Trend #1
Hollywood and the Entertainment Industries Jump into Wellness
Move over purists: big media means wellness for all
By Beth McGroarty
Introduction
The ways that wellness has rewritten vast industries such as food, travel, beauty, real estate and fashion have been endlessly documented. Fewer people have paid attention to how wellness is starting to shake up the global entertainment industries, how more innovative wellness programming is hitting that box that is the center of most people’s homes: TV, and how new music-for-wellbeing concepts and platforms are transforming the $50 billion global music industry.
Experiments across the entertainment industry—to deliver more wellness programming in more creative and meaningful ways—will heat up in 2021.
The trend takes many directions
Wellness TV: Wellness is moving toward becoming a dedicated programming “channel” on both smart TVs and streaming TV sites. Smart TV brand Samsung has created a portal to thousands of hours of free wellness/fitness classes right from their home screen. All kinds of wellness will be the focus of more TV programming, with the concepts increasingly coming from wellness companies, not studio execs. Who would have thought two years ago that mega meditation apps Calm and Headspace would get their own TV series? And if TV has always been about passively consuming “shows,” the wellness programming of the future gets you doing; it’s about you being involved and transformed.
Wellness music: As more people seek music as intentional medicine (to de-stress, sleep, focus or work out), the music industry is responding. The big streaming music sites (Spotify, Amazon, Apple, etc.) are really ramping up their music-for-wellbeing content, essentially making “wellness” a new listening channel. Big artists are experimenting with creating music that heals; meditation apps are becoming full-blown record labels; and radical new technologies, including “generative” music platforms that create an always-unfolding healing soundscape based on your biometrics, are poised to emerge out of the start-up lab and onto Big Media platforms.
The Celebrity-Wellness Connection Is Skyrocketing
Film, TV, music and sports stars are suddenly all over wellness, not just as spokespeople, but as company founders and major investors; they’re a growing, not-to-be-ignored integer in the global wellness investment space. Sure, some dream of building another money-minting Goop empire, but more is at play: Wellness is becoming a powerful way for celebrities to positively rebrand during a health, racial inequity and environmental crisis—and more are launching wellness brands and initiatives that tackle serious issues such as bringing more wellness to Black and brown communities or taking women’s sexual wellness out of the closet.
The “wellness industry” is now actually two industries: Big Media/Big Tech (with piles of money) over here—and what most think of as the “real” industry (the thousands of independent practitioners and wellness-focused brands) over there. The fact that the traditional wellness industry often doesn’t know what the Big Media/BigTech wellness world is up to inspired this trend.
We know that for the “real” industry, the wellness purists, that a trend on how the entertainment industry is coming for wellness will cause a collective eye roll: If Goliath TV, music and tech companies are moving into wellness programming, it must be, by nature, inauthentic and bad. (And, of course, there is no one that doesn’t long to emerge from this time where our lives have shrunk to screens: We ache for nature and human connection.)
There can be some hypocrisy from wellness purists. Their rightful cry today is more “wellness for all,” to build a more inclusive, affordable industry. But they typically remain married to the idea that only “small-batch,” intimate experiences are “real wellness.” Most people can’t afford $40 boutique fitness classes or any form of a wellness retreat, and the power of bringing more wellness programming to TV and big music sites is the power of REACH…Reaching people where they already are and reaching populations beyond privileged wellness devotees.
Over a billion people worldwide already have smart TVs—and if they keep serving up free fitness/wellness classes, that’s reach. Every time a Samsung, Apple, Amazon, Netflix or HBO (250 million people subscribe to the big streaming TV sites) gets serious about bringing more serious wellness programming to our TVs (and now totally interconnected devices), many, many millions are reached; 275 million people already subscribe to Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music or YouTube, and if they serve up more music-as-medicine, that’s reach.
It’s difficult to imagine bringing more wellness to the masses without mass media. And the powerful entertainment companies (TV, music, film, gaming) have the production budgets, and high-profile talent with big megaphones, to make high-quality, transformative wellness content if they set their mind to it. Especially when health and wellness experts drive the programming, which is why these two wellness worlds really must “speak.”
Fueling the trend
Streaming Media and Wellness Are the Pandemic Winners
Entertainment and wellness were both multitrillion industries pre-pandemic, and the media world was digesting the huge cultural force that market wellness had become. Then COVID-19 hit, and both “screen-based” wellness/fitness and streaming media have been the huge winners. In 2020, TV streaming subscriptions (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) hit an all-time high (218 million) while health/fitness app downloads jumped roughly 50% globally. And surveys show that post-pandemic, the top things people plan to do more of are at-home wellness/fitness and streaming TV and music. Media invests in content where consumer spend is, and ad agencies report that all kinds of wellness categories quintupled ad revenue during the pandemic. The entertainment world knows that wellness is now a much bigger value for people, and they’re comfortable consuming it at home. So, a new media-wellness convergence makes nothing but sense.
More Space and New Formats for Wellness Programming
The big shift in TV is people moving away from pay-TV to streaming channels (which are proliferating)—and streamed media (TV and music) opens up more space and “channels” for all kinds of programming, including wellness. Streaming is also breaking down traditional genres (film, TV, apps, how music is released and consumed), which means TV and music formats can move beyond the rigid half-hour show or three-minute song: a meditative TV program could be 10 minutes while a wellness music composition could be 45.
Aspects of the trend
A New Wellness TV
Wellness programming on TV has a long history, although it wasn’t called “wellness” in the early experiments. In the ‘50s, The Jack LaLanne Show beamed workouts right into American living rooms. Richard Hittleman’s TV shows in the ‘60s and ‘70s, such as Yoga for Health, introduced millions to the then-exotic yoga practice. In the ‘80s, Jane Fonda’s Workout took the world by storm, ranking as the #1 VHS tape for six years. Starting in the ‘80s, Oprah’s media empire brought alternative medicine experts and concepts to the masses, such as introducing tens of millions to meditation via Deepak Chopra. In 1993, Bill Moyers’ groundbreaking PBS series, Healing and the Mind, introduced 40 million viewers to a whole new understanding of the mind-body connection. As reality TV exploded in the 2000s, a spate of weight loss and “extreme makeover” programs appeared, such as 17-season The Biggest Loser—rather voyeuristic shows where we watched overweight and unhealthy people suffer to get fit.
The history of “wellness on TV” has been fragmentary: a few milestones across decades. But it shows how a few influential shows and gurus—because of TV’s unparalleled reach—can jumpstart global health crazes. What is happening now, and will in the future, is of a different order. Wellness will occupy far more real estate on TV: all kinds of wellness will not only be the focus of more TV programming but also become dedicated “channels” on both smart TVs and streaming TV sites.
The wellness TV concepts and experiences will increasingly flow from actual wellness companies and experts (who know more than “Hollywood” on these things). This will spur another key change. If most recent wellness programming on TV has been about wellness as a “topic”—talk shows or documentaries that educate or reality programs where you passively watch other people undertake health challenges—the programming of the future will increasingly be about you doing the wellness—about content that is designed to involve, impact and transform you. It’s less about another new “wellness show” and more about TV as a fast-evolving medium that can deliver immersive wellness experiences in new ways.
But before we move on from the passively-consumed “wellness show,” we need to note that programs focused on the modern wellness industry were born (and had a big year) in 2020. Time magazine notes that 2020 was the year when the now politically incorrect extreme makeover show was supplanted by a “kinder” wellness reality show that typically featured celebrities traveling the world to experience alternative healers. 2020 kicked off with The Goop Lab on Netflix, where Gwyneth Paltrow and her team explored a different wellness experience each week: trips to Jamaica to try psychedelics and to psychics and energy healers. On Netflix’s Down to Earth, actor Zac Efron and his guru circle the world to experience wellness and grapple with climate change. Lost Resort sent nine people packing to the Costa Rican jungle, where a group of alternative healers took them on “a journey of self-discovery” that included rage rituals and orgasmic dance. These “wellness shows” came in for derision because they served up some pseudoscience and focused on out-there, oh-my-god trends to grab eyeballs.
While this flurry of programming is a clear sign that TV studios had digested what a huge market wellness has become, they don’t respectfully address people’s deep desire for real health and wellness solutions—and how TV programming and platforms could begin to creatively deliver that. That is the future.
Wellness baked into your TV
Smart TV brands will increasingly create portals to wellness classes and content right from their home screens—getting people “doing” rather than just “watching.” Samsung (the world’s largest TV maker) made the first move. Early in the pandemic, it launched Samsung Health (“Home is where the health is”), allowing people to binge 5,000 hours of free (live and on-demand) fitness and meditation classes from buzzy brands: boutique workouts from Barre 3, Echelon and obè fitness, meditations and Sleep Stories from Calm, trainer-led weight loss from Fitplan, and fitness guru Jillian Michaels’s 28-day workout plan. Samsung Health reminds you when to do your fitness or mindfulness, and it creates personal challenges. Samsung’s 2021 TVs have a “Smart Trainer” feature: Attach a webcam to your TV, and the Samsung Health app gives you real-time coaching as you work out.
