#1 - How do you like your eggs in the morning, Holly? 🌞

We like them sunny side up.

LA: 🌅 6:18 AM PST | ⛅ High of 84° | 🌇 7:32 PM PST

NYC: 🌅 6:12 AM EST | ☁️ High of 83° | 🌇 7:45 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, including a mix of our favorite summer songs and a few throwbacks.

2. 🎙️ Holly Humberstone is our featured artist of the week.

3. 📈 Data on how concerts are back and better than ever.

4. 💿 Tech giants making moves in the music industry.

5. 🎡 Festivals to look forward to this fall.

Songs for you to savor the last few weeks of summer 🎹

From the Vault 🔙

Donya's Pick

Chris's Pick

Artist of the Week: Holly Humberstone 🎙️

For our first edition of Sunlighter, we're highlighting one of our favorite artists who's been making waves across the pond and will soon be making bigger waves in the United States. To some, she's already reached rarified air, joining Margaret Thatcher and Sir Isaac Newton as the most notable Brits hailing from Grantham, but for most, she has yet to be introduced. We’ll do the honors.

Holly is one of four sisters who grew up in a creativity-centered household to parents who supported her music curiosity at an early age. Her father is a long-time poetry and Spanish music enthusiast, while her mother is an occasional weekend cellist. This fostered a dynamic that naturally influenced Holly to begin writing music and playing violin during her primary years. After secondary school, Holly attended the Liverpool Institute for Performance Arts (same place where The Wombats met) but left after her first year due to feeling out-of-place. She subsequently moved to London to continue pursuing music, but ultimately, she still felt that same sense of isolation and loneliness.

Things changed for the better when Holly got her first break with BBC Music Introducing, a program that allows undiscovered artists to upload their music to local BBC radio shows in hopes of being recognized on the national stage. Through BBC, she was invited to play at Glastonbury 2019, and after a short six months, she released her debut single, “Deep End,” prompting Lewis Capaldi to invite Holly on tour. In 2021, she secured her first record deal (with Interscope and Polydor) and more recently, she joined the ranks of Adele, Florence & The Machine, and Sam Smith in winning the 2022 BRIT Rising Star Award (basically the British Grammys).

So why do we like Holly so much? We love a small-town underdog story. She represents a new wave of young artists and provides a more genuine perspective on the quintessential Gen Z aspects of vulnerability, oversharing, and female progressiveness through her music. Lyrics are the most important part of her music – she even says so – and it's made very apparent in her vocal-heavy, intimate approach. Coupled with a unique but complementary production style, you hear an artist pushing the boundaries of bedroom pop into a more developed, mature sound while still maintaining fragility. We really like it, and we can't wait for her first full-length album to drop.

In the meantime, here are some of our favorite songs:

Data 📈

The Return of Concerts: They're back and better than ever.

Live Nation's Q2 2022 earnings report shows record demand for concerts. 100 million tickets have been sold in the first two quarters of the year, translating to $3.2 billion in event-related revenue, surpassing 2019 ticket sales.

Industry Updates 💿 

Quick Hits:

• Shop While You Bop: Spotify and Amazon Music are among the streaming platforms now selling artist merchandise on their apps.

• Bandsintown: The top live music discovery platform is providing artists total control over the fan relationship. For free.

• TikTok's Taking Over the World: ByteDance has filed for a music service trademark in several countries.

• Spotify Taps into Web3: Spotify started showcasing NFTs on Disclosure and Steve Aoki's profiles earlier this week.

• NFT Ticketing: Ticketmaster is hiring for a product manager of NFT Ticketing Tooling, potentially revealing plans to expand their presence in Web3.

Festival Announcements 🎡

A few festivals you might not know are happening next weekend:

Breakaway Music Festival - August 26-27th in Columbus, OH

Breakaway Music Festival is actually hosted in 5 different cities (KC, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Bay Area) throughout the year and focused on curating a lineup of local artists, both for music and traditional art mediums. The festival is organized and promoted by Prime Social Group, an artist management and event promotions company from Columbus, Ohio, so this is a homecoming for them.

This Ain’t No Picnic - August 27-28th in Pasadena, CA

It’s the first year of This Ain’t No Picnic, and it’s being organized by Goldenvoice (the same company that organizes Coachella), so you know it’s going to be good. This festival pays homage to its festival heritage originally organized in Irvine, CA in 1999, and they’re celebrating this with a Le Tigre reunion at the Rose Bowl.

Sacred Rose Festival - August 26-28th in Bridgeview, IL

[collectiv presents], a full-service event promotion and production company known for North Coast and Suwannee Hulaween, is bringing a new multi-genre, counterculture-inspired rock n’ roll music festival to Chicago. Year one for this festival means a pre-party to celebrate The Grateful Dead, a unique festival-themed burger, and a Sunlighter favorite, Khruangbin. The week after is North Coast, so the organizers at SeatGeek will be busy.

Big ones coming up:

• Made In America | September 3-4

• Life is Beautiful | September 16-18

• Austin City Limits | October 7-16

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter with one line and one poll.

Lyrical Genius ✍️

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya