Beats + Bytes Archives - Page 8 of 39

The Music & Brands Report Recap

May 1, 2024 Over the weekend, I engulfed myself in a series of articles and videos. The SponsorUnited Brands and Top Music Artists 2023/2024 report was perhaps the most fascinating. It is filled with interesting insights that I tried to summarize and internalize below.

Music’s ChatGPT Moment

April 17, 2024 Back in the day, as a young, hungry agent, I had a rule of thumb: if I heard about a new artist three times in a week, I’d stop whatever I was doing and find a way to introduce myself to that artist or their team. It allowed me to meet and work with a lot of up-and-coming artists and stay on the pulse of what was next.

Festival Season Has Returned

This weekend, the festival season officially kicks off with Coachella. We had a strong warm-up with Dreamville last weekend, and J. Cole outdid himself by dropping a surprise album, I Might Delete Later, the night before the fest. That’s a next-level marketing stunt and shows how non-artist driven festivals can’t compete with true fandom when […]

Q1 Music Trend Report

Heading into Q2 is always a good moment for Spring cleaning and reflection on what’s transpired in the year so far. From my standpoint, the industry is looking solid across the board. The primary way I see music changing is through perceived value. During the early 2000s, music was viewed as free by consumers. Now, […]

The Great Transformation

The world has entered an era of transformation. Everywhere I look, there is significant change taking place. Mark Zuckerberg dubbed 2023 the year of great efficiency. We got through it, it was tough, but we are still feeling ripples of it this year. Big companies are firing and tightening their belts. Public companies are letting […]

The Rise Of The Amateur Sensation

AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetime and there is a lot of talk about how it will impact music. Although I’ve got a list of areas in which the music business needs help, overall it is in a very healthy place. It’s the healthiest I’ve seen it in my career. […]

SXSWin

I just returned from a few awesome days at SXSW. I had a blast workshopping new ideas, seeing old friends, meeting rising stars, and connecting with colleagues and clients. We generated a heap of new leads and heard about what’s next as we head into a pivotal year of technological advances and global transformation. It’s […]

The Rise Of The Amateur Sensation

Women Making History this Month

March is Women’s History Month, an exciting opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come as a culture, and how much further we still have to go to achieve true equality at home and abroad. This week, my friend Cynthia Nelson released a podcast with me. Cynthia has founded multiple companies and is a thought leader […]

New Moon Era

We are living in a time of great uncertainty, but also great progress. There has not been a successful moon mission since 1972, but last week that changed when SpaceX’s NASA-funded Falcon 9 rocket, Odysseus, landed on the Moon after launching from Cape Canaveral, FL. My brother, Alex, was on hand for the launch. This […]