The most exciting thing in culture this week is...the stock market?It’s obviously more complicated than “Reddit is wreaking havoc on Wall Street,” but it’s also true. There has been major disruption in the finance industry thanks to a relatively small group of savvy users who discovered weaknesses in the market and exploited them using technology designed to democratize the trading system, namely the Robinhood app.The “subreddit” WallStreetBets consists of over 4 million people. Their collective buying power sparked a movement that allowed a lot of people to make a killing by leveraging short squeezes on companies like Game Stop, AMC, Blackberry, Silver, and others. This wild play is being framed by some as a retributive attack on hedge funds. Robinhood got in over their head and made the very controversial decision to halt trading (sidenote: I feel much safer using an app called Public).Elon Musk, who has seen his Tesla stock grow more than 3,000% over the past five years, also once fell victim to hedge fund short squeezes, which he overcame, causing huge returns for investors and making him a people’s champ of sorts (as well as the occasional richest man in the world). Tesla and Bitcoin have been on-and-off to the moon!Musk understands this culture and knows how to stoke its fire, which massively impacts the markets and makes his followers a fortune along the way. “He who controls the memes, controls the universe,” he famously Tweeted a few years back.This week he jumped on our favorite app, Clubhouse, for a series of questions and answers. The CEO of Robinhood joined to make his case for stopping trading. In short, he didn’t have the funds to cover but was able to raise 3 billion dollars off the back of this fiasco. That’s one way to capitalize on the moment.It has all been, at the very least, fascinating and, at the very worst, illegal. “A picture says 1000 words, and maybe a meme says 10,000 words,” Musk declared. “It’s a complex picture with a whole bunch of meaning in it.”The times and media are shifting. Things are moving fast and systems are being rewritten. As I’ve been preaching, this is an era of transformation. It’s important to stay abreast of top trends and move at the speed of culture to remain relevant (and maybe even get rich!). Fortunes will be made and fortunes will be lost.That said, keeping up with the Joneses has its drawbacks. The opposing school of thought says to ignore the horse race and not get caught up in the madness; focus on your craft and create. A Jay-Z quote comes to mind: “Would you rather be a trend, or Ralph Lauren? I’d rather be Ralph Lauren.”
BEATS
Best Music Industry Newsletters You Should Subscribe To In 2021Working in this industry means keeping up with its fast-paced trends, innovative tech advancements and everything in between. Subscribing to these newsletters is an easy way to keep yourself informed and stay ahead of the game. Enjoy! (Symphonic Distrubution)
Triller’s Josh Richards Invests in Breakr, a New App Linking Artists With InfluencersBreakr claims to have acquired 17,000 customers already, roughly 70% of whom are artists — the bulk impartial — whereas the opposite 30% are influencers. The startup is a part of a push over the previous two years to professionalize and streamline the influencer advertising and marketing trade round music. (Social Media World News)
Thanks To Pharrell & His Creepy Robot, Sneaker Seeding Is Officially Out Of ControlIn recent years, sneaker seeding (gifting) has gotten crazier and crazier. Most recently, Reebok and Cardi B sent out a mouth and tongue-shaped sofa that contained Bluetooth speakers and all three pairs of the rapper’s latest Reebok sneaker collab. It was huge. It was crazy. And it was totally unnecessary. But that’s the point. (High Snobiety)
Joe Budden Brings Podcast to Patreon, Joins Company as Head of Creator EquityFive months after yanking his blockbuster shows from Spotify amid a dispute over compensation, podcasting powerhouse Joe Budden is partnering with another subscription platform that’s promising artists more leverage. (Billboard)
Meek Mill Remixes Latin Dance Classic "Conga" With Leslie Grace & Boi-1daOut of absolutely nowhere, BACARDÍ Rum has released a global campaign to support the new song and video for Meek Mill and Leslie Grace's collaboration on "Conga", a remix of the 30-year Latin dance classic, produced by Boi-1da. (Hot New Hip Hop)
Versus Game Secures $4 Million Financing Round Led By Raised In Space & Plus Eight Equity PartnersVersus Game, the world's leading consumer prediction/social wagering marketplace, has announced it has completed a $4 million Series Seed round of financing, allowing the company to massively expand its user base through engaging more influencers in the entertainment, sports and social media spaces. (Business Wire)
Tencent Acquires Additional 10% Share In Universal Music GroupVivendi has completed the sale of an additional 10% of the share capital of Universal Music Group to the Tencent-led consortium. The deal is based on an enterprise value of €30 billion for UMG. The sale follows the decision by the consortium – comprising Tencent with the participation of Tencent Music Entertainment and global financial investors – to exercise its option to acquire an additional 10% of UMG last month. (Music Week)
Record Labels Reap Billion-Dollar Bonanza From Tunes on Social MediaIn the latest example, Warner Music Group Corp. has signed a deal with TikTok that will boost its fees for song rights and increase collaboration with the popular social-media app. The contract covers recordings from the company’s labels, as well as songs from its publishing division. (Bloomberg)
Confirmed: Sony Music Is Paying $430m To Buy Awal And Kobalt Neighbouring RightsEarlier today, MBW broke the news that Sony Music Entertainment (SME) had acquired two companies – AWAL and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights (KNR) – from Kobalt Music Group. Now, we can reveal the price. (MBW)
How Questlove’s ‘Summer of Soul’ Tracked Down Rare Footage of the Landmark Harlem Cultural FestivalLegendary musician and music scholar Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is bringing his musical expertise to the movie business, making his directorial debut with “Summer of Soul … (Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. (Variety)
Innovations That Streamed Music Forward In 2020In 2020, music streaming services continued to relentlessly innovate and develop new products and experiences for fans and artists. Here are 10 innovations that helped stream music forward. (Garrett Levin)
Blackpink’s Arena-Sized Livestream ‘The Show’ Is the Next-Best Thing to Being ThereOn Saturday night or Sunday morning — depending on the time zone — Blackpink fans finally got to experience the closest thing to an in-person concert from the group with “The Show.” While the K-pop titans — Lisa, Jennie, Rosé, Jisoo — had intended to be on tour supporting their debut full length, “The Album.” This arena-scale concert, livestreamed from Seoul, showed that the foursome haven’t missed a step, despite the pandemic. (Variety)
Maxim Teams With Blended Festival For 2021 ReturnThis year’s Blended Festivals are shaping up to be the biggest and best yet, with major names from pop, country and EDM set to perform at events featuring entertainment as perfectly blended as fine wine. Blended has plans to double its number of nationwide festivals in 2022, as well as recently completing site visits in Florida, Arizona, and New York. (Maxim)
BYTES
Merck Mercuriadis, Bob Dylan, and the mutual understanding of the power of publishing monies. After Dylan sold his songwriting catalogue to UMG last month for nearly $300m, it’s clear that acquiring rights to musicians’ publishing is a coveted asset in the entertainment world. Listen to Jon Caramanica discuss.
Some of the industry's biggest musicians including John Legend, Janelle Monáe and others reflect on the songs they composed for awards contenders, personal truths revealed by the pandemic, their younger selves and missing the stage at this years’ songwriters roundtable.
Public, like Robinhood, is a zero-cost trading service. Its founders have worked to build a community-first platform, including offering ways to let groups chat about their investments. And like Robinhood, Public has seen its growth skyrocket in recent days. Company representatives told TechCrunch today it was seeing “steady ~30%” month-over-month growth until Thursday, when “new user signups went up 20x.
Emerging artist Arlo Parks discusses her creative process - with a livestream performance - on KEXP Live at Home, as the British star paves her way to success.
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!