Spotify‘s efforts to grow their premium subscriptions are paying off, quite literally.
The streaming giant recently revealed record profits on its Q2 earnings call, and now, their stock is surging. Shares ballooned at a 14% clip on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, per Music Business Worldwide.
Spotify reportedly revealed a 20% revenue increase to a staggering $4.14 billion from April to June, with gross margins of 29.2%. But how is Spotify driving so much revenue?
Premium subscriptions are bringing in the big bucks. The company saw a 12% increase in its subscriber base despite a pair of price hikes, bringing the number of total users to an astounding 246 million. These premium subscriptions swelled the company’s revenue by 21%. Spotify’s ad business has also proven successful, driving a 13% increase in sales to over $456 million.
Another major contributing factor to the company’s boosted Q2 revenue is their late-2023 layoffs and budget cuts. Back in December, Spotify reportedly reduced their workforce by 17% by letting go of roughly 1,500 employees. Their operating costs were cut by 16% year-on-year, which not only affected their workforce, but also their massive marketing budget.
“It’s an exciting time at Spotify,” said CEO Daniel Ek, per a Spotify blog post. “We keep on innovating and showing that we aren’t just a great product, but increasingly also a great business. We are doing so on a timeline that has exceeded even our own expectations. This all bodes very well for the future.”
Spotify expects an additional 13 million new users in Q3 and five million more premium subscribers as they debut their Basic plan in Britain and Australia, and expand their video catalog. Moreover, the company predicts they’ll see over $4 billion in revenue from July to September.
When twin brothers Blake and Joel Atchison were growing up in Nashville, an electronic music scene didn’t exist.
The city is known as an iconic bastion of country music, but at that time, the words “Nashville” and “EDM” were rarely used in the same sentence.
The Atchison twins spent their childhoods playing in the river and visiting record shops, until they snuck into the first-ever Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Little did they know, they would go on to play a pivotal role in the development of Nashville’s EDM culture as the innovative founders of Deep Tropics.
With backgrounds in sustainability, they always harbored a vision for fusing the worlds of environmentalism and music. In college, they studied agriculture, green energy and city planning and even received an EPA grant to run a biodiesel project that powered the Appalachian State buses.
Blake first began producing electronic music events in Nashville in 2008 and went on to create the production company Full Circle Presents, which organizes shows featuring music in house, drum & bass and other sub-genres of electronic dance music.
The “Decompress” party series, which has hosted the likes of John Summit, Justin Martin, J. Worra and more, began in this time. At first, the parties happened every month to six weeks. Now, they run three times a month.
“Consistency really helps the growth of the scene,” Blake Atchison tells EDM.com in an exclusive interview. “Now, we have multiple options for shows to go to, like a normal city. But, it hasn’t always been that way. Even 10 years ago, that was unheard of.”
“I think what makes Nashville really unique and special with the culture here, is there’s a scarcity of shows and parties in this scene,” he continues. “So, I feel like everyone here really appreciates it. I think artists feel it. They’re surprised when there’s a scene and when there’s people that know their music. It’s a really cool time in the city.”
Full Circle Presents now throws between 200 and 300 shows each year. Throughout the process of cultivating an EDM culture in Nashville, one of the biggest hurdles they faced, Blake recalls, was a lack of proper venues for the electronic shows.
“We were going into rock ‘n’ roll rooms, bringing in extra supplemental sound, video walls and lighting, then having to sell the agent that this is an acceptable place for their artists to come play,” Blake explained. “Now, we have venues like The Office and Cannery Hall, with a Void sound system in the small room, a PK Trinity in the main room and The Hennessy sound system in the middle room. It’s unbelievable to see the growth in production value with the venue ecosystem.”
The thing that makes it all worth it? Community, the brothers agreed.
“That is what makes our organization special, that we are all like-minded and we’re doing this for the love of the music, and for the love of the community,” Blake says with a smile. “To see the diversity in Nashville and the richness of the culture, how it’s growing, that’s what fires us up and what makes it all worth it.”
The first ideas of designing a music festival came to life in 2016, a time when the city “didn’t have a proper electronic festival,” Blake said. “It rose out of necessity for Nashville culturally.”
Blake and Joel spent a week in the Northern Californian woods, discussing everything from talent to sustainability. After the creative brainstorming session and a “serendipitous meeting” with John Hanna, a Nashville-based DJ and investor, Deep Tropics was born.
“Nashville is Music City, it’s more than a country city,” Hanna tells us of why Nashville was the perfect location for Deep Tropics. “Country has taken the limelight, but even back in the day, Jimi Hendrix was writing his album here. People outside of the country lane have historically existed here. Just over the last 10 years, with the influx of different cultures, we’re starting to see a rise in much more than just country music. We’re happy to help that come about.”
Besides bringing a large-scale electronic music festival to Nashville, where a thriving scene was now craving a bigger event, the team’s goal was to deeply infuse environmentalism into its bedrock. Sustainability has always been at the core of the vision for Deep Tropics; now, it is considered “the greenest festival in North America.”
Last year, Deep Tropics replaced most of their diesel generators with electric generators and batteries. Their goal for the 2024 festival is to ditch them completely and power the event fully on renewable energy in addition to a modicum of ancillary grid power.
According to Deep Tropics, the festival’s team diverts a staggering 96% of festival waste from landfills. They also annually offset their carbon footprint via a massive tree-planting initiative.
The key to this eco-friendly success is by meticulously stewarding the festival’s sourcing, the team explained. They only use materials that are compostable—without any single-use plastics—and they also reuse as much material as possible, even when it comes to art and decor.
Through a partnership with a recycling business called Terracycle, “impossible items” like microplastics and cigarette butts are able to be reclaimed. Other sustainability efforts at Deep Tropics include an “infinity cup” program in which attendees employ a stainless steel clip to reuse their cup for the entire festival.