Apple Fitness+ recently launched, built around Apple Watch, which brings a dizzying array of famous trainer-led workouts—HIIT, yoga, dance, strength, core, cycling, treadmill and “mindful cooldown”—to Apple TVs, iPads and iPhones so people can easily work out from anywhere. For companies like Samsung and Apple, it’s all about seamlessly linking up their smartphones, wearables and smart TVs to help people track their health and workout metrics across devices and bring their wellness right to the big screen of TV.
As wearables get exponentially more sophisticated (tracking so many biometrics, from stress to mood), the new wearable-connected smart TVs will serve up super-personalized wellness experiences to people in their living rooms: the right movement and stress-reduction at the right time. As Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told Outside magazine, when it comes to fitness, “the things going on in our labs are mind-blowing.”
Wellness companies becoming full-blown production studios
The future is more wellness companies creating original content for media platforms, ushering in an era of more expert-based wellness programming.
The Big Two meditation apps, Calm and Headspace, have taken the lead in translating their mental wellness content to TV, and it’s striking, as the idea of a meditation app scoring a TV series on an HBO or Netflix would have seemed unthinkable just a couple of years ago.
If both apps have been raking in venture capital and revenue for years, with the traumatic stress meltdown that was 2020, both saw new surges in funding, revenue and downloads. In December, Calm (at 100 million downloads) doubled its valuation to $2 billion, and it served up 1 billion minutes of mental wellness content in 2020, double 2019. Headspace now boasts 65 million users in 110 countries, a valuation of $320 million, with downloads doubling since the pandemic. This gives these apps plenty of moolah to ramp up their quest to become production studios creating original wellness content for TV, podcasts, music—and even film.
Calm has been a bold mover in the wellness-meets-the-entertainment-industry space. If it started as a meditation app in 2012, it has since added its popular (250 million listens) Sleep Stories and original music for wellbeing. Celebrities are the lynchpin of their strategy to bring mental wellness to more people, and they bring an edgy, often humorous approach to the hushed, deadly serious meditation space. With the Calm app, you can have Harry Styles or Matthew McConaughey tuck you in with a bedtime story or listen to original “Calm” music from Moby or Sigur Rós. Their slate of stars delivering meditations or master classes keeps growing exponentially. Calm CEO Michael Acton Smith has been vocal about wanting to build a media empire around mental wellness, stating that the company would even “love to win some Emmys and Oscars.”
In October 2020, they made their TV debut on HBO Max with A World of Calm, a filmic translation of their Sleep Stories, with each episode narrated by big stars such as Nicole Kidman, Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba. Each episode takes viewers on a visual journey (amazing cinematography) into another world (such as weaving through an Indonesian coral reef) to calm the viewer’s body and brain. It’s specifically designed to incite a new state of mind “through enchanting music, scientifically engineered narratives, and astounding footage.” It will soon be released in many international markets.
Settling into A World of Calm means letting go of what you’ve come to expect from most TV programming: there are not a lot of plot twists. As the New Yorker noted, there is “absolutely nothing entertaining or titillating about it, by design,” and the Wall Street Journal noted that it’s a standout example of a new kind of TV that’s appearing “that works like a sedative.”
Another quite literal (and bold) TV move from Calm was sponsoring CNN’s coverage of election night in the US (no small potatoes), where, as people suffered mini-strokes with each state’s “Key Race Alert,” they flashed “Calm” next to the changing vote tallies and ran an ad that was nothing but the sound of rain hitting leaves to remind Americans to take a breath. It was funny and impactful, and Calm downloads went crazy.
Mega meditation app Headspace, co-founded by Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe, has created Headspace Studios, producing mindful living content for the app, but also for “TV and film projects and podcasts.” They’re now ratcheting up wellness TV programs and partnerships. They debuted their own nature-meets-mindfulness series Mindful Escapes: Breathe, Release, Restore on the UK’s BBC Four in 2020. They produced content—“Meditation Monster”—for Sesame Street. They’ve just announced a collaboration with superstar comedian Kevin Hart’s production studio, Laugh Out Loud, to bring meditation to the masses: The Meditate with Me show on YouTube TV’s LOL Network (which “fuses comedy with wellness”) follows the meditation journey of top comedians (Kevin Hart, Hasan Minaj, Amanda Seales and Deon Cole) and the inner chatter that’s unleashed when they meditate. And Headspace just launched its own show on Netflix, where Puddicombe guides viewers through different mindfulness techniques to tackle issues like sleep and stress, brought to life through animation and music (and it’s dubbed in 30 languages). Another interactive Netflix series, Headspace Guide to Sleep, is to follow.
