Greetings from California.Today kicks off WORLDZ. WORLDZ is a platform like none other. It’s been defined by some as the Harvard of culture. It's always a worthwhile gathering where many of the best and brightest brand marketers investing in culture come together to exchange ideas. It’s only done with a flair that makes it even more fun and inspiring. The past few years I’ve taught a master class.Two years ago, I lead a class with rockstars and Hollywood staples Joel and Benjy Madden. I really look up to these brothers. They are self-made from bouncers in DC to pop stars with Good Charlotte. Now besides touring with their band and being Hollywood royalty are steady flexing their musical and entrepreneurial chops. It was really fun to teach a class with them. The purpose of that Worldz master course was to teach the audience how to harness the creative energy of music: to reinvigorate their organization by directly engaging with musicians and bringing them into the boardroom. When marketers utilize musicians as executives they become cultural liaisons for your ideas and can bring a whole new perspective to your business. They can demystify the nuances of culture, and put a real-world mirror up to your organization’s ideas. For an activity at the end, we broke up into groups and had each group come up with their own music strategy for a mock brand brief.Last year, I lead a class with the two EDM superstar sisters Krewella (can you tell I have an affinity for siblings that go into business together… what up AK!) and their manager at the time, the incomparable, Jake Udell. In that class, we discussed the artist “roadmap,” how to achieve market share and the ways in which these ideas converge around the traditional business cycle and brand growth. We call it the “Rockstar Business Plan” and it was lessons every brand can learn from artists.The amazing thing is that both of these classes have helped me to shape the direction of what I’m working on today.The Madden lecture’s building music strategies for brands is a key pillar of what Nue does. Helps brands make deeper connections to their consumers by leveraging music. Our thesis is that every brand should have a music & entertainment marketing strategy and we can help you build yours and execute it. As for the Krewella class, there is so many lessons brand marketers can learn from artists. This in many ways is the premise to my first book which will hopefully be out sometime next year. You can pre-order it here.Anyway, it’s amazing how teaching can really hone ideas. Steel sharpens steel and being in a room full of bright brand marketers will hopefully not only continue to inspire my work and thus inspire the people affected by it. This year, I'm not going to be leading a master class. I’m doing more a give back in the form a mentoring session offering free consultations to attendees. It should all be interesting. I'm just glad to be out there spreading the good gospel. The music business is back and in many ways better than ever. Every brand can benefit from incorporating music into their brand strategy. That’s the wave I’m on and ways to make that better and easier for brand marketers to understand is a win for everyone involved from the industry to the artists to the brands to the consumers. Thank you to the WORLDZ team for the community and culture to help foster these ideas in music and many more worthwhile verticals.
BEATS
The United States Is About To Become a $10BN Recorded Music Market Again - For The First Time Since 2007Music fans in the United States are making it rain. New stats confirmed by the RIAA today (September 5) show that, on a retail basis – i.e. the money spent on streaming subscriptions, as well as physical and digital music – the US record industry generated $5.39bn across all formats (plus sync) in the first six months of this year. (Music Business Worldwide)
What Chance the Rapper Gets Wrong About OwnershipFor years, Chance the Rapper has emphasized the importance of artist independence. His experience, similar to Russ and other rappers, has been “look at me, I did it. Y’all can too.”But last week on The Breakfast Club, Lil’ Chano from the 79th took his ideology one step further. (Trapital)
A Decade of Music Is Lost on Your iPodFrom the late 1990s until whenever we stopped burning things onto compact discs, I gave my friends, family, and colleagues a year-end best-of mix as my Christmas card. I kept it to my favorite 20 songs of the year, the final track listings subject to last-minute switches, bold additions, and sequence changes that were controversial to only myself. (Esquire)
Streaming Services Draw New Subscribers With Old-Time Rock ’n’ RollFrom the invention of the phonograph in 1877 to the boom in streaming services today, the music industry has had to constantly adapt to emerging technology. In this video, we explore whether music can continue to reinvent itself to survive. (Wall Street Journal)