They also implemented an eco-band program, which offers prizes while benefiting nonprofits and helping plant 10 trees through a partnership with an organization called Trees for the Future. Throughout the year, Deep Tropics also offers opportunities for people to plant trees themselves.
c/o Deep Tropics
“This year, we’ve taken a couple trips to the R.A.N.C.H. Project so people have an opportunity to actually get their hands dirty and plant trees and work on a farm,” Joel Atchison tells us. “That’s what gets us the most excited, is providing opportunities in our own community. We provide outlets for people to connect with other nonprofits and organizations that are doing cool things. So in addition to promoting artists, we’re also promoting organizations that are doing amazing things in the community.”
The festival’s sustainability initiatives are all made possible through Blake and Joel’s organization, Deep Culture.
“Deep Culture supports harm reduction and safety and champions consent and boundaries,” Joel said. “People really act differently when there’s zero trash cans on-site, there’s not trash all over the ground. Our intention, to promote personal growth and holistic wellbeing within the event, is definitely a distinguishing aspect from other festivals.”
Deep Tropics hosts a variety of dynamic workshops and wellness experiences, like ice bath activations, runway shows and clothing swaps as well as discussions about regenerative agriculture and sustainable fashion.
“We really go all out to make sure there’s plenty of places for people to rest and get educated. We see Deep Tropics as a bridge between party and purpose,” Joel gushes. “We push for sustainability, wellness, anything that is going to inspire people to connect, build community or champion values like consent, equity, human health and resilience. Those are the ideas that we’re certainly trying to get across.”
When asked why it’s important for event organizers to promote sustainability, Joel says that music festivals represent special chances to connect with people and foster change.
“There’s this mainstream narrative that we are separate from nature,” he explained. “When we realize that caring for the Earth is connected to caring for ourselves and our communities, there’s a huge paradigm shift that happens. If there’s no planet, there’s no people. The science is out—we have a major social and ecological crisis going on and so it’s just our responsibility. And I think it’s a really unique opportunity for the festival promoters and event organizers to incorporate that. You’re catching people and at a moment where their minds and their hearts are maybe more open than they will be for the rest of the year. So, what a great opportunity to educate.”
Deep Tropics Music, Art, and Style Festival.
c/o Press
The team shares a long-term vision for the future of Deep Tropics, which they see expanding into a week-long conference in Nashville, similar to Miami Music Week, SXSW or the iconic Amsterdam Dance Event.
“We want to go beyond this festival model, which is a great example of making this weekend event as sustainable and regenerative as possible, and go in beyond that, to make Nashville the most sustainable city that it can be,” Blake said.
The team is taking a step towards that goal by virtue of Deep Culture’s Sustainability Summit, which is scheduled to take place on the Thursday before Deep Tropics 2024. The event will moonlight as a convergence of industry professionals and government officials across different sectors, from food and farming to infrastructure.
“We really want to showcase regenerative solutions and innovation,” Hanna says. “There’s a lot of great stories to tell. So, we’re going to take a crack at our first annual Sustainability Summit this year and see if we can inspire Nashville.”
The Deep Tropics team leaves us with some advice for any event organizers who hope to adopt sustainability at their own shows and festivals.
“Move beyond the mental block of the cost-prohibitive nature, and understand the responsibility that we have, and the power and inspiration that the music industry has,” Blake urged. “From a sponsorship level, people probably wouldn’t be involved or give the kind of money that they do, if we weren’t doing some cutting-edge stuff. I think people gravitate to that on a sponsor level. With a reusable cup program, there’s great organizations that have been doing that for a while now, where you’re creating a revenue stream for the festival. In turn, they can offset the cost of composting and recycling. It’s a journey and we are figuring it out as we go along, but we’re always down to share ideas and what we do with other organizations.”
For Joel, the biggest advice is to embrace the power of collaboration.
“Definitely hit us up,” he said. “We bill ourselves as the greenest festival in North America, not because we want to be the best, but because we want to inspire people.”
“The message that I’d like to give to festival producers is, people care more than you think they do,” he adds. “By taking these steps, it will inspire a different type of behavior. There’s not another place that generates as much inspiration as the music industry. So by making a difference at an event, you’re going to be inspiring a lot of business owners and inspiring the world at large. If we could make the music industry across-the-board more sustainable, I think the whole planet will follow suit.”
Deep Tropics 2024 will take place August 16-17 with performances by RL Grime, Kaskade, Elderbrook, PEEKABOO and many more. Tickets are available here.
A seed is planted, it anchors roots and a flower blooms. The pedals fall as the flower wilts and returns to the soil. The cycle of life sources the old to empower the new, a concept that’s very much present in Whethan’s new album, Life of a Wallflower Vol. 2.
You can trace the project’s DNA to its predecessor back in 2018, but Whethan’s latest effort is entirely distinct from his debut. And it’s apropos that he constructed a sequel to Life of a Wallflower when he did.
Whethan “hit the reset” button on his creative approach, he tells EDM.com, while enduring Mother Nature’s volatility during and after the pandemic. The outcome is a swathe of fresh creativity while adopting the soul of the original project.
“I felt like the world kind of slowed down for a little bit for many reasons,” Whethan recalls. “It gave me more time to reflect on myself and work on this new sound and a bunch of different sounds.”
“Trying to collaborate with many different artists in many different fields. This is very reminiscent of six years ago when I did the first project. If you will, this feels like the return or the next part in the series.”
World-building is a fundamental component of Whethan’s music. He keenly pays attention to it in all mediums, whether the immersive vices of the Cyberpunk video game’s futuristic metropolis or the cruel, captivating beauty of the Dune films. The latter specifically seems to sometimes inspire Life of the Wallflower Vol. 2 with its rich desert theme and sounds. It’s appropriate that the lonely Wallflower sprouts in such difficult terrain.
