High school senior Conner Smith is already making major accomplishments in the Nashville music industry.

Singer-songwriter Smith has inked his first major publishing deal with Ashley Gorley‘s Tape Room Music and Zach Crowell‘s newly-formed Miller Crow Music, in addition to signing with Creative Artist Agency (CAA) for talent booking and agency representation. His CAA rep is Darin Murphy.

The 18-year-old Tennessee native has been working with members of Nashville’s creative community for the past two years, balancing school and baseball at Brentwood Academy with opening shows for Sam Hunt, Kane Brown, and Kip Moore.

Smith has also been working alongside HOMESTEAD manager Brad Belanger, whose client roster also includes Hunt and Dustin Lynch.

Spotify has created a new bundle with Hulu as part of Spotify’s premium membership offerings, expanding the partnership between the two companies. In addition to Spotify’s 40-million songs and podcasts, premium Spotify members can now access Hulu’s 85,000+ episodes of television and movie content.

“Today is the first time that we’re offering a Hulu plan to the masses as part of their $9.99 Spotify Premium subscription,” Marc Hazan, Spotify’s vice president/ global head of premium business development said. “As we push towards making Spotify Premium a gateway to a bigger world of entertainment, we’re fully committed to finding new ways to enhance the overall experience for our Premium users and this is just the beginning.”

The new bundle is available to all Spotify Premium individual users at no additional cost (including new and current users), and includes Hulu’s ad-supported tier. The offer is available until June 10, 2019. new subscribers receive the first 30 days free of charge.

Spotify users who paid for last year’s $12.99 bundle will be discounted to the $9.99 price.

Spotify is one of several companies, including Google, Amazon and Pandora, which recently filed a notice of appeal for the Copyright Royalty Board’s recently-issued final rates and terms for songwriter mechanical royalties, which determine the price labels and digital services should pay music publishers. The notice of appeal sparked a backlash from several well-known members of Nashville’s songwriting community, prompting the company to issue a blog post explaining their position.

Renowned songwriter Jeffrey Steele‘s 12th annual Jeffrey Steele & Friends fundraiser concert took place Monday night (March 4) at The Franklin Theatre in Downtown Franklin, TN. The annual event raised over $120,000 for overlooked and at-risk youth in memory of Steele’s late son, Alex LeVasseur, and featured a star-studded line-up of living legends, current chart-toppers and rising stars from a variety of genres.

The sold-out evening hosted by Storme Warren included performances by Steve Cropper, Travis Denning, Steve Dorff, Alissa Griffith, Chris Janson, KASL, Lit, LOCASH, Eddie Montgomery, RaeLynn, and Steele.

Downtown Music Publishing’s Nashville office recently held a week-long songwriters’ retreat at Camp Wayfarer, near Asheville, North Carolina.  The retreat focused specifically on songwriting for synchronizations and the goal for the week was to create at least eight 100 percent Downtown-controlled compositions, specific to current themes for the creative team to actively pitch.

Each day the global sync team supplied the group with specific briefs from their advertising clients from various markets including New York, London, Los Angeles, and Sydney, to tackle the needs of various brands and trends from around the globe. At the end of the week, Downtown earned ten 100 percent controlled songs for the global sync team to pitch and work with.

The songwriters that took place in the Downtown retreat were Tony Esterly, Paige Blue, Luke Arens, Fancy Hagood, Justin Donahue (Jung Youth), and The Brummies’ John Davidson and Jacob Bryant. They were guided by Downtown staff members, Steve Markland, Natalie Osborne, Katie Roth and Cabrea Casey, as well as Dave Hopper, Esterly’s manager at Hard 8 Working Group.

“It was amazing joining our writers and worldwide sync team for a very intimate, hands on experience,” said Steve Markland, Senior Vice President, A&R. “Each day we sent newly written songs to our worldwide sync team and later connected via video conference for direct critiques with the writers. We also gathered immediate feedback from advertising clients and music supervisors to directly meet their needs for specific briefs. So proud that Downtown could provide impactful opportunities as well as a fun bonding experience between writers and staff.

“I enjoy getting into a different space that forces you to create differently,” said Tony Esterly. “The limitations of a mobile studio help bring out new aspects of songs and recordings that you normally wouldn’t find in an everyday workspace. The camp atmosphere and feedback from the sync team helped everyone get some great songs.”

“Beyond the fun that was had, what I loved about the camp was the chance to witness daily purpose-driven collaboration between the global sync team and our writers, all working together to create music that we know will be used for future syncs,” said Jedd Katrancha, Executive Vice President. “The writers are as earnest as they are talented, and they approached each assignment with the goal to simply write something great, and the sync team worked to offer feedback without distilling the creative process in any way. What we ended up with were great songs that served as the backdrop for nightly dance parties, and are still on rotation now that the smoke has cleared and we’re back at our desks and studios.”