#4 - Return of the Mac 🌞

LA: 🌅 6:34 AM PST | ⛅ High of 86° | 🌇 7:05 PM PST

NYC: 🌅 6:33 AM EST | 🌧️ High of 75° | 🌇 7:12 PM EST

Welcome to our weekly roundup of happenings in the music industry. Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🎹 Song recs based on what we're listening to.

2. 🎧 Audiomack is our Sunlighter Spotlight of the week.

3. 📈 Data you wouldn't expect from Italy.

4. 💿 Industry news on interesting trends and cool apps.

5. 🎡 Festivals coming up next week and some more tour announcements.

Songs we're listening to lately 🎹

From the Vault 🔙

Donya's Pick

Chris's Pick

Sunlighter Spotlight: Audiomack 🎧

It's been ten years since Dave Ponte and Dave Macli co-founded Audiomack, a music streaming and discovery platform that reaches over 20 million people worldwide. This NYC-based streaming company prides itself on having a low barrier to entry and is constantly releasing new features to fulfill a dual company mission:

• Make the music industry more equitable for all artists

• Strengthen the relationship between artists and fans

Like competitor streaming platforms, Audiomack makes revenue from ads, and a portion of the ad revenue is paid to artists. Unlike competitor streaming platforms, their mission is to increase the size of the pie vs. splitting the pie into more pieces. Here are four features they're using to make it happen:

1. Creator App: A tool that allows artists to upload music, engage with fans through comments, and see streaming statistics along with geographical regions where their music is most popular. Audiomack's goal is to draw the shortest possible line between the platform and the artist.

2. Supporters: Fans pay $1 (that's right, only $1) to unlock exclusive content from their favorite artists. This alone made over $30k for artists in the first 4 months.

3. Premiere Access: Artists can "feed fans first" by providing Supporters exclusive access to music before the music is publicly released on the platform.

4. Artist Guide: This is a free educational resource on how to navigate the music industry for artists at every stage of their careers.

Audiomack's number one goal is to be the place where artists start their musical journey. If you've jammed to "Big Energy" (who hasn't?) you might be surprised to know that Latto spent the early days of her career growing her fanbase on Audiomack. She recently paid homage to her roots by returning to Audiomack to perform on Audiomack's "Fine Tuned" series. We're optimistic that Audiomack will continue to help position artists like Latto for more growth.

Data 📈

Grazie Mille: Italians have a lot of pride in their home talent, whether it's their tennis players like Jannik Sinner or musicians like Måneskin. We like this graphic because it breaks down market share, streaming trends, and top-selling music consumed solely within the Italian market. Our biggest *woah, what?* moment was learning that the top 10 albums and singles so far this year within the Italian market are solely Italian artists. Given recent A&R investments and government tax incentives, we should expect this trend to continue in the foreseeable future.

Industry Updates 💿 

Quick Hits

• Increasing Sample Size: Arpeggi Labs, the team behind web3 digital audio workstation Arpeggi Studio, released a feature that enables users to upload and mint their music samples to the Arpeggi Library, their branded decentralized registry of user-submitted music. This allows artists to receive royalty payments and contributor credit each time their samples are used.

• Largest Concert Ever: Andy Lau, Hong Kong actor turned Canto-popstar, now holds the new record for the most viewers during an online concert on Douyin (TikTok).

• Green Nation: Last week, Live Nation made a strategic investment in TURN Systems to support the use of reusable cups at Live Nation venues and festivals.

• Lineup Poster to Playlist in Seconds: LineupSupply, an app developed as a side project by a senior iOS developer at Loom (work video messaging tool), allows you to instantly transform a photo of a music festival poster to a Spotify playlist.

• Weekend 1 or Weekend 2: After a blitz of festival demand in 2021, festival organizers are seeing an alarming trend: revenue from ticket sales may be up, but fans are becoming increasingly selective of which live shows they plan to attend.

Festivals & Tour Announcements 🎡

A couple festivals happening next weekend:

Bourbon & Beyond - September 15-18th in Louisville, KY

There is no bigger celebration of bourbon than Bourbon & Beyond, and there's no Bourbon & Beyond without Danny Wimmer. Danny, previously a record label executive, entered the music festival side of the industry through DWP, his production company. Through DWP, Danny worked with both influential chefs and distillers to add elevated elements of both food and drink to a music festival. A risky bet at the time of the inaugural festival in 2017, but one that paid off and is back again this year. Louisville's legend Jack Harlow won't be there, but it doesn't even matter because this lineup is stacked.

Life Is Beautiful - September 16-18th in Las Vegas, NV

As one of the highest grossing festivals in the nation, Life Is Beautiful is back in downtown Las Vegas for its 9th year. With a strong focus on art (there's 18 blocks of space spanning the entire festival ground) and comedy, there's much more to experience than just music: Ferguson's Downtown turns into a local shopping mecca, Downtown Container Park turns into the Rising Stars stage, and you can even partake in line dancing sessions at the Western Hotel and Casino (owned by Tony Hsieh before his passing - RIP).

Tour Announcements 🤘

• BLACKPINK announces their Born Pink World Tour, which kicks off on October 15th in Seoul, South Korea and arrives in the US on October 25th.

• Justin Bieber officially postpones the rest of his Justice World Tour.

• Dave Matthews Band announces additional North American Fall tour dates after a long summer tour.

• Jack White announces a pair of special acoustic concerts to his Supply Chain Issues Tour.

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week paying tribute to a legend who always brings us childhood nostalgia with a side of our favorite snacks.

Lyrical Genius ✍️

We pay our respects to Mac Miller. It's been over 4 years since his passing on September 7th, 2018. Be safe.

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Chris and Donya