Calm and Headspace’s series are a mental wellness intervention into a TV landscape of stress: screaming news pundits, all the endless shock and violence.
Environmental wellness is about to get its own free streaming TV platform called Waterbear Network that Vogue notes is “like a Netflix for climate documentaries.” Partnered with 80 global charities and NGOs, and with supporters including Prince Harry, model Lily Cole and Maisie Williams, Waterbear will feature films about amazing environmental projects and the most critical issues facing our planet today. Notably, it’s specifically about “doing” not just watching: Every episode urges you to take action in six very specific ways, connecting viewers directly to charities or volunteering organizations.
Fitness start-up obé partnered with HBO Max to turn its classes into entertaining TV events, with Sex and the City, Game of Thrones and Sesame Street themed classes, to brand themselves as the company where “entertainment meets fitness.” HBO released a wellness-focused augmented reality app to promote its hit show, His Dark Materials: When you complete more wellness activities (like going for a walk or run), your magical “daemon” gets happier.
China is jumping into wellness TV, perfecting the marriage of programming and e-commerce, but in a far cooler and more modern way than a QVC. Alibaba Health recently rolled out Health Buyer’s Shop on Youku TV, a celebrity wellness series aimed at young generations (and with more shows in the works). Alibaba also recently launched the wellness reality show Sleep Tight on Youku, where doctors and sleep experts help guests get a better night’s sleep—and it struck a nerve, generating more than 100 million Baidu searches. Rumors are HBO will make moves in fitness programming.
As Alexia Marchetti, global director of PR at Calm, put it, “We’re seeing explosive growth in the media wellness category. Many streaming platforms are adding self-care and meditation content…and we anticipate the growth to continue as consumers prioritize their mental health. Expect to see more from Calm, be it through audio, streaming television, social media, and perhaps one day, even movies. Our company is thinking big.”
Wellness Will Keep Shaking Up the Music Industry
We named “wellness music” a major trend last year, looking at the new ways that music was being created as intentional medicine through new technologies, experiments and experiences. We explored how the mainstream music industry was making moves to deliver music for wellbeing; how meditation apps were expanding into wellness music, signing huge artists to create adult lullabies or meditative tracks; and how new “generative,” AI-powered apps that pull your biological and situational data to create made-for-you, always-changing healing soundscapes that you can tune into anytime were rising.
We argued that music would increasingly be created as precision medicine (for stress, sleep, focus, a better workout, or just some trippy, ambient bliss) and that more people would turn to the new wellness music and sound creations as therapy. Last year, the trend felt nascent; with the year-long anxiety attack that was 2020, it kicked into a higher gear, and we predict that the music-for-wellbeing concepts and platforms will really shake up the global music industry in 2021 and beyond. Look for moves from the big music streaming sites; more wellness music/sound integrations on smartphones, TVs, apps and wearables; and more artists experimenting with creating music that heals.
The pandemic accelerated both the consumption of music and people turning to music specifically for mental health relief. A Samsung UK study found that compared to 2019, roughly a quarter of millennials are now listening to over five hours of music a day—and over half rate music their number one “feel-good” source in 2020. A global study1 from NYU, McGill University and the University of Barcelona found that music was the number one way people were tackling anxiety during COVID-19 (more than sex, alcohol, working out, etc.), and that music was the only solution that actually lowered their depression. Spotify reported that global listening time for their mental health playlists doubled in 2020.
At streaming music sites, wellness becomes a genre
Streaming is conquering the music industry (now accounting for more than half of global industry revenues),2 and the big music sites have incredible reach: Spotify has 130 million subscribers, Apple Music has 70 million, Amazon Music has 55 million, and YouTube has 20 million. Streaming music makes possible curated content and playlists and targeted searches—and all these sites are now ramping up their music-for-wellbeing content. They are essentially making “wellness” a new listening channel. Think: rock, jazz, hip-hop…”chill”…”sleep.”
Spotify now has an entire vertical for “sleep” music on its genres page (many downloaded more than a million times) and features dozens of playlists on its Chill shelf. In 2020, it took things further, launching a Daily Wellness program, giving people more personalized musical self-care. Your curated wellness playlist taps into your music preferences, and every morning, you’re served music designed to motivate you and help you focus; in the evening, you’re served calming music to wind down. Also mixed into your daily mix are mindfulness, breathwork and gratitude exercises, and wellness podcast content (booming everywhere). It’s a sign that streaming sites will go further in creating platforms that deliver personalized sound experiences that you need across your day.
