everybody started singing to one day, and it’s kind of built on itself.” The Rangers’ first home playoff game provided the perfect opportunity for the team to bring the fans in on the action. After a three-run blast from Adolis García gave the Rangers a 6-0 lead, the 40,000-plus in attendance got a special surprise. As the song blared through the stadium speakers, it went from being the players’ anthem to being the fans’ anthem as well. Picking the right motivational song can have a huge impact. It’s typically most effective when it comes about organically as “Higher” did, and it’s really fun to see how this song has found a new place in pop culture.Creed’s team noticed the lift and were smart enough to jump on it. The band tapped in, too. They showed up to the World Series and announced a massive 2024 reunion tour, their first in over a decade. For frontman Scott Stapp, who’s had a rocky road since the band’s initial peak, it felt so, so sweet.Creed saw a spike in Spotify activity and released a ‘stadium anthems playlist’ of their classic hits to better connect their old catalog to the songs being boosted by the new wave. Not missing an opportunity to intelligently brand, they made the playlist cover the Texas Rangers logo.Talk about an amazing cultural moment for music and sports. We will be covering this in depth next week in our Stat of The Week section done in conjunction with Chartmetric and Clayton Durant. In the meantime, check out this week’s case study of the campaign that Sephora did with emerging artists and music.
BEATS
Garth Brooks is Releasing His New Album Exclusively via Bass Pro ShopsGarth Brooks has unveiled his latest album Time Traveler as part of a limited edition box set. The catch? It’s available exclusively via Bass Pro Shops (Consequence of Sound).
Riot Games' Loud Impact on Mainstream MusicIn the last decade, the 'League of Legends' developer discreetly produced almost 1000 songs, including major hits (Jacob Wolf Report).
Gen Zers Can Recognize Brands Based Solely On ‘Sonic Memes,’ Report SaysSonic branding agency amp found that more than half of this generation can correctly identify a brand based on a viral sound alone (Marketing Brew).
Can Cult Names Like Martine Rose and A$AP Rocky Revamp The High-Street?With fashion scrambling to meet the overstimulated needs of netizens, the industry nearing saturation, and the arts merging (Jing Daily).
This Music-Tech Company Is Revolutionizing The Future Of MusicApproaching the one-year anniversary of their relaunch, United Market stands as a comprehensive platform catering to producers, songwriters, vocalists, musicians and labels facilitating seamless collaboration (Essence).
Fans Care About Openers, Says Survey. But For Acts, Is Bigger Better?Fans care about opening acts, according to a recent survey by UTA and Variety, and these coveted slots remain a way to build a fanbase (Hypebot).
Kendrick Lamar’s pgLang Partners With Light To Release Minimalist “Phone For Humans” The new gadget, Light Phone II, will release on Thursday (Nov. 2) and has been dubbed a “phone for humans” due to its lack of third party apps, which often come with tracking technology (Yahoo).
Spotify Will Begin Dropping Capsule Collections With Top Artists on Its PlatformLeading music platform Spotify is expanding into the artist merch domain, with plans to produce fully-fledged capsule collections in collaboration with some of its top-performing artists (Hypebeast).
STAT OF THE WEEK
How Sephora Sounds Is Tapping Independent Artists To Help The Beauty Brand Win Consumers on TikTok Sephora has launched ‘Sephora Sounds’, a groundbreaking music collective initiative aimed at nurturing and promoting diverse, emerging artists through various social media platforms. This program has incorporated over 55 musical artists since its initiation, with a significant number of BIPOC and female artists, reflecting the diversity of Sephora’s wider community.Sephora Sounds offers both financial support and visibility to artists across a spectrum of backgrounds, working in partnership with SixtyFour Music. Brent Mitchell, the Vice President of Social Media and Influencers at Sephora, highlighted the brand's commitment to fostering inclusivity and providing a platform for a broad range of creative voices saying, “Within the sound-on world of TikTok and social media today, we’re thrilled to be able to feature and amplify a diverse range of musical artists on our social platforms, showcasing the soundtracks that make up the sounds of Sephora – a sound of strength to empower all creators.”
BYTES
In each episode of the new podcast, Noah will have an extended discussion with a single guest. For now, he’s keeping mum on who will be joining him on “What Now?” but said the guests run the gamut from the famous to the obscure (Variety).
Now and Then's eventful journey to fruition took place over five decades and is the product of conversations and collaborations between the four Beatles that go on to this day (The Beatles).
Kaiber, the generative AI creative studio behind the music videos of popular artists Kid Cudi and Linkin Park, announced today the launch of its new mobile app to give creators, musicians and artists a range of AI tools, including text-to-video, image-to-video and video-to-video (TechCrunch).
The 2023 Texas Rangers started listening to Creed’s music in the locker room and the bus. The players say it helped them break out of a slump during the second half of the season and has kept them rolling into the American League Championship Series, where they hold a 1-0 series advantage over the Houston Astros (LA Times).
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!