Whethan is a world traveler who is always pursuing something new. Take for example Middle Eastern instrumentation and rock music, each of which he’s enthusiastic about exploring further. His youthful curiousness for discovery tethers the two volumes of Life of a Wallflower.
“It’s a blessing and a curse. I can’t ever seem to want to make the same thing twice,” Whethan says. “I love pushing boundaries and seeing what kind of new sounds I can come up with. This one is different, but the energy and feeling are similar. The sounds aren’t the same, but they might evoke the same emotion or the same feelings that the first one gave me. But in a modern current landscape twist.”
It’s been nearly a decade since Whethan’s debut original release, “Can’t Hide,” a song predating Life of a Wallflower by two years. His relative longevity makes it easy to forget that he’s very much in bloom.
The 25-year-old producer and DJ has been touring as an artist since he was in high school. It’s an unusual circumstance that’s rotted the careers of many young artists plagued by the entertainment industry’s seedy side. That’s not Whethan’s story. He has fortunately been nurtured by a caring team and there isn’t much he’d change about his work-life trajectory, perhaps only the composure that comes with time.
“Just chill out,” Whethan says. “Looking now at where I’m at, I could just think back to certain times when I was just so stressed out and just destroying myself mentally to the brink to try to finish something or do something that maybe deep down I know wasn’t really, but I don’t know.”
He’s even hesitant to call that a mistake, highlighting an important truth about tough learning lessons.
“That’s that part of me that’s like, well, you never know,” Whethan says. “It’s like the picture of the guy cutting in the rocks and the diamonds are right there, but you don’t know until you break that next rock.”
“So I always believed that it was all for a reason. That’s why I don’t look back with any regret but, definitely, just chill out. It’s going to be okay. Trust the process.”
Whethan was well into his senior year of high school when he got a life-changing offer to tour with The Chainsmokers in 2017.
“I was still in high school while I was setting up my team,” Whethan recalls. “I had enough credits to graduate. The Chainsmokers had offered me a slot on their tour, which even looking back is still one of the most massive, insane tours I’ve ever seen. It was super eye-opening at the time, especially in high school, to just go and see what a tour of that scale looks like. It felt like a Taylor Swift-sized tour. There were multiple semi-trucks and stadium arenas every night. Getting a taste of that was truly amazing.”
The logistics of a high school senior skipping class to tour the U.S. for a mainstream act’s world tour sounds like a wonderfully absurd movie plot. But in reality, it was surprisingly seamless in its execution.
“My school was down with it! They were super supportive,” he continues. “I had been talking to my guidance counselor during my senior year because people started to pay attention because things were starting to make their way on the internet. They were supportive and they wanted to look out for me. They said, ‘You have enough credits to graduate early if you want to get out a semester early and go do the tour.’ I just said, ‘Yes! Let’s do it.'”
“The parents were super supportive too. My dad is a math teacher in high school—not the school that I went to—but a different school. Even watching him, someone who’s in the education system, say, ‘I think this is a good move. I think you should do it,’ was amazing.”
Whethan has often trusted the process. It’s led to a remarkable career from a young age and a phenomenal new project earning rave reviews. It’s hard to gauge what’s next for an artist who’s constantly adapting, but in whatever way dance music’s Wallflower branches out, he does so full of life.
You can listen to Life of a Wallflower Vol. 2 below and find the new album on streaming platforms here.
In the twenty-tens, if you found yourself listening to artists like Rae Sremmurd, Wiz Khalifa and Lil Wayne, you were in good company. So did Tape B, the barnstorming dubstep and bass music producer who is channeling the nostalgia of their timeless hip-hop to cultivate his beloved “Old School x New School” style.
Tape B’s real name is Kemal Berk Alkanat, though he’ll introduce himself as Berk since his first and middle names got switched in the midst of his move from Turkey at just three years old. Now 26, the DJ has found himself on a snowballing trajectory to superstardom.
Though his steps into electronic music’s limelight are fairly recent, Alkanat has been producing music for 10 years. That means his Tape B project was well underway at the young age of 16. But it wasn’t until recently—through a pandemic-spurred move home to Boca Raton, Florida—that Alkanat had a lightbulb moment leading to his now-signature sound.
“I was in this rut where I can make good music but I just don’t know who I am or what kind of music Tape B is,” he recalls in an interview backstage at the dazzling Breakaway Festival in Minnesota.
Through listening to dubstep from the iconic UKF channel along with loads of SoundCloud rap, Alkanat says he experienced an epiphany of sorts, deciding to remix the music he used to listen to in high school since he was home and “everything felt nostalgic” at the time. As it turned out, adding newfangled sounds to long-since popularized tracks seemed to fit what he wanted: a vibe of his own.
“It clicked immediately after I made the first three,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Yo, I’m actually pretty good at making these remixes.'”
Though the songs he reworks are fairly recognizable among fans, Alkanat adds, he chooses their subject matter based off of his own perception of nostalgia.
“I always try to keep it something niche to me where no one else is remixing it,” he says.
As his music grows increasingly popular music, Alkanat highlights another element that has become a signature: vowel bass, the deep and growling sound he endearingly refers to as “the yoys.” This slithering sound is in the underbelly of his fan-favorite remix of PEEKABOO and LYNY’s trap hit “Like That.”
Alkanat recognizes that fans are starting to associate his name with vowel bass, but he wants fans to know that he adopted the sound out of respect to its progenitors.
“I feel like I did play a part in bringing that sound back, but it’s just been such an iconic sound for decades,” he explains, crediting dubstep icons Zeds Dead and Doctor P with its popularization.