“Generative” music, where tech meets your biometrics, will take music-as-medicine to radical places
A Spotify can use algorithms to create wellness playlists (from existing music) that reflect your musical tastes. But the march of AI and biometric technologies has given birth to “generative” sound technologies, which work by capturing your biometric and situational data to create an always-unfolding sound environment (sequences of chords, beats, tones, keys and musical textures) designed to nudge your brain and body in the right direction—whether you need to calm down or wake up.
Mubert, Lucid, Wavepaths, and Endel are leaders in generative wellness sound technologies. Berlin-based Endel is doing fascinating things and is poised to expand their technology and reach (2 million downloads already) in important ways (they recently raised another $5 million).
Endel was named Apple Watch’s “2020 App of the Year” (no small feat), and it works by using a wearable to pull your heart rate, movement, the weather, your location, and circadian data (your sleep/wake cycle and exposure to natural light). It then takes all these inputs to create a unique-to-you, neuroscience-based soundscape to help you either relax, focus or sleep. Endel’s soundscapes are grounded in the concept of the “flow state” (when a person is completely immersed in an activity), made famous by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi and his seminal book Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. The company uses brain wave measurement technology and SleepScore Labs testing to validate that their sound interventions actually work.
Endel doesn’t call their soundscapes “music”: it’s the opposite of catchy tunes designed to be intentionally listened to; rather, it’s an ambient “sound blanket” that’s “almost like adding another biological function to our body”—as unconscious as breathing. For instance, since it knows your usual resting heart rate, if it’s elevated and you’re not moving, it unleashes soundscapes to calm you down (synching the beats to your heartbeat); if your energy drops after two awful Zoom calls, it energizes you for the next one. With biometric sensor tech evolving at lightning speed (from your cortisol levels to facial expressions), the generative sound platforms from companies like Endel or Mubert will keep getting better at delivering precise, real-time sound medicine. But with the explosion of health trackers pulling more and more data on your physical and mental state, privacy issues will reach crisis levels. Endel’s position of not sharing any of their users’ data will be crucial to their future success—and other companies should take note. The benefits of personalization die with the prostitution of data.
Endel is working with artists: They collaborated with Grimes (now known as C), using her musical/lyrical composition as the building blocks for their new “AI Lullaby.” Their CEO, Oleg Stavitsky, talks about working with more artists so that when they release a regular album, it will be accompanied by a functional, adaptive album, so it can work as a soundscape for when you have to work or are trying to go to sleep. And he says, “their big vision is to ultimately go beyond sound.” In 2021, they will release an app for Apple TV that incorporates video into their generative music experience. And Endel wants to use their technology to transform your total environment beyond sound, using biometrics to change up elements like temperature and lighting in your home in real time—and Stavitsky says that reality is “not far away.”
We elaborate on Endel here because it’s important to grasp how technology (advances in biometrics, AI and Big Data) is creating a dramatically new kind of “music” for wellness, and one that makes possible a Holy Grail: delivering evidence-based sound/music that could help a specific person with what they specifically need at a specific time.
The huge tech companies, an Apple, Amazon or Samsung, could take this Holy Grail mainstream. Their devices (from health wearables to music delivery platforms) all “talk” to each other now, and Frank Fitzpatrick at Forbes asks, who among them (including Spotify) “will connect the dots first?” He argues for Apple, already heavy into health and wellness, who has made music a key feature at the new Apple Fitness+, and who also recently hired a Head of Strategic Music Initiatives that is talking to generative music start-ups (and the same person who signed the Endel algorithm to a record deal when at Warner Music). Amazon is rushing into healthcare and wellness and could connect its new fitness tracker, Halo, (which goes so far as to gauge people’s emotional states via voice analysis) to music/sound delivery at Amazon Music and TV. Samsung is already connecting its wearable to its new Samsung Health platform on its smart TVs—and notably, they just released a forecast of how tech will rewrite the future of music, putting emphasis on generative music for wellbeing powered by biometrics. Perhaps a telling sign…
Meditation apps become music studios and labels
It’s astounding how the big meditation apps—first Calm and now Headspace—are becoming full-blown “record labels” for music for mental wellbeing—and it’s a lesson to the music industry about the rising popularity of platforms that make wellness music easily discoverable and how artist-driven experiments can work.
