I’ve been making mixtapes for as long as I can remember. It’s how I first fell in love with music. My friends in high school would slide me custom mixtapes to bump after school and, eventually, romantic interests would do the same. It was a glorious time for self-discovery and shared experiences.As time passed, and audio formats evolved, my love affair with mixes only grew stronger. But with more music available than ever before, how do you make something stick? One day I’m loving a song and the next thing I know, I haven’t heard it in weeks. A whole new crop of tunes have replaced it, coming at me from every angle. First we had surround sound, and now we’re surrounded by sound. Is the era of the earworm over?I really hope not. For our part, we put together a blend of tracks that we hope can cut through. It’s a collection of 2019’s best dance, latinX, hip-hop, rock, and obscure gems we stumbled on along the way. What do they all have in common? They slap, of course :)One of the awesome things about playlists in 2019 versus mixes 1999 is that they’re living, breathing “earganisms.” If I missed a song or, inevitably, another burner drops this Friday, I can add it. So holler if you heard something we need to know about!I must admit that this year’s list was more challenging than 2018’s. Are there fewer summer anthems? Is a trend toward sadness and pain in pop music tougher to pair with poolside margs? Or have we fully entered the world of the niche, resulting in fewer songs we unanimously understand to be “songs of the summer”?Regardless, it’s fun to go back and hear what we were pumping this time last year. But it’s even more fun to look forward. So fire up that grill, crack open a fire hydrant, and do a giant cannonball with Nue’s Agency’s Summer of 2019 playlist, curated by me and the fam, blaring in the background.
BEATS
Drake and Live Nation are the Newest Investors in Ntwrk, the QVC for Gen Z and Young MillennialsNtwrk’s deft use of celebrity—and the brands who also have access to them—gives it an advantage in the influence-driven commerce game. (Fast Company)
Converging Art, Expertise and Technology: A Q&A with Our Client mVibeFounded by the prolific composers Stephen Edwards and Mike Suby alongside Stephen Kadenacy, the big idea behind mVibe is to make licensing covers for film, commercials, and other creative uses as easy as possible. (Synchtank)
A Playlist Is Not A Marketing Plan: The 4 Ingredients Of A Great Music Business Conference PanelSame problem, different format. A decade ago, the “get me on a playlist” directive was heard as “make me a viral video.” Dozens of tracks can land on just the single, most-popular playlist. How many videos go viral? (Hypebot)
The Best Place to Discover New Music? Instagram.Instagram began allowing users to share album covers and Spotify links to music on their stories in May 2018. But in recent months, the feature has grown increasingly popular. (Mashable)
Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2019 Summarized for the Music BusinessMary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report, now in its 24th year, has grown to become the de facto bible for Silicon Valley. The report by the investment veteran and former KPCB general partner tracks the most important global shifts across areas including but not limited to mobile, e-commerce, advertising, streaming and gaming. (PDF)
A Generation of Hip-Hop Was Given Away For Free. Can It Be Archived?Record labels have a bad habit of losing their tape archives—sometimes intentionally. Some have thrown away truckloads of masters to save space, donated them to salvage drives, and chopped them up with saws to be sold for scrap, according to Billboard. (PS Mag)
Spotify Decides It Doesn't Want To Be a Distributer After AllSpotify got the music business chattering last year when it announced that it was enabling artists to upload their music direct to the platform. This feature, initially made available to a few hundred acts via the Spotify for Artists dashboard, launched in Beta in September 2018. (Music Business Worldwide)
Jobs of Tomorrow 2019: Take a Peek Into Music's FutureWant to level up in the music business? Don’t just keep pace with the industry -- forge your own path within it, like these drag queen-managing, luxury cannabis-delivering, playlist-piloting innovators making the future look bright. (Billboard)
The BTS Money Machine Continues With a ‘BTS World’ Gaming App — Complete With Its Own SoundtrackBTS agency/label Big Hit Entertainment is minting millions off of BTS, with fresh products released seemingly every week. BTS fans — aka the rabid A.R.M.Y. — will basically buy anything from this group, creating a virtual money machine for Big Hit and anyone else tied to the ultra-successful K-pop phenoms. (Digital Music News)
BYTES
"The hood is good," says Jon Gray of the Bronx, New York-based creative collective Ghetto Gastro.
Streaming services like Spotify are changing more than the way we listen to music - they are actually changing the way music is written.Nahre and LA uncover techniques used to create successful streaming tracks and talk to James Sunderland and Brett Hite of Frenship about winning the lottery with their hit "Capsize."
With Mixtape, you never have to stop dancing. You’re on a roadtrip with some friends, and you need music, but no one can agree on just one playlist.
Here’s our carefully curated summer playlist of bops for Summer 2019. Enjoy those beach days and summer Fridays with Nue’s “Songs That Slap.”
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!