Though the seismic sound is in much of his wobbly hybrid music, Alkanat strives to keep “the yoys” on a tight leash, emphasizing that he spaces them out in music releases and DJ sets alike.
He identifies inspirations behind other Tape B sounds as Claybrook, SVDDEN DEATH, Space Laces, Getter and REZZ, among others. Though he mentions that his sound doesn’t much mirror that of his inspirations, it’s the curation of an atmosphere surrounding their music that inspires him. “I just think they’re extremely unique; they do them very well,” he says.
Another major inspiration lies behind his adored tagline, “Yo Tape B, show ’em how it’s done.” He credits influential trap producer TroyBoi with the idea to split up the line and strategically place its fragments throughout his tracks.
Now, after filtering through inspiration to find his own clarity in his direction, it’s undeniable that he’s achieved the perfect concoction of sentimentality, novelty and in-your-face bass. And his career has progressed exponentially, recently dropping high-flying sets at Coachella and Ultra Music Festival, just two of a plethora of major appearances. He’s now gearing up for his own headlining tour in the fall—the largest of his career to-date.
Pulling the yarn of his “Old School x New School” direction switch, Alkanat recalls a surreal moment at last year’s Electric Forest that served as a crucial validator.
“When I looked out, I couldn’t believe how big the crowd was,” he reminisces with a smile. “I had prepared so well for it. I played my first song and I was immediately so happy—I was like, ‘I know exactly what I’m doing, I’m so well prepared.’ And I was so in the moment for that, and that was the day it turned around for me.”
For many fans of EDM and hip-hop alike, Tape B’s recent track “Trippy Land,” a collaboration with Mersiv and Juicy J, was an instant playlist staple upon release. Working with the iconic rapper, Alkanat says, helped to legitimize his work in hip-hop.
The track’s release also catalyzed the outreach of more artists he hadn’t even dreamt of working with yet. Despite his excitement and gratitude, he emphasizes that when it comes to collaborations, he doesn’t want to rush it.
“I want to make sure I have stuff that I’m really proud of before I send a lot of my favorite rappers and influences something to work on,” he says.
Other rappers he dreams of working alongside include Meechy from Flatbush Zombies, Schoolboy Q, Waka Flocka Flame and A$AP Rocky, the lattermost of whom tops the list.
For Alkanat, the key to navigating his rapid ascent was getting over the fear of freestyling rather than having his sets planned out. “When I freestyle it’s just so much easier,” he says. “I know exactly what I want to play… it was really just getting over that fear of freestyling in front of thousands of people.”
Knowing that freestyling led to his best work but fearing the potential mistakes that come with an unplanned set, it took some rationalizing to overcome his doubts. “Back then all I did was show up with a laptop and my controller and just read the room for four hours, and I thought I was way better back then at DJing,” he explains. “So now I’m like, ‘I was good then, why don’t I just do this in a bigger setting?'”
“It was kind of a mental battle, but now I’m very comfortable freestyling up there,” he continues, highlighting the connection it cultivates with his fans. “I think it’s more fun for the fans to just be in the moment and play what feels right.”
His approach extends even further, like in his fan-favorite “Cartunes” and “Driptapes” volumes released via SoundCloud. According to Alkanat, these mixes pay homage to his top live tracks of the year.
You may be surprised to discover that he sits down and assembles these mixes all in one go. Alkanat says he finds himself consumed by a “random manic state” as he sits down to work on longer mixes and EPs, and the spontaneity with which he changes elements.
“The ‘Dopamine’ VIP, with the Rae Sremmurd vocals over it—I made that the day before the mix came out and I’m like, ‘I think this would actually fit!’ And now it’s a lot of people’s favorite part from the mix,” he reveals with a laugh.
In the same vein of feeling and fun within his own studio, Alkanat wants to encourage a sense of community with his nostalgia-fueled music. So take it from the producer himself that his music and sets are there for your entertainment and escape—along with the occasional headbang”.
“At the end of the day, as long as everyone’s respectful, and they’re kind to each other and having fun, that’s what it’s all about,” he says. “We’re all here to get away from real-life shit and just have fun and listen to music.”
Streaming platforms are paying exorbitant sums of money to bad actors, claims research from Beatdapp, who revealed that roughly 10% of all music streams are fraudulent.
That’s according to a recent report from Sky News, which illuminated troubling figures from the music data tracking company.As it stands, all the money from subscriptions is placed into a large pool used to pay out artists per stream. This model has reportedly been exploited by scammers, whose methodology typically involves uploading a song and then implementing bots to stream it en masse before collecting royalties on the artificial plays.
That fraudulent activity has resulted in up to $3 billion in revenue each year, per Beatdapp. The firm has now joined forces with Beatport with the hopes of amplifying their fraud detection technology to make sure on-platform streams are authentic.
The merits for the company are crystal-clear—by detecting fraud, they won’t be wasting money paying for inauthentic content. However, Beatport’s charts open the door to benefits for non-artist users on the platform. With the elimination of fraudulent streams, Beatport’s chart rankings will give users a better idea of who’s organically trending in the industry through a “fair and transparent environment” devoid of the influence of pay-to-win bots.
Helen Sartory, Beatport’s Chief Revenue Officer, acknowledged that fraud is less of a problem on their platform as opposed to Spotify or Apple Music, but doubled down on these benefits.
“We launched streaming products under the Beatport and Beatsource brands in 2019, and despite the fact that they have not historically been a target for streaming fraud, suspicious activity has been on the rise in recent months,” Sartory said in a statement. “Although our fraud rates still remain half that of the industry average, we rely on accurate streaming data not only to preserve fair compensation to artists and labels, but also for track recommendations and analytics. We are excited to be able to work with Beatdapp to ensure that our data is representative of authentic listener engagement.”