Calm is the current leader, having delivered hundreds of millions of music streams to users. They launched their Calm Music arm and brought in a former Universal Music Group exec to head it in 2019. Their model is to partner with big, cool artists to create original music for stress-reduction, sleep and meditation. But it’s not all ambient, mellow mixes; they talk of partnerships with everyone from country to hip-hop stars—and they let artists think outside the music industry short-song box to create long-form, immersive tracks. Some of their biggest hits include an exclusive album from Moby and a remix of the hit “How Do You Sleep?” from crooner Sam Smith for their super-popular “adult lullaby” collection. Since the pandemic, they’ve really ramped up Calm Music, releasing works from artists Above & Beyond (their Flow State album), 5 Seconds of Summer, Norwegian DJ Kygo, Moses Sumney, and DJ/songwriter Diplo. Alexia Marchetti, their PR head, reports: “One area we see growth opportunities is within our music section. We’re looking forward to working with artists to create more custom, original music for Calm in 2021, and we have a big partnership coming down the pipe in March, so stay tuned.”
Headspace named its first Chief Music Officer in August and came out swinging by hiring Grammy-award winner John Legend. He will be part of Headspace Studios to create original music, playlists and artist collaborations for the app. He will curate their new app offering, “Focus,” made up of a dozen music “stations,” featuring a different artist each month and devoted to specific genres and topics. Legend’s statement suggests big ambitions for Headspace Music: He will be “bringing some of my friends in the music industry along with me for the ride.”
All-wellness-music apps
More apps will be entirely focused on delivering music for wellbeing. In 2020, music industry financier The Cutting Edge Group launched myndstream, an app and music label that creates music to reduce anxiety, help with sleep, and improve focus—with a mission to connect wellness music (and the musicians who make it) to companies across the digital wellness space. Australian start-up Muru Music Health is the first streaming platform aimed at people over age 60, using music to “ward off the effects of brain aging.” It uses AI to analyze massive quantities of music and then generates unique playlists based on a person’s age, heritage, childhood and musical likes to help people relax, move or relive positive memories. They just partnered with Universal Music Australia to provide the platform to senior living residents there. They plan to expand to the UK and US in 2021. The Soul Medicine app serves up music and mediation tracks all composed around a 432 MHz frequency, which studies have shown works to synch sides of your brain and decrease heart rate.
Music becoming a star at digital fitness platforms
Online fitness and wellness classes have, of course, skyrocketed during the pandemic, and experts predict they’re not going anywhere post-pandemic. Music for digital fitness has become hugely important, as star instructors have become like DJs. Apple put a major focus on music when it created the new Apple Fitness+, integrating its workouts with Apple Music and creating new “Studio Series” playlists, tracks created to motivate you to “run that last mile or hold that last pose.” Music-for-fitness is getting so serious that Equinox just licensed Universal Music Group’s catalog for its at-home fitness app Variis so users can move to artists like Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande or Billie Eilish.
The medical evidence for music as medicine is overwhelming, proven to have a powerful impact on everything from depression to pain and Alzheimer’s, as memories of music aren’t lost to the disease. High-quality research on how specific musical elements impact the brain and how music can best be used for specific conditions (from PTSD to autism) are ahead. The NIH awarded an unprecedented $20 million in 2019 for a new Sound Health Initiative to fund such studies, and they’re well underway.
A real paradigm shift is underway: If music has always been consumed around artist, song and genre, now more people want music/sound served up to them as mental therapy (with a specific emotional vibe) when they need it. All the music industry players will further answer this call in 2021: cutting-edge tech companies, the big streaming sites, wellness apps, and artists.
For Celebrities, Wellness Is Now the Brand
Since the dawn of mass-market capitalism, celebrities have always been tapped as the pretty face of brands. But now, film, TV, music and sports stars are simply all over wellness, and not just as spokespeople: They’re rushing to found companies, are huge investors, and are taking executive roles, in every kind of wellness brand, as never before. Celebrities are a growing integer in the wellness investment space, and any discussion of “wellness and the entertainment industry” needs to understand their force.
Critics decry that it’s just a “Goop rush,” with more stars angling to create a wellness empire as profitable as Gwyneth Paltrow’s—and sure, for some, that will be true. And yes, traditional branding avenues (the celebrity fragrance or fashion lines) have recently been cut off, while wellness is a booming market.
But there are more complex reasons for this unprecedented new connection between celebrities and wellness. Wellness is now a powerful way for celebrities to positively rebrand during our era of health, racial inequity and environmental crises. The moment is a bit analogous to Hollywood stars going all-out to help servicemen during World War 2.
Celebrities reach the ears of millions of people, and more are launching wellness brands and initiatives that take on serious, tough issues—whether bringing more wellness to Black and brown communities or tackling taboo issues like women’s sexual pleasure.
