The AvA Connection

🗽 HEY NYC - SEE YOU ON JULY 29

We are bringing our AvA IRL series to NYC on Tuesday, July 29 with AvA’s biggest event yet.

We are taking over the very cool Arlo Ballroom in Williamsburg for 2 star studded panels with a reception to follow. I’ll be moderating both panels and am looking forward to meeting our NYC community.

The best part? It’s free. But we only have 500 seats and every AvA event to date has sold out.. so grab tix and let’s celebrate the next gen of Entertainment.

*Please only RSVP if you can attend the event!

🐝 The Weekly Buzz (6 things you need to know)

1) Luminate’s 2025 Midyear Music Report has officially published. Their CEO shared a super detailed breakdown that you can read here, but below are some of the highlights:

• Global on-demand audio streams rose 10% to 2.5 trillion in H1 2025 📈

• Overall physical album sales declined 3% to 34 million, but when you exclude Taylor Swift, it was actually a 6% increase to 32 million. This shows some durability in physical copies 💿

• U.S. total album consumption rose 4% to 558.9 million, yet total album sales declined 6% to 41 million in H1 2025. This signals a notable shift towards on-demand streaming 📉

• Country music streaming rose 8%, while R&B/Hip-Hop dropped 9% 📈📉

• The most surprising stat? 1 in 3 U.S. music listeners are comfortable with AI creating song instrumentals. Seems pretty high.

2) Netflix posted their Q2 earnings report for 2025, showcasing a 16% increase in revenue year over year. The report further shares that they reached $11.08 billion in overall revenue with a $1 billion jump in net income to $3.1 billion, largely due to “more members, higher subscription pricing and increased ad revenue.”

🧠 Industry Insight: Netflix also shared their Engagement Report that revealed subscribers watched 95 billion hours globally in the first half of 2025, up slightly from 94 billion in the year-earlier period. ‘Adolescence’ topped the list as the most watched series, and ‘Back In Action’ with Jamie Foxx led the way for movies.

3) ‘Lilo & Stitch’ becomes Hollywood’s first movie to hit $1 billion in 2025. After eight weekends in theaters, the family comedy has grossed $416.1 million in North America and $584.8 million internationally for a global tally of $1 billion.

4) Metallica copyright striked… The Pentagon? ‘Enter Sandman’ was used without the band’s consent to help promote expanded military drone capabilities, and then the video was taken down shortly after and reposted with no instrumental.

5) Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ announced IMAX tickets for sale… a whole year before the film hit theaters. The craziest part though? Nearly all of them sold out in under a minute.

6) CBS is cancelling Late Night with Stephen Colbert, with the last episode set to air in May 2026. The network stated it is ‘purely a financial decision’ and that they will be retiring ‘The Late Night Show’ at large. This is a HUGE decision that may be overlooked, but is another signal for the traditional media industry at large. More on that here.

🏆 Best AND Worst Moment of the Week

Could it be anything other than Coldplay exposing an affair on their kiss cam?

📞 The Call Log: Advice from the Community

We asked your peers to give one piece of advice for someone trying to succeed in the entertainment industry, and here are some of our favorite responses:

• “Doors will close along your journey. Use them as fuel to open much bigger ones along the way.”

• “Trust your taste but stay curious.”

• “It’s more important to network laterally than vertically.”

• “Say yes. Go to shows. Go to events. Go out and see the real world and make real connections.”

• “It will be a short career if you take everything personal. Calm heads prevail.”

⏰ In Case You Missed It…

If you missed last weeks interview with the Festival Director for Bonnaroo, you can catch up on that at the link below. New episode coming next week 🫡🎥

👋 See you back here on Tuesday for a brand new selection of Entertainment jobs

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This newsletter is written by Warner Bailey and edited by Riley Furey and Dominik Sansevere.

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