You can learn more about Beatdapp’s fraud detection technology here.
As ODESZA‘s “The Last Goodbye” tour finally turned into an actual prophecy, their fans weren’t prepared for the void they’d soon confront.
Returning to the breathtaking Gorge Amphitheatre in their home state of Washington, the duo developed “Echoes,” a tech-driven art installation moonlighting as a monument to their unparalleled connection with those ride-or-dies.
“The Last Goodbye,” which takes its name from ODESZA’s scintillating album of the same name, persisted for roughly three years and is now universally regarded as their most innovative production yet. The tour officially met its end last week after a trio of spectacular finale shows from July 4-6, but not before the band left fans with one more trophy for their museum of memories.
Walking through two rows of three iridescent, curved towers, the scene at the Gorge looked like some kind of phantasmagoric Stonehenge—only with less history and more LEDs. “Echoes” was fueled by a single PC powered by a minuscule-but-mighty Snapdragon X Elite processor from Qualcomm, with whom ODESZA’s Clayton Knight and Harrison Mills collaborated on its development. 66,000 fans passed through the bleeding-edge installation, which featured 120 LED panels displaying projection-mapped visual content from ODESZA and their tour.
However, even in such a smorgasbord of surrealist art and tech, the pièce de résistance of “Echoes” was the integration of voicemails recorded by fans. Mills and Knight shared an anonymous phone number in the weeks prior and asked fans to leave messages containing their favorite ODESZA memories, which were played in 4D audio around the towers and transcribed on their LED panels, transforming them into conduits for immersive storytelling.
ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
The voicemails were a microcosm of the duo’s extraordinary bond with their fans after years of nurturing a community through consistent artistic evolution and haunting songwriting. They were brought to life inside the Gorge’s grounds by the visionary team behind UPROXX Studios and a pair of renowned art collectives, SETUP and The Vessel.
It’s worth noting that Knight and Mills are fiercely selective when it comes to collaborations, so their leap of faith was not lost on this horde of contrarian creatives, who set out to prove that technology can facilitate the emotional release of ODESZA’s music.
“You know how much risk goes into developing something like ODESZA? It’s hard to even comprehend,” says Jarret Myer, co-founder and CEO of UPROXX Studios. “We weren’t with them when they were traveling around in a van. We weren’t with them in their room struggling over the right chord change in a song.”
“There has to be a level of ‘what if,'” Myer adds when asked about his studio’s secret sauce to brand-building. “ODESZA is such a great example of incredible storytelling because they’re willing to tell big stories that they might not even know all the answers to—in all of their different mythologies—but they’re willing to weave a huge tapestry.”
UPROXX Studios CEO Jarret Myer inside ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
Through anecdotes ranging from walk-on-air nostalgia to heartsick ache, the installation captured the essence of a generation that wears its emotions like the very voicemails within its lattice—fragile confessions left in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will take the time to listen and understand.
If technology could shed tears, it would’ve weeped through the ducts of “Echoes.” It was the fans, though, who felt its “searingly emotional” weight in droves. That’s according to Steve Bramucci, UPROXX Studios’ charismatic Senior Creative Director, who said he ultimately saw fans bawling their eyes out.
“It’s an incredible weight to truly matter to people,” Bramucci told us at the Gorge the night before the show, just minutes after we watched ODESZA rehearse before an empty amphitheater during a sublime sunset. “It’s a lot different to not matter to people. And I think [Mills and Knight] take that weight with the gravity that it deserves.”
“I am not good at a million things, but I am good at gratitude and understanding the privileged position that it is to be able to come up with ideas like [‘Echoes’] for a living… it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve been a part of.”
UPROXX Studios’ Steve Bramucci hugging a teary-eyed attendee of ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
For over 12 years the quest for human connection has been in the bone marrow of ODESZA’s music, which has the profound ability to tether itself to the charts that dictate our growth and happiness—or our gnawing desire for hope. Technology acts as both a lifeline and a labyrinth in that pursuit for fans, especially in a digital age that casts a longer shadow everyday on pavement scuffed up by polarizing algorithms.
But it’s clear the team behind Qualcomm’s Snapdragon tech knows that beneath the surface of our digital interactions lies a paradoxical truth: the very tools that seem to separate us can, when wielded with intention and compassion, enrich the human experience across vast distances. The words of love shared between partners continents apart; the silent tears of joy as grandparents witness their grandchild’s first steps virtually; the poignant memories of an ODESZA fan drifting literally through crisp summer air thousands of miles away; these moments are no longer lost to separation and time.
By reaching through the digital veil with genuine curiosity—and a deep adoration of the band’s relationship with fans—Qualcomm inoculated its Snapdragon chips with processing power that extends far beyond their circuitry. As fears of technology’s power to atrophy human creativity worsen in the AI era, the company used its products to conjure a world in the Gorge where that chasm was caulked by real-life monoliths for shared emotion.
“I think we have a shared vision for creating moving experiences,” said Tami Dunnam, Global Brand Manager at Qualcomm. “ODESZA cares deeply about their fans and taking them on a journey with their music and their performances, and Snapdragon is focused on connecting with people through their passions, enabling and enhancing their experiences with best-in-class technology.”
“ODESZA also embodies creativity in a way that completely impressed me,” Dunnam adds. “Their showmanship is multi-layered, blending a unique sound and stunning visuals. Their performance wraps together EDM, strings, brass, drums, vocalists, lasers, lights, pyro and truly breathtaking graphics with perfect harmony. The experience is both amazing and moving. I see a very strong connection between what ODESZA represents and Snapdragon’s ethos of ‘The Power to Move.’ Because Snapdragon isn’t just about industry-leading technology, it’s about delivering experiences, enabling passions and unleashing emotion.”