In 2021, more stars will launch purposeful, personal wellness brands that fight for more health and wellness justice. Everyone knows that consumers are getting awfully good at differentiating between make-a-buck and make-a-difference brands and that rich, beautiful people selling expensive wellness products is now beyond tone-deaf. The celebrity wellness brands of the future will increasingly put their money where their beliefs are…not all brands, but more. They’re increasingly behind ambitious, important wellness initiatives, such as Leo DiCaprio’s charity to inject urgency into our response to climate disaster and restore the lost biodiversity that is threatening life on Earth.
Founders & Investors – Not just spokesmodels
There are so many new examples of celebs partnering with, investing in, and founding wellness brands that only a Dead Sea Scrolls-long document could capture it. There are traditional partnerships, such as meditation apps taking a very direct cue from Calm’s celeb-voiced meditations and Sleep Stories: Model Gisele Bundchen will now deliver meditations for the app Insight Timer, while Indian film stars Konkona Sen Sharma, Rahul Bose and Amol Parashar are doing “sleep stories” for Indian app Mindhouse.
Celebrities are taking on bigger roles at wellness brands, especially as “creative director.” Jennifer Aniston recently became the spokesperson for collagen company Vital Proteins but will also serve as creative director; edgy, androgynous face mask brand Loops recently named model Emily Ratajkowski creative director.
So much celeb investment is flowing into wellness companies. A few examples: Twenty pro athletes (including NBA star Seth Curry and tennis superstar Serena Williams) have helped take home fitness start-up Tonal to $200 million; J. Lo and Indian actress Malaika Arora have taken stakes in Indian yoga chain Sarva; and serial wellness investor Maria Sharapova recently invested in bodywork device brand Therabody.
So many stars are launching their own wellness brands or apps. Alicia Keys just launched Keys Soulcare, a line of skin- and wellness-focused products that revolve around content, exploring the “mind-body-spirit connection.” Australian actor Chris Hemsworth created his fitness app Centr during the pandemic, so people can train like Thor (and he’s made it free for six weeks). Halle Berry launched her free app Re-Spin, with workouts, mental wellness resources, healthy recipes, etc., to help people survive the pandemic.
Canna-celebs
As wellness markets become crowded, celebrities are increasingly tapped to help wellness brands rise above the noise. Cannabis and CBD is one crowded industry (the legal global market is worth $14.9 billion), and so many celebrities are founding and investing in cannabis companies that it sometimes seems as if they all are. Famous faces have been a force in making a recently illegal substance utterly mainstream. On the CBD front, Martha Stewart CBD just launched nationally in the US, Nicole Kidman just became a business partner and ambassador for Sera Labs, Kristen Bell just launched CBD skin-care line Happy Dance, and rap artist DJ Khaled rolls out his CBD product line in 2021.
The number of celebs launching psychoactive cannabis brands may be the best scientific evidence yet that smoking weed does not cause a lack of initiative. Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, comedian Chelsea Handler, and rapper Wiz Khalifa were all early movers with their own lines. Stoner comedy star Seth Rogen co-founded fast-growing cannabis company Houseplant in Canada, and it will now be coming to the US; Jay-Z just launched his brand Monogram. With so much momentum for magic mushrooms (the regulation environment relaxing, the medical evidence rising), surely celebu-psybin moves are ahead.
Sexual justice brands
At the 2020 Global Wellness Summit, top journalists gathered to predict 2021 wellness trends, agreeing that the next era of wellness will be defined by tackling cultural taboos and pain-points, such as sex and death, noting that sexual wellness brands are reporting a 300–400% sales spike during the pandemic. The sexual wellness space is seeing a lot of investment from women celebrities who feel passionate about bringing women’s sexual pleasure out of the closet. Model/actress Cara Delevingne just became co-owner of sexual wellness company Lora DiCarlo, and actress Dakota Johnson just became an investor and co-creative director of sexual wellness brand, Maude. Again, big megaphones mean big impact—and for more crucial solutions than another collagen or candle line.
Confronting racial inequities in wellness
2020 exposed the human cost that inequities in access to both healthcare and wellness have for Black and brown communities. In 2021, more celebrities of color will use their star power and brands to bring more wellness to underserved communities. The new multiyear partnership between Peloton and Beyoncé took a strong racial justice position and gifted two-year Peloton Digital memberships to every student at 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Oscar-nominee Taraji P. Henson just launched a foundation to help eradicate the stigma around mental health issues within the African-American community; it’s been helping Black people get free online therapy during COVID-19; and she’s just launched a Facebook Watch series, “Peace of Mind with Taraji,” to honestly explore the mental health challenges that confront Black people.
