Exclusive: Cardi B, Julia Michaels And DaniLeigh To Take NYC ‘Beyond’ With Free Pandora Concert

Omar Vega / Invision / AP – Cardi B
Cardi B gets sassy during her performance at The Player’s Ball at The Armory in Minneapolis Feb. 4.

Pandora’s “Beyond” event is returning to New York City in 2018 with a free concert featuring Cardi B, Julia Michaels, and DaniLeigh, along with a set by DJ Big Ben.

The event takes place at Terminal 5 on Nov. 13, and is free for Pandora listeners, who will be invited based on their Pandora listening habits and likes.

Jeff Zuchowski, Pandora’s VP of industry relations and artist marketing, told Pollstar his team at Pandora was very excited for the show.

“We have a headliner that is probably gonna be one of the leading women in the upcoming Grammy Awards. She has been collecting some metal this past year from a lot of awards shows. She is easily having one of the best years in a long time for a female hip-hop artist.”

Cardi did have to back out of her slot on Bruno Mars’ tour earlier this year, but she is still lighting up charts with a seemingly endless barrage of singles following her 2018 album Invasion Of Privacy. Her latest song is “Money.”

The last solo headline report we have from Cardi B is her 2016 9:30 Club show when she sold 1,200 tickets for a $24,000 gross.

Image Courtesy of Pandora – Jeff Zuchowski

“The event also includes Julia Michaels, a major recording artist on her own but also an incredibly skilled songwriter,” Zuchowski said. “And Dani is our up and comer. We always get a great opportunity to book a strong headliner, a strong supporting cast, but the fun is booking that emerging talent. It’s gonna give her the opportunity to perform in front of that audience that may be coming to see Julia or Cardi, and may not know who she is, but be walking out of the event and typing in her name in Pandora and listening to some new music from her.”

Jason Aldean was also just announced as the headliner for Pandora’s “Backroads” event, with special guest Steven Lee Olsen, to be held Nov. 27 at Marathon Music Works in Nashville.

Previous Beyond events have featured the likes of Post Malone, SZA, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and G-Eazy, all with invitations to fans solely based on their Pandora listening habits.

Zuchowski said lots of data analysis, especially relating to interaction, goes into selecting the packages for these shows, and Pandora is able to identify the super fans who are really listening to an artist’s music. These experiences, he said, really cut through noise and get real fans in the door to see their favorite artists, and those fans often do fit into very real demographics, so brands are eager to be a part of that experience.

Although the concert is free to fans, a number of brands have signed on as partners in the event to help offset the costs, as the artists will still be paid their fees. Beyond 2018’s sponsors include Clorox®, Glade®, Lane Bryant, Mattress Firm, Shutterfly, Inc., Spectrum, Tony Chachere’s® Famous Creole Cuisine and Ulta Beauty.

“We’re able to hyper-target because of the data that’s available to us. A lot of these brands are constantly coming back to us and doing multiple-year deals with us, saying ‘Wow, that was a really great event with you,’” he said. “We do a lot of stuff with them year after year after year because of our targeting. We’re really, really good at it.”

Pandora has quietly become a regular force in special events, as Zuchowski said the platform has put on more than 50 events for each of the past several years. Additional upcoming events include El Pulso, Dec. 6 in Los Angeles; an album playback session with Saweetie in Oakland, Calif., Nov. 2; and multiple T-Mobile branded events, one of which will be in Charlotte, the other of which will be Nov. 6.