The Mail Cart: Monday, October 26th

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Today is the Super Bowl for sports fans. Well not the actual Super Bowl, but a once-a-year sports equinox. WNBA Finals + MLB World Series + My Eagles limp into Monday Night Football + 3 NHL & 9 NBA games.

New York challenged Hollywood for production spend and things are getting spicy…

Anthropic AI got sued (once again) for using the music of a legendary artist without approval, SAG-AFTRA extended their National Executive Director for another 4 years + gave him a title upgrade, Raye won the Mercury Award for Album of the Year, and Ryan Gosling’s ghost themed folk-rock band returns after a 17-year hiatus.

Plus Skydance’s ultimatum for employees.

AvA Job Board

💼 Looking for open Entertainment jobs? Today we highlight jobs from The Recording Academy, Universal Music, Live Nation & Sony Pictures. Scroll to the bottom of this email, or visit our Job Board, which now has 230+ early career Entertainment roles.

Follow our IG page for daily resources, standout jobs (staff picks vibe), and niche industry facts to impress your boss.

FULL CIRCLE MOMENT ALERT

Kirk Sommer, the Global Head of Music @ WME joins AvA LIVE this Wednesday. Kirk taught me a ton about the biz, but the two things I took away from my time as his assistant are that relationships are more important than anything, and that there is no replacement for outworking your competition.

In May 2000 he started in the William Morris mailroom at $300 a week. He signed The Killers in 2003, the late Amy Winehouse in 2006 and Adele in 2007.

He now works with everyone from Sam Smith, Hozier, Lola Young, Rihanna, Arctic Monkeys, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Ellie Goulding, Empire of The Sun and the list goes on.

He is joined by:

The “King of Sitcom”s, Chuck Lorre who is behind Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory & many more
Doja Cat’s longtime manager, Gordan Dillard
The duo behind MADE BY US STUDIOS, Tanya Cohen and Leanne Perice, who just signed a big strategic partnership w/ TikTok

Have a segment idea? Tip? Guest request? Respond to this email!

🎬 New York is fighting Hollywood for the most Film & TV production spend.

New York posted $1.61 billion in spending for the sector in Q3 (+87% year over year), but California remained in the top spot at $1.76 billion (+17%) and holding its lead by $147 million.⁠

This growth is aided heavily by NYC’s soundstage inventory growing by 43% since 2020, and only time will tell how that war wages on.

⚖ Anthropic AI was sued for using Elvis Presley’s music to train their generative models. What do these AI companies think is going to happen??

🎵 SAG-AFTRA extended their National Executive Director for 4 years and added CEO to his title… carrying him through the next round of negotiations with major studios.

🏢 Skydance sent a company-wide memo offering employees voluntarily buyouts ahead of layoffs and are requiring 5-days in the office for all employees who don’t get laid off.

💿 Raye won the Mercury Prize for Album of the Year.

This is a major honor meant to uplift artists in the UK and Ireland, and she beat out Paul McCartney, Olivia Dean, and more (just in case you didn’t know).

🤳 Instagram is taking aim at YouTube with Features, a new format that lets creators post horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. Instagram plans to expand the test to tens of thousands of creators and bring the videos to its TV app. The first time I saw it in action was in a Colin & Samir clip with the Head of IG himself Adam Mosseri.

My 3 takes:

EVERYTHING IS TV
It was tough to watch on my phone. YouTube is great because you can multitask in different windows.
This will only work if IG catches up to YT with long-form monetization

🤖 Ari Emanuel is NOT team AI calling it “the great average. It doesn't have new ideas. It doesn't have taste. It doesn't have a point of view.” Clip here.

🏰 Ryan Gosling’s ghost themed folk-rock band is returning with new music for the first time in 17 years.

We don’t usually cover new music releases, but this felt worth covering. Super interesting come up story for their group, and Happy Halloween week to all my spooky folks out there.

Every week we drop our favorite podcast & book recs. Today we have something a little more social.

Fan favorite and former AvA LIVE guest Daniel Mac caught up with Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington on the carpet for Netflix’s Animals. And yes, he hit them with his signature “What do you do for a living?” Answers included “actor-producer person.”

Kerry also shared her favorite moment from Animals, when rehearsals started, and how rare it is to rehearse a movie before cameras.

We LOVE a good red carpet interview as you know here at AvA.

Another amazing conversation facilitated by the team at Central Talent Booking.