Mexican-American superstar singer Selena Gomez recently launched a beauty brand poised to make a big difference. Rare Beauty has mental wellness at its core and is devoted to “breaking down unrealistic standards of perfection” that damage girls and women. Through the brand, she launched the Rare Impact Fund, pledging to raise $100 million over 10 years to bring mental health services to underserved communities. Gomez is a mental health activist (and honest about her own struggles)—and that’s putting serious money up against your values.
THE FUTURE: “Binge-able” wellness
2020 was the year when video streaming exploded, and everyone from yoga instructors to musicians to churches rushed online. People all over the world discovered the power and affordability of “anytime” digital wellness. This is a permanent behavior change, and expanding all kinds of wellness programming to bigger media platforms, whether streaming TV or music sites,
is the logical future.
The experiments in “wellness TV” and “wellness music” are still in the early days. Calm and Headspace’s new shows that translate their meditation content into a multimedia experience (stunning nature film, music, animation) at Netflix and HBO, or Samsung baking exclusive fitness/wellness classes right into their TVs, show one important new direction: programming that’s designed to involve the viewer, to get them “doing.” It’s interesting that both TV content and wellness resorts operate around the concept of “programming”: Both specialize in immersive journeys that can wrap people up in a story.
The future of wellness programming on TV needs to reach for that and be less episodic. People pay thousands of dollars to go to wellness destinations to experience deep, serious, multi-week programming that can change their lives: to get wrapped up in transformative mindful, spiritual movement and healthy eating experiences delivered by amazing practitioners. Of course, you can’t deliver human touch and real nature via screens, but you can deliver many experiences and much knowledge. TV and film can take people to awe-inspiring places, and people are endlessly hungry for authentic wellness experiences from all over the globe. Why wouldn’t I want to do my morning meditation with Buddhist monks live from a mountain in Bhutan or wind down my day with a Hindu fire ceremony on the banks of the Ganges?
Getting people more immersed in wellness TV programming will be rapidly accelerated by technology. The future of TV is more social: The Amazons and Netflixes already enable interactive “watch parties”—and people could undertake wellness challenges and experiences with their tribe. The seamless connection of wearables, wellness apps and smart TVs will personalize programming; it could gamify wellness challenges and make “you” the center of the programming.
Fitness and meditation translate well to screens, but there are so many wellness topics and experiences to explore: programming around mental health/wellness; for children; for men (who are underserved in wellness); for (and by) people of color, who are now creating so many extraordinary wellness platforms/communities; in women’s health and sexuality; in sustainable living; in spirituality. We have so many cooking and home shows/channels; certainly, wellness is overdue for some airtime.
In an interesting recent interview,4 Endel’s CEO, Oleg Stavitsky, argued that as a biological species, humans have simply not been able to evolve fast enough to handle the speed and barrage of technology (and we would add, the “outrage” and violent programming on TV)—leading to our mental health and sleeplessness crises. He imagines his generative music platform as essentially “antidote” technology to help people cope. Technology and social media’s awful practices have been taken on by important organizations like the Center for Humane Technology to imagine a new world of tech that could “support our wellbeing.” Big Media needs to come in for the same scrutiny, and serious, meaningful wellness content would not only provide some much-needed “antidote” programming—it could help media companies—whether in TV, music or gaming—brand themselves as more “humane media.” And in 2020, so many analysts have argued that a big lesson from the pandemic is that every brand must now think like a wellness brand.
To create the wellness media programming of the future that can actually change lives and health, it needs to be driven by scientists, wellness experts and doctors. Hollywood has a hard time thinking past celebrities, and they certainly bring great communication talent, sexiness and huge audiences to the show—just as big entertainment companies can deliver the high-quality productions that the wellness world can’t. But media companies need to register people’s frustration with only-celeb-led wellness; people are desperate for evidence-based solutions and authentic experiences.
New collaborations between Big Media (who know a few things about making immersive, high-quality content) and the wellness world (who has done a far better job than doctors in getting people obsessed with health) are the future.
We need “binge-able” wellness programming—the kind you get addicted to. It could impact millions and millions of lives. And it feels awfully overdue…
Endnotes
1 Ernest Mas-Herrero, Neomi Singer, Laura Ferreri, and Michael McPhee, “Rock ’n’ Roll but Not Sex or Drugs: Music Is Negatively Correlated to Depressive Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic via Reward-related Mechanisms,” PsyArXiv, December 22, 2020, DOI:10.31234/osf.io/x5upn.
2 “IFPI issues annual Global Music Report,” IFPI, May 4, 2020, https://www.ifpi.org/ifpi-issues-annual-global-music-report/.
3 Kevin Rose Foundation podcast, December 14, 2020.
4 Kevin Rose Foundation podcast, December 14, 2020.
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