ODESZA and Qualcomm’s Tami Dunnam posing with the newly released Manchester United home kit featuring the Snapdragon brand inside the “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
Dunnam and her Snapdragon team had lots of help, of course. That includes award-winning brand activation expert Jenny Feterovich, CEO of The Vessel and Creative Director of “Echoes.”
“This has never been done before,” Feterovich said as the installation teemed with fans in the distance. “This is really insane—what we pitched [Mills and Knight]—and off we went. It’s a true collab with ODESZA because they’ve never worked with other creatives before, for the whole entire existence of their being. They’ve never let an outside creative force in. It’s a true honor.”
“The band would do nothing that wasn’t authentic to them,” Bramucci affirms. “They were vigorous about that. They were very solid on that: ‘If it’s not authentic to us, we will not do it. Full stop. Talk to you later. Take your money and walk away.’ And I think that’s why this has mattered, because it’s authentic to people.”
Feterovich’s initial pitch to build the installation, she tells us, was rejected a staggering 18 times. That would deter most, but not this relentless creative, who is officially listed as the “Chief Energy Officer” of The Vessel.
“People called us crazy,” she recalls. “They said, ‘You’re insane. There’s no time. It’s too expensive. Less than two months.’ Then our technical director, Phil, said, ‘Why don’t you just sleep on this?’ So then we convinced another crazy person to go on this journey, because the technical part of building this physically is so ambitious. It’s insane.”
The Vessel’s Jenny Feterovich working on ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
While the remarkably detailed “Echoes” seemed effortless at first glance, the days leading up to its reveal were anything but. As the beginning of the end of an era for ODESZA approached, the sprint to activate the baroque installation lasted until just a few hours before showtime.
There were enough obscure details in the installation’s blueprint and the granular nature of its production to make Frank Lloyd Wright bite his nails. At any given moment, you could see Vasilii Miroliubov, a virtuosic designer at SETUP, intensely examining it.
For starters, a construction team had to level the grassy knoll to ensure uniformity in the height of the installation’s pillars, each of which came with its own set of unique problems.
A construction team working on ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 3rd, 2024.
The cutting-edge LED panels were then assiduously sheared and whittled down to fit each 30-foot tower’s convex shape, according to Keenon Rush, a creative producer on the project. That feat was accomplished after delays due to the glue drying too quickly under the punishing Pacific Northwest sun.
Another architectural triumph was rooted in the terra firma beneath the installation’s feet. Stakes were high for its producers at the Gorge, one of the world’s most scenic concert venues, to entwine with nature in a way that felt organic. They consequently positioned the pillars with the foresight to integrate them into dusk so “it looks like we’re siphoning the sun’s energy when it sets in the mountain range,” Rush said.
ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation in action at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
All of these minutiae kept the teams up through the dead of night, plugging away at the Gorge less than 24 hours before doors were scheduled to open.
“Not a single person or team feels that they’re alone,” Feterovich said. “We’re in this together and we have been through so many crises since we landed. I can’t even begin to tell you. But here’s the thing: we operate out of love, not fear. And we as a team, we can solve any problem. I have incredible amounts of self-belief and we will figure it the fuck out.”
The unflappable Feterovich, who served as a pressure valve in the cooker of the “Echoes” stress test, said she never lost sight of her prevailing goal in life, simply “to make really dope-ass shit come alive.” She’s being charmingly reductive when it comes to the elaborate project, a truly “immersive” experience existing on the fringe of a modern music industry which continues to beat that word into oblivion.
Once a descriptor of depth, the term is now as shallow as a kiddie pool, with artists and marketers constantly leaving fans wondering if they’ve accidentally wandered into a sensory deprivation tank or just another overhyped show. Thanks to the deceptive nature of far too many in entertainment, no one reallyknows what “immersive” means anymore.
But ODESZA and friends found a silver bullet within the Gorge’s idyllic grounds. Fans came for the music but they left with so much more, including a new perspective on the power of closure.
“As you’re standing there in the middle of this thing and you see people crying, and you hear four-dimensional audio of people talking about how ODESZA affected their life at a time of loss, you can just get lost. For me, this is the true meaning,” explained Feterovich’s colleague, Roustam Mirzoev, a music industry vet and experiential marketing specialist. “People saying they have goosebumps, people are crying, people going through in and out; that’s the real difference between the buzzword and the real experience. When it’s immersive, you can feel it.”
Fans admiring ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
“We live in the intersection of art, music and technology, which is a beautiful space to live,” Feterovich adds. “To us, this is the future of storytelling. This is the future of making people feel things.”
The dreamlike nature of “Echoes” wasn’t exclusive just to its physical attributes. From an existential perspective, it was a dream come true for filmmaker Steven Vasquez, rooted in the idea that each of us has the ability to create our own sense of purpose with our work.
“Everybody here cares about music in a real, legitimate way,” gushed Vasquez, the Director of Production at UPROXX Studios, whose deep portfolio includes credits producing music videos for Steve Aoki and The Chainsmokers. “Everything is authentic to the music, the fans, the feelings, the emotion, the expression… this is what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s my dream. My dream has always been to just build something for real.”
To that end, now that “Echoes” has been dismantled, we’re left to wonder—what constitutes an authentic shared experience in the digital age? And what’s the key to fostering community in this period of technological mediation?
It all starts with unfiltered creativity, Dunnam says.
“Snapdragon enables you to unleash your creativity,” she explains. “You can achieve more because the technology experience is so seamless and powerful—it’s like an extension of yourself. So you can get into that flow state where creativity meets productivity, where you can be so fully immersed in and focused on what you’re doing that everything around you seems to fade into the background.”
UPROXX Studios is now producing a four-part video series documenting the development and cultural impact of “Echoes.” Fans can watch the series here.