Peloton Is Selling Tons of Bikes, But The Biggest Risk To Its IPO May Be The Looming Music IndustryJust as Peloton was gearing up to go public earlier this year, the maker of home stationary bikes was slapped with a $150 million lawsuit for alleged copyright infringement. The case had nothing to do with the company’s rapidly growing business of selling exercise equipment and subscriptions for interactive classes. (CNBC)
‘They Legitimized Buying Views’: YouTube Ads Divide Latin Music IndustryMajor music companies are allegedly spending tens of thousands of dollars to boost view counts on the world’s largest streaming service. How the companies are doing it, though, is entirely legal on YouTube, thanks to a type of Google advertising that one digital marketer describes as “the legit way of juicing streams.” Three sources with knowledge of major-label marketing campaigns say that Universal Latin and Latin labels in the Sony system have been spending aggressively to boost the views on new videos. (Rolling Stone)
Billboard’s Parent Company Is Buying Nielsen’s Music BusinessValence Media, the parent company of famed entertainment-industry publication Billboard, is acquiring the music-industry data, software and analytics business of Nielsen Holdings Plc, according to people familiar with the situation. (Bloomberg)
2019 Clio Music WinnersThe Clio Awards is an annual award program that recognizes innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication, as judged by an international panel of advertising professionals. (Clio)
The Incredibly Technical History of Digital Rights ManagementDigital rights management seemingly came out of nowhere to define our relationship with technology in the modern day.Popularly, it seemed like its birth had come as a direct response to the growth of piracy in the film and music industries, but what's interesting—and perhaps not properly contextualized—is that it existed for years prior to Napster, and had a technical component before the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gave it a legal component. (Vice)
Confirmed: Alibaba Buys Stake In Netease Could Music In $700M DealOne of the world’s biggest companies, Alibaba Group, is now officially a stakeholder in one of China’s largest music streaming platforms, NetEase Cloud Music. NetEase has confirmed to MBW that Alibaba has acquired a minority stake in its company. Together with Yunfeng, Alibaba is investing approximately US $700m in NetEase Cloud Music, lower than the $2bn that sources were speculating yesterday (Sept 5). NetEase Inc. will remain the controlling shareholder in NetEase Cloud Music, according to the company. (Music Business Worldwide)
Sony Cashes In On Nostalgia With 40th-Anniversary Walkman (Now Cassette-Free!) In honor of the original Walkman’s 40th birthday, Sony is releasing an anniversary edition of the iconic cassette player that first made music portable, the company revealed at IFA on Thursday. Only, it doesn’t actually play cassettes, so don’t go breaking your collection out of storage. And it’ll set you back about three times as much as one would have in 1979. (Gizmodo)
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
Black music, forged in captivity, became the sound of complete artistic freedom. It also became the sound of America. On today’s episode: Wesley Morris, a critic-at-large for The New York Times.“1619” is a New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. You can find more information about it at nytimes.com/1619podcast.
Nine-time GRAMMY Award-winner Sheryl Crow’s album of collaborations, THREADS, has been announced as an August 30 release on The Valory Music Co. Unveiling the cover art and full tracklist across social platforms, she premiered “Still The Good Old Days” featuring Joe Walsh and performed the song on The Graham Norton Show during a run of dates in Europe. Crow shared, “’Still The Good Old Days’ totally captures what Joe and I believe about getting older…that life is still fun no matter what stage of life you are at, and that living isn’t just for the young.”
BHAD BHABIE is now in her own mobile game! Jump on & joyride cars, dodge heavy traffic, and outrun cops in high-speed cop chases. Collect cash, steal cars, get rich. Get it on the App Store & Play Store.
After a successful campaign that found her stepping out onto the global stage more than ever before, British songstress Mahalia has shared her Love and Compromise album, the debut album that features appearances from Burna Boy, Ella Mai, Lucky Daye, Terrace Martin and more. The new entry finds the U.K. rising star effectively crossing over into waters that find inspiration in R&B and Soul sounds from around the globe, effortlessly floating between neo-soul, dancehall, and pop-tinged cuts. (HotNewHipHop)
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!