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#ThursdayVibes. What a week, Future Party people. Paris Fashion Week wrapped on Tuesday, the world celebrated International Women’s Day on Wednesday, and now SXSW is about to be in full swing. What will happen next?
If you’re in Austin for the festivities, check out our official 2023 SXSW Party Grid. It’s your go-to source for all the best parties and events taking place over the next ten days.
In other news… Former Apple exec builds a new record label, Congress really wants to ban TikTok, and high schoolers unite to save the mall.
Top Trends
YouTube → The Machine
Twitter → Michelle Yeoh
Google → Nick Cannon
Reddit → Hugh Jackman
TikTok → “Excuse My French” - Nardo Wick
Spotify → “A&W” - Lana Del Rey
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MUSIC
Larry Jackson // Illustration by Kate Walker
Gamma updates the record label
The Future. Former Apple exec Larry Jackson is launching a new record label called Gamma with some of the biggest names in hip hop. Armed with a business plan that lets artists keep ownership (a recent desire for everybody from Taylor Swift to Kendrick Lamar), Jackson may be at the forefront of remixing the power dynamic of music in the streaming era.
License to licenseLarry Jackson is creating a record label for the artist-ownership era.
Jackson’s Gamma is launching with $1 billion in funding from investors such as Todd Boehly’s Eldridge, Apple, and A24.
Gamma’s pitch is that he’s an “alternative to traditional record labels,” per Bloomberg. The focus is on long-term licensing over ownership so artists have more control.
And artists love the sound of that — Gamma will soon release music from Snoop Dogg, Usher, and Rick Ross.
And to avoid needing to partner with a major label to distribute music to streaming services, Gamma has acquired distribution pipeline startup Vydia.
Gamma is also already looking into content creation outside of music — it has struck deals with A24 for films and The Shade Room for podcasts.
No size fits allFor those wondering, betting on Jackson (who worked for Clive Davis and Jimmy Iovine) is a good bet.
While at Apple, he convinced Drake to release his music on Apple Music before it went up on other streamers.
He convinced Frank Ocean to cut out a record label and release his new album exclusively on the service as well.
And now, with Snoop Dogg, Gamma is showing just how innovative it can be. When Snoop bought Death Row Records, he pulled all of its music from streaming and was deciding on what to do next. That’s when Jackson pitched him a unique way of getting the music back out — dripping some of Snoop’s spoken-word songs from Dr. Dre’s The Chronic on TikTok to build buzz.
The plan worked, and the songs blew up (again). Now, with Gamma, Snoop Dogg is planning to put all of Death Row’s music back up.
GOVERNMENT
Stop the scroll
TikTok is on Congress’ chopping block
The Future. Two bills introduced in Congress this week could effectively ban TikTok for everyone in the US. While TikTok has been trying to strike a deal that would effectively siphon off American user data from ByteDance’s oversight to keep operating in the US, recent revelations of data sharing and spying may give Congress enough evidence to simply shut it down, just like in India.
Bipartisan beatdownGen Z is probably going to riot if Congress passes two new bills that could restrict TikTok in the US.
The RESTRICT Act gives the Secretary of Commerce the power “to ban foreign technologies and companies from operating in the US if they present a threat to national security,” according to The Verge.
The bill focuses on companies from China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela that have access to “sensitive personal data” from more than one million Americans.
It also allows the Commerce department to force American companies to divest from companies it deems harmful.
The DATA Act would give The White House the power to “sanction or ban TikTok if the administration determined it shared US user data with individuals associated with the Chinese government.”
The bill is an obvious swipe at TikTok, but backers also put a target on Chinese firms such as Huawei and ZTE.
The official puntTikTok has responded by saying the Biden Administration could approve the deal it’s been negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for the past three years (which the White House has been reviewing for six months).
But with the White House publicly backing the RESTRICT Act, it probably doesn’t want to be the one responsible for killing your endless scroll.
TOGETHER WITH RIIPEN
Need an extra hand or six?
Feel like you’re so busy that you’ve been scarfing down sad salads for lunch on the reg? You’re not alone.
That’s where Riipen’s in-class projects come in. Riipen is the go-to place to find legit student interns to help you get your work done fast and free of cost.
Here’s how it works:
Sign up and simply upload your projects to Riipen’s platform
You’ll be assigned a group of savvy, digital Gen Zers
Start checking off your to-do’s (and have some time to make yourself a respectable lunch)
It’s really a perfect thing. You get the help you need — and the students get real-world experience. No wonder companies like Deloitte and Royal Bank of Canada regularly work with Riipen.