As ODESZA‘s “The Last Goodbye” tour finally turned into an actual prophecy, their fans weren’t prepared for the void they’d soon confront.
Returning to the breathtaking Gorge Amphitheatre in their home state of Washington, the duo developed “Echoes,” a tech-driven art installation moonlighting as a monument to their unparalleled connection with those ride-or-dies.
“The Last Goodbye,” which takes its name from ODESZA’s scintillating album of the same name, persisted for roughly three years and is now universally regarded as their most innovative production yet. The tour officially met its end last week after a trio of spectacular finale shows from July 4-6, but not before the band left fans with one more trophy for their museum of memories.
Walking through two rows of three iridescent, curved towers, the scene at the Gorge looked like some kind of phantasmagoric Stonehenge—only with less history and more LEDs. “Echoes” was fueled by a single PC powered by a minuscule-but-mighty Snapdragon X Elite processor from Qualcomm, with whom ODESZA’s Clayton Knight and Harrison Mills collaborated on its development. 66,000 fans passed through the bleeding-edge installation, which featured 120 LED panels displaying projection-mapped visual content from ODESZA and their tour.
However, even in such a smorgasbord of surrealist art and tech, the pièce de résistance of “Echoes” was the integration of voicemails recorded by fans. Mills and Knight shared an anonymous phone number in the weeks prior and asked fans to leave messages containing their favorite ODESZA memories, which were played in 4D audio around the towers and transcribed on their LED panels, transforming them into conduits for immersive storytelling.
ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
The voicemails were a microcosm of the duo’s extraordinary bond with their fans after years of nurturing a community through consistent artistic evolution and haunting songwriting. They were brought to life inside the Gorge’s grounds by the visionary team behind UPROXX Studios and a pair of renowned art collectives, SETUP and The Vessel.
It’s worth noting that Knight and Mills are fiercely selective when it comes to collaborations, so their leap of faith was not lost on this horde of contrarian creatives, who set out to prove that technology can facilitate the emotional release of ODESZA’s music.
“You know how much risk goes into developing something like ODESZA? It’s hard to even comprehend,” says Jarret Myer, co-founder and CEO of UPROXX Studios. “We weren’t with them when they were traveling around in a van. We weren’t with them in their room struggling over the right chord change in a song.”
“There has to be a level of ‘what if,'” Myer adds when asked about his studio’s secret sauce to brand-building. “ODESZA is such a great example of incredible storytelling because they’re willing to tell big stories that they might not even know all the answers to—in all of their different mythologies—but they’re willing to weave a huge tapestry.”
UPROXX Studios CEO Jarret Myer inside ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
Through anecdotes ranging from walk-on-air nostalgia to heartsick ache, the installation captured the essence of a generation that wears its emotions like the very voicemails within its lattice—fragile confessions left in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will take the time to listen and understand.
If technology could shed tears, it would’ve weeped through the ducts of “Echoes.” It was the fans, though, who felt its “searingly emotional” weight in droves. That’s according to Steve Bramucci, UPROXX Studios’ charismatic Senior Creative Director, who said he ultimately saw fans bawling their eyes out.
“It’s an incredible weight to truly matter to people,” Bramucci told us at the Gorge the night before the show, just minutes after we watched ODESZA rehearse before an empty amphitheater during a sublime sunset. “It’s a lot different to not matter to people. And I think [Mills and Knight] take that weight with the gravity that it deserves.”
“I am not good at a million things, but I am good at gratitude and understanding the privileged position that it is to be able to come up with ideas like [‘Echoes’] for a living… it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve been a part of.”
UPROXX Studios’ Steve Bramucci hugging a teary-eyed attendee of ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
For over 12 years the quest for human connection has been in the bone marrow of ODESZA’s music, which has the profound ability to tether itself to the charts that dictate our growth and happiness—or our gnawing desire for hope. Technology acts as both a lifeline and a labyrinth in that pursuit for fans, especially in a digital age that casts a longer shadow everyday on pavement scuffed up by polarizing algorithms.
But it’s clear the team behind Qualcomm’s Snapdragon tech knows that beneath the surface of our digital interactions lies a paradoxical truth: the very tools that seem to separate us can, when wielded with intention and compassion, enrich the human experience across vast distances. The words of love shared between partners continents apart; the silent tears of joy as grandparents witness their grandchild’s first steps virtually; the poignant memories of an ODESZA fan drifting literally through crisp summer air thousands of miles away; these moments are no longer lost to separation and time.
By reaching through the digital veil with genuine curiosity—and a deep adoration of the band’s relationship with fans—Qualcomm inoculated its Snapdragon chips with processing power that extends far beyond their circuitry. As fears of technology’s power to atrophy human creativity worsen in the AI era, the company used its products to conjure a world in the Gorge where that chasm was caulked by real-life monoliths for shared emotion.
“I think we have a shared vision for creating moving experiences,” said Tami Dunnam, Global Brand Manager at Qualcomm. “ODESZA cares deeply about their fans and taking them on a journey with their music and their performances, and Snapdragon is focused on connecting with people through their passions, enabling and enhancing their experiences with best-in-class technology.”
“ODESZA also embodies creativity in a way that completely impressed me,” Dunnam adds. “Their showmanship is multi-layered, blending a unique sound and stunning visuals. Their performance wraps together EDM, strings, brass, drums, vocalists, lasers, lights, pyro and truly breathtaking graphics with perfect harmony. The experience is both amazing and moving. I see a very strong connection between what ODESZA represents and Snapdragon’s ethos of ‘The Power to Move.’ Because Snapdragon isn’t just about industry-leading technology, it’s about delivering experiences, enabling passions and unleashing emotion.”
