live-music
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Tapped AI Tried to Be an AI Record Label. The Better Business Was Hiding in the Venue Spreadsheet
The New York startup began with a $50-a-month AI artist-services pitch, hit the cold-start wall of a two-sided marketplace, and rebuilt around a less glamorous asset: useful live-music data. Its most copyable idea is also its least theatrical - let one customer group improve the dataset for the next.
Aeronaut Brewing Company
Aeronaut Brewing Company is a Somerville, Massachusetts craft brewery founded in 2014 by three grad-school roommates who brought MIT and Cornell science backgrounds to beer. Known for propagating its own house-cultured yeast and experimental recipes, Aeronaut pairs adventurous ales and lagers with a Somerville taproom that doubles as a food hall, live-music venue and community hub. In 2024 it merged with Dorchester Brewing Company under a new parent, Tasty Liquid Alliance.
Smith
Smith is an Asbury Park-based hospitality group that grew out of a 1990s branding and design studio. Beginning in 2006 with Brickwall Tavern, its partners helped restart a stalled downtown, then built a collective of restaurants and bars - Porta, Pascal & Sabine, Homesick, and Lovesick - that pair scratch kitchens with art-filled rooms. Smith treats hospitality as an instrument of urban renewal, designing, branding, and operating each venue in-house.
Olivia Dean
Olivia Dean is a British soul-pop and jazz-influenced singer-songwriter from North-East London who won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2026. Her second album 'The Art of Loving' (September 2025) debuted at UK #1 and spawned the monster hit 'Man I Need' - a song that spent 19 consecutive weeks at UK #1, peaked at US Billboard Hot 100 #2, and surpassed one billion Spotify streams. Rooted in the soul traditions of Lauryn Hill, Sade, and Amy Winehouse, Dean writes with disarming emotional clarity about love, identity, and self-worth. She is currently on 'The Art of Loving Live' world tour, which kicked off in Glasgow in April 2026.