👋 Welcome to The Mail Cart. This is Warner, founder of AvA. Connect with me here.
🌉 Up at Outside Lands this weekend (dare I say my favorite US festival) where we will sit down with the teams behind artists like GRiZ, Subtronics, Lane 8 & Tinashe. Plus some unsung heroes behind the festival itself. If you’re going to the fest come say hi.
⛱️ Assistant? In L.A.? We are throwing a lil beach hang this Saturday. Deeeets here.
🎊 HUGE CONGRATS TO JULY’S ASSISTANTS OF THE MONTH
🎤 AvA LIVE (our show helping you build a career in Entertainment) is now on Spotify. This week’s convos included Este Haim, the CMO of the Oscars and two A24 writers.
💼 Looking for open Entertainment jobs? Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter.
Plus Our Job Board now has 250+ early career Entertainment roles as well.
Not subscribed yet? Join 39,650+ of your peers. Your future self will thank you.
Coolest thing I saw this week:
GIVEAWAY: AvA is teaming up with Blockprint to give away 2 free tickets to their L.A. block party on August 22nd on Abbot Kinney.
The link to enter here.
⭐ Three big stories from Disney:
They announced a “First-of-its-kind global short-form content-sharing deal” with TikTok in an attempt to deepen fan engagement.
Streaming profit doubled in June and they now have their eyes on launching free streaming channels in the future.
Domestic theme park attendance rose 3%, a different story from Universal Park’s recent decline in attendance.
⭐ Jobs in movies & music grew in July
The U.S. lost 23k jobs in July, but jobs in movies and music actually grew during the month, by 9,900, to 332,700. Great sign for the continued resurgence.
A bunch of new jobs on our job board below…
⭐ Suno, the $5.4B AI music company, is entering into the (checks note) world of vinyl
Music “fans” will now be able to create a vinyl from their favorite AI-generated “songs.” Black mirror type shit here. You’re a tool if you buy one. I said what I said.
⭐ Spotify hit 300 million paid premium subscribers in Q2 & posted a 15% increase in revenue.
Semi-related: Spotify is helping Phoebe Bridgers do album listening experiences in planetariums across the US next week. Planetariums ROCK.
⭐ Nielsen is set to acquire DoubleVerify for $2.15 billion to further refine their streaming measurement services
“Joining forces with DoubleVerify will extend our capabilities deeper into the digital media industry, ensuring that the spend flowing between buyers and sellers is reaching real people in brand-suitable environments, through verified channels.”
⭐ Grand Theft Auto 6 is debuting an ‘extended look’ trailer across both YouTube and Netflix at the end of the month
Netflix is changing their approach of hosting both non- and co-exclusive content in their fight against YouTube for consumer attention. Also I really won’t believe GTA6 comes out until it actually does.
⭐ ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ became the highest grossing movie of 2026 in just 7 days after reaching $1.15 billion
Tyler Denk went from having $120k in student debt & 49 cents in his bank account, to building beehiiv who is on track for $50m in revenue this year. He was employee 2 at Morning Brew and his story is one of my favorite founder stories to follow.
Here are his 5 lessons:
⭐ Put yourself in situations where you’re over your head.
Tyler credits much of his success to repeatedly taking on roles before he felt fully ready. Teaching himself to code to leading product and tech at Morning Brew at 22.
⭐ Choose the opportunity where you can be uniquely valuable.
His friend told him he could be one of 40k consultants at Deloitte, or the only person in the world building Morning Brew. He chose the path with more ownership and upside.
⭐ Entrepreneurship is mostly solving problems, not celebrating milestones.
The public sees revenue, acquisitions and growth. The actual job is handling one people, technology, vendor or resourcing problem after another.
⭐ Build in public to expand your “luck surface area.”
Creating useful content beyond your immediate product can attract people who are not customers today but may recommend, hire or buy from you later.
⭐ Start before it’s perfect.
Tyler said beehiiv often ships at 90%, gets real user feedback and improves faster. "Don't let perfection get in the way of progress."
CAA signed Alicia Keys to a full 360 deal on the back of working with WME for 15 years. Tea!
Warner Music promoted Tom Corson to become their Chief Operations Officer after spending 8 years at the company, most recently as the Co-Chair and CEO of Warner Records.
Sony Music uplifted Stephanie Yu as their new Executive Vice President of Business & Legal following Julie Swidler stepping down. Yu has been with Sony for 21 years and counting.
Addie Poris (who I worked with at WME) moved from WME to Vice President, Film, TV, and Content Strategy at The Team.
Our new job board features 250+ early career roles in Entertainment, including:
💼 Marketing - Mythical - Apply Here
💼 Event Manager - CAA - Apply Here
💼 Talent Assistant - WME - Apply Here
💼 Artist Management - Roc Nation - Apply Here
💼 TV Assistant - Lionsgate - Apply Here
💼 Research - Almost Friday - Apply Here
💼 Office Manager (Masterworks) - Sony Music - Apply Here
💼 Executive Assistant - Fox Entertainment - Apply Here
💼 Creative Assistant - Amazon MGM - Apply Here
💼 Communications - NBCUniversal - Apply Here
💼 Ad Sales - AMC - Apply Here
💼 Research Analyst - Paramount - Apply Here
💼 Assistant - Independent Artist Group - Apply Here
💼 Business - Sony Pictures - Apply Here
💼 Sales - CBS - Apply Here
🎒 Digital Intern - Live Nation - Apply Here
🎒 Copyright Specialist Intern - Create Music Group - Apply Here
👋 See you back here on Monday
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The Mail Cart is written by Warner Bailey and edited by Riley Furey and Dominik Sansevere.
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