ECONOMY
New view of the mall // Illustration by Kate Walker
High schoolers band together to save the mall
The Future. A Boston-area mall tapped students from a local private school to see if they could come up with creative ideas to save the space from irrelevance in the age of e-commerce. The school’s entrepreneurship club eventually came back with some big swings that may not be totally feasible. But knowing that malls have historically been a staple suburban-teen hangout, turning to their counsel may soon provide a breakthrough for making the mall cool again.
Teen redesignNew England Innovation Academy’s entrepreneurship club is searching for a solution to save their local mall in Marlborough, Massachusetts, reports Fast Company.
At the invitation of the management team at Solomon Pond Mall, the club made it their project to advise how best to revitalize the underperforming mall.
Using NEIA’s focus on “human-centered design,” the club initially came back with more aesthetic updates like adding more seating areas and plants and updating lighting. Management didn’t love it, wanting more “big, more open ideas.”
The club brought back more radical ideas like retrofitting vacant stores for more experiential things like VR arcades and immersive spas — management dug the ambition of these new proposals.
While Solomon Pond Mall probably won’t be taking all of the club’s ideas to heart, it shows that malls are thinking outside the box to stay alive — lest they become just another fulfillment warehouse.
How a top surgeon takes control of his gut health
Eating healthy is important, right? Right.
But, according to Dr. Steven Gundry, some so-called "health foods" may be laced with toxins that are not-so-healthy after all. (And may even add on some extra pounds.) 😳
Dr. Gundry has got your back with his toxin-busting cleanse protocol. Say goodbye to those extra pounds and hello to a healthier, happier you. With Dr. Gundry's guidance, you'll learn to make smarter food choices that keep you energized and feeling fab.
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Spotify tunes up a TikTok clone
Spotify has rolled out a major overhaul of its mobile app meant to address its discoverability issue. Now with a vertically oriented feed, users can better find new music, podcasts, and audiobooks on the platform, which, yes, optimizes for short-form video previews. It also gives significant real estate to its new AI-powered chatbot recommendation engine, DJ. With TikTok recently taking the crown for breaking new artists, Spotify is looking to reclaim the throne.
Read more → variety
Ex-Apple execs raise money to combine AI and wearables
Driven by tantalizing speculation, WSJ reports that former Apple execs Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno have founded Humane Inc. and plan on debuting a wearable device with a major AI component. The company has raised a fresh$100 million from Kindred Ventures and has struck deals with OpenAI and Microsoft. While very little is known about the device, a patent filing details it could have a projection display that users can interact with. Guess we’ll see what all the hype is about in the coming months.
Read more → wsj
Vertex promises to be transparent about crypto
The crypto industry has had a rough go at it the past several months, thanks to the collapse of FTX and a slew of other high-profile bankruptcies. Now, a new exchange, Vertex, is positioning itself as an alternative to Coinbase or Binance and promising to be what the blockchain was always meant to be: transparent and decentralized. Vertex says it can achieve those goals while also being able to process transactions as fast as its centralized competitors.
Read more → bloomberg
Tower Records finds physical life
Famous music retailer Tower Records is upgrading from its online resurrection in 2020 to a full-fledged brick-and-mortar renaissance. The brand has opened Tower Labs in Brooklyn — a space "designed to engage and stimulate music fans with a range of offerings, including live music events, album listening parties, and a new speakeasy-style ‘vinyl drop’ window for limited edition music and merchandise releases.” In other words, very much our jam. Additionally, it’s firing up the (digital) printing presses for its iconic magazine, Pulse, which will feature filmed podcasts, interviews, and performances.
Read more → variety
Cartier lets you try on rings while never touching them
Cartier rings are very expensive… so expensive that Cartier would love for you to see how they look on your hand without actually having to bust them out. It’s doing this at its Cartier Retail Innovation Lab in Brooklyn with a powerful AR virtual try-on tech. When a customer puts on a black “marker” ring and places it under a specialized lamp, the customer’s hand appears on an adjacent iPad in highly realistic detail. It’s all thanks to its use of “generative adversarial networks'' — the same software used to create deepfake videos. Your hand is being recreated in real-time.
Read more → fastcompany
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Today's email was brought to you by David Vendrell.Edited by Nick Comney. Publishing by Sara Kitnick.