The Mail Cart: Friday, Apr. 17th

👋 Welcome to The Mail Cart. This is Warner, founder of AvA. Connect with me here.

🎥 Next week’s AvA LIVE: Connor Hayes (Head of Threads), Laura K. Smith (Costume Designer for Industry) & Hailey Sani (Creator). I want to ask your questions live. Email me if you got one..

📰 Live Nation is a monopoly. Spotify teams up with venues. New merch record at Coachella.

💼 Looking for open Entertainment jobs? Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter. Plus Our Job Board now has 210+ early career Entertainment roles as well.

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Think you have a tough job? Here are some Hollywood Horror Stories as submitted by our community to get you through your Friday:

⭐ Live Nation has officially lost their trial against ~40 states and has been deemed a monopoly.

What this does meannnnnn though? Live Nation will possibly (I’ll believe it when I see it..) have to split with Ticketmaster, which brings in 37% of the companies operating profit:

Source: TrungTPhan

⭐ Bieber shattered the all-time Coachella merch record:

His brand Skylrk sold $5.04 million worth of merch in ONE weekend at the fest. That’s an absurd $40 per head. Coachella attracts 125k fans per weekend.

The previous TWO-WEEKEND record? $1.7 million.

⭐ Spotify teams up with the National Independent Venue Association for a 1-year deal to expand visibility and help them compete with Live Nation & AEG.

⭐ MrBeast is already the biggest creator in the world. Now he’s pushing into financial services, mobile, and deeper marketing infrastructure and hiring his first CMO.

Creator Economy Trends

Trend 1: Creator-led businesses are getting a more operationally complex, and a lot closer to modern media conglomerates.

Trend 2: A ton of traditional $$s (VC money) is flowing into creator businesses to help them build out that infrastructure.

Trend 3 : Everyone wants to own their distribution. Niche communities with direct relationships to a defined audiences will continue to become more and more valuable, and companies, brands, and media players will overpay for them.

⭐ AI “actress” (lol no) Tilly Norwood was scheduled to visit a top film school, faced a ton of backlash and bailed

My favorite reactions: “Gross and irresponsible” & “When is Dodge gonna learn we don’t want AI slop” - Deadline

⭐ The video podcast wars continue

Hulu locked in four video podcasts, including Handsome with Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin, plus rewatch shows for New Girl, Prison Break, and This Is Us, starting April 19.

The deal with Headgum gives Hulu early exclusive episodes before wider release.

Shows now seem to go from YouTube to streaming, back to YouTube, and then somehow package deal back to streaming. The cycle only continues.

CinemaCon Highlights:

💡Wtf is CinemaCon? Each year studios and theater owners meet up to show off upcoming movies + lots of industry gamesmanship.

⭐ David Ellison promised once again that Paramount & WBD will release 30 movies a year if the deal goes through, all of which will have a 30-45 day theatrical window.

⭐ Amazon MGM Studios also shared that they will be releasing 15 movies a year in a continued bid to reach their target of a $1 billion annual spend on films

If this means more original movies like ‘Project Hail Mary’ getting green-lit, I’m all for it.

Guest lineup booked by:

Can’t believe Bieber watched AvA LIVE on stage at Coachella (per sources).

This week I only accidentally muted myself once! while talking to David Grutman. Hey, at least you can't accuse me of lip syncing. We also will fix my fucked up audio next week (I promise). The beauty of LIVE.

Connor Hayes (Head of Threads) will join me to read crazy Hollywood Horror Stories, and maybe he has a special guest of his own… Plus the costume designer for Industry & creator Hailey Sani.

Connor hasn't accepted my LinkedIn request yet, and he once called me Warren for an extended period of time, but he's still my favorite.