👋 Welcome to The Mail Cart. This is Warner, founder of AvA. Connect with me here + follow our IG page for daily resources.
🎥 July’s Assistants of The Month will be announced live on AvA LIVE today at 12:30pm PT. Winners include assistants at The Team, Lionsgate, UTA, Mosaic, CAA, Paramount & Paladin Artists. Tune-in here to see if you (or a coworker) won.
📝 Tidal (almost) dunks on AI generated music. Catalog acquisitions are on the ups. Premier League Lacrosse could become Wrexham 2.0, and more.
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We are giving away 3 of these AvA LIVE show exclusive hoodies on the show today at ~1:25pm PT. These won’t ever be for sale. Only way to win is to tune-in.
In 2025, the average concert ticket price across the top 100 worldwide tours was $132.62. While this represented a slight 2.4% decrease from the all-time peak of $134.23 in 2024, it’s still trending about 4x inflation in the last 20 years.
Source: Pollstar & Yahoo Finance
So I’m bringing my former boss Omar Al-Joulani, President of Touring at Live Nation to AvA LIVE today to dive into it.
He’s overseen probably 78% of your Spotify Wrapped Artist tours: JAY-Z, The Weeknd, Beyoncé, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Swedish House Mafia etc. etc.
Live Nation & Ticketmaster get a lot of heat. I agree with a lot of it. But Omar is one of the good ones, and someone who went from a line cook at A&W into one of the biggest roles in music. He’s got an inspiring story and gave me a shot to chase my dream (at the time) of music touring.
Also on the show today:
🎙️ James Lafferty & Stephen Colletti - The duo co-starred in One Tree Hill, after Colletti got his start in the biz on the reality show Laguna Beach. They are young adult stars turned adult stars, with their new show Everyone Is Doing Great, that took 3 years to be picked up after crowdfunding ~$250,000 for Season 1, now streaming on Netflix.
🎙️ Lauren Neustadter, President of Film & TV at Hello Sunshine - Reese Witherspoon’s partner in crime behind hits like Big Little Lies, Daisy Jones and the Six, The Morning Show and as of today, the TV reboot of Legally Blonde, Elle.
🎙️ BONUS: Live AMA with Nicole Lapin, 5x NYT Bestselling Author & Founder, Money News Network - Did you know Hollywood assistants make $45,075 per year? Nicole Lapin will be taking questions live from the chat about how to build wealth early in your career.
⭐ Tidal: AI music can enter the chat, but no residuals for the robots
While Spotify and Apple Music largely put the responsibility on artists and distributors to disclose whether a track was made with AI, Tidal says it will apply mandatory labels itself, starting with 100% AI-generated songs and expanding from there as detection tools improve.
The bigger move: royalties. Tidal says it will not knowingly pay royalties on music it identifies as wholly AI-generated, arguing payouts should go to original works “directly produced, written, and performed by people.”
So while Spotify’s position is basically, “licensed music is licensed music,” Tidal is saying: cool, the robot can upload the song, but it’s not getting those royalty checks.
⭐ Catalog acquisitions are becoming the new norm
Over the past couple of years we have seen countless major catalog buyouts, ranging from Taylor Swift buying back her own works after years of working towards it, all the way to Red Hot Chili Peppers recent catalog sale for $300 million.
The latest company to get in on that action is a team made up of Firebird, Ares Management, and The Raine Group who just announced a $750 million fund.
⭐ Glen Powell and Rob McElhenney joined ESPN and others in a $100 million investment into the Premier League Lacrosse League. Wrexham 2.0?
We sat down with the founder of the PLL, Paul Rabil, the other week. Massive deal.
⭐ Netflix wants to turn watching into playing (PLEASE STAY IN OUR APPPPPP)
They unveiled a horror video game directed by David Fincher and starring Zoe Kravitz that can only be played in the Netflix app. Following moves into the podcasts and video games alongside their film and TV catalog, it’s only time before they buy DoorDash to become a one stop shop?
The real story, is Netflix is turning passive streaming into “playable thrillers,” betting that gaming can feel less like a console and more like watching a horror movie that occasionally tries to kill you. To hopefully juice their favorite metric: Engagement!
⭐ Olivia Rodrigo teamed up with Lego for 5 different sets that span symbols from her first 3 albums
⭐ NEON picked up the rights to ‘Artificial’ a film about OpenAI’s founder, Sam Altman, written by an SNL alum.
Why does it matter? Amazon dropped the film. Ok by why does that matter?
‘Artificial’ reportedly takes a critical stance at artificial intelligence, which put Amazon in an awkward spot. It’s pretty hard to champion an anti-AI movie when you’ve got a $50 billion investment riding on OpenAI.
Coolest Thing We Saw This Week: Sprite’s Partnership with Genius 🔦
The soft-drink company teamed up with the lyric annotation website to display 50 different sets of lyrics across 6 decades to celebrate the history of Hip-Hop:
Virgin Music Group and Downtown officially announced their combined leadership team after their recent $775 million merger.
NBC News parted ways with their Chief Digital Officer Chris Berend after 7 years. He shared that he is “leaving to pursue his passion outside of news.”
Our new job board features 230+ early career roles in Entertainment, including:
💼 Assistant to Partner - UTA - Apply Here
💼 Creators Assistant - CAA - Apply Here
💼 Publishing Producer - 2K - Apply Here
💼 Domestic Sales Strategy - Lionsgate - Apply Here
💼 Entertainment Coordinator - NBCU - Apply Here
💼 Special Events - Paramount Skydance - Apply Here
💼 Emerging Talent - Warner Music - Apply Here
💼 Motion Pictures Production Assistant - CAA - Apply Here
💼 Indie Label Partnerships - Spotify - Apply Here
💼 Music Central Assistant (Miami) - WME - Apply Here
💼 Ideation Strategist - MrBeast - Apply Here
💼 Product Manager - Amazon Music - Apply Here
💼 Media Associate - Mattel - Apply Here
💼 Content - Madison Square Garden - Apply Here
💼 Sales Coordinator - Amazon MGM - Apply Here
💼 Visual Creative - Universal Music - Apply Here
💼 Associate - Publicis - Apply Here
💼 Content Protection - Netflix - Apply Here
💼 Marketing & Digital - Warner Music - Apply Here
👋 See you back here on Friday
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The Mail Cart is written by Warner Bailey and edited by Riley Furey and Dominik Sansevere.
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