ODESZA and Qualcomm’s Tami Dunnam posing with the newly released Manchester United home kit featuring the Snapdragon brand inside the “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
Dunnam and her Snapdragon team had lots of help, of course. That includes award-winning brand activation expert Jenny Feterovich, CEO of The Vessel and Creative Director of “Echoes.”
“This has never been done before,” Feterovich said as the installation teemed with fans in the distance. “This is really insane—what we pitched [Mills and Knight]—and off we went. It’s a true collab with ODESZA because they’ve never worked with other creatives before, for the whole entire existence of their being. They’ve never let an outside creative force in. It’s a true honor.”
“The band would do nothing that wasn’t authentic to them,” Bramucci affirms. “They were vigorous about that. They were very solid on that: ‘If it’s not authentic to us, we will not do it. Full stop. Talk to you later. Take your money and walk away.’ And I think that’s why this has mattered, because it’s authentic to people.”
Feterovich’s initial pitch to build the installation, she tells us, was rejected a staggering 18 times. That would deter most, but not this relentless creative, who is officially listed as the “Chief Energy Officer” of The Vessel.
“People called us crazy,” she recalls. “They said, ‘You’re insane. There’s no time. It’s too expensive. Less than two months.’ Then our technical director, Phil, said, ‘Why don’t you just sleep on this?’ So then we convinced another crazy person to go on this journey, because the technical part of building this physically is so ambitious. It’s insane.”
The Vessel’s Jenny Feterovich working on ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
While the remarkably detailed “Echoes” seemed effortless at first glance, the days leading up to its reveal were anything but. As the beginning of the end of an era for ODESZA approached, the sprint to activate the baroque installation lasted until just a few hours before showtime.
There were enough obscure details in the installation’s blueprint and the granular nature of its production to make Frank Lloyd Wright bite his nails. At any given moment, you could see Vasilii Miroliubov, a virtuosic designer at SETUP, intensely examining it.
For starters, a construction team had to level the grassy knoll to ensure uniformity in the height of the installation’s pillars, each of which came with its own set of unique problems.
A construction team working on ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 3rd, 2024.
The cutting-edge LED panels were then assiduously sheared and whittled down to fit each 30-foot tower’s convex shape, according to Keenon Rush, a creative producer on the project. That feat was accomplished after delays due to the glue drying too quickly under the punishing Pacific Northwest sun.
Another architectural triumph was rooted in the terra firma beneath the installation’s feet. Stakes were high for its producers at the Gorge, one of the world’s most scenic concert venues, to entwine with nature in a way that felt organic. They consequently positioned the pillars with the foresight to integrate them into dusk so “it looks like we’re siphoning the sun’s energy when it sets in the mountain range,” Rush said.
ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation in action at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
All of these minutiae kept the teams up through the dead of night, plugging away at the Gorge less than 24 hours before doors were scheduled to open.
“Not a single person or team feels that they’re alone,” Feterovich said. “We’re in this together and we have been through so many crises since we landed. I can’t even begin to tell you. But here’s the thing: we operate out of love, not fear. And we as a team, we can solve any problem. I have incredible amounts of self-belief and we will figure it the fuck out.”
The unflappable Feterovich, who served as a pressure valve in the cooker of the “Echoes” stress test, said she never lost sight of her prevailing goal in life, simply “to make really dope-ass shit come alive.” She’s being charmingly reductive when it comes to the elaborate project, a truly “immersive” experience existing on the fringe of a modern music industry which continues to beat that word into oblivion.
Once a descriptor of depth, the term is now as shallow as a kiddie pool, with artists and marketers constantly leaving fans wondering if they’ve accidentally wandered into a sensory deprivation tank or just another overhyped show. Thanks to the deceptive nature of far too many in entertainment, no one reallyknows what “immersive” means anymore.
But ODESZA and friends found a silver bullet within the Gorge’s idyllic grounds. Fans came for the music but they left with so much more, including a new perspective on the power of closure.
“As you’re standing there in the middle of this thing and you see people crying, and you hear four-dimensional audio of people talking about how ODESZA affected their life at a time of loss, you can just get lost. For me, this is the true meaning,” explained Feterovich’s colleague, Roustam Mirzoev, a music industry vet and experiential marketing specialist. “People saying they have goosebumps, people are crying, people going through in and out; that’s the real difference between the buzzword and the real experience. When it’s immersive, you can feel it.”
Fans admiring ODESZA’s “Echoes” installation at the Gorge Amphitheatre on July 4th, 2024.
“We live in the intersection of art, music and technology, which is a beautiful space to live,” Feterovich adds. “To us, this is the future of storytelling. This is the future of making people feel things.”
The dreamlike nature of “Echoes” wasn’t exclusive just to its physical attributes. From an existential perspective, it was a dream come true for filmmaker Steven Vasquez, rooted in the idea that each of us has the ability to create our own sense of purpose with our work.
“Everybody here cares about music in a real, legitimate way,” gushed Vasquez, the Director of Production at UPROXX Studios, whose deep portfolio includes credits producing music videos for Steve Aoki and The Chainsmokers. “Everything is authentic to the music, the fans, the feelings, the emotion, the expression… this is what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s my dream. My dream has always been to just build something for real.”
To that end, now that “Echoes” has been dismantled, we’re left to wonder—what constitutes an authentic shared experience in the digital age? And what’s the key to fostering community in this period of technological mediation?
It all starts with unfiltered creativity, Dunnam says.
“Snapdragon enables you to unleash your creativity,” she explains. “You can achieve more because the technology experience is so seamless and powerful—it’s like an extension of yourself. So you can get into that flow state where creativity meets productivity, where you can be so fully immersed in and focused on what you’re doing that everything around you seems to fade into the background.”
UPROXX Studios is now producing a four-part video series documenting the development and cultural impact of “Echoes.” Fans can watch the series here.
