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Remember CDs? Theres a new company betting that, if you dont already, youre about to. Jewel is a Norwegian company specializing in manufacturing high-end display cases for CDs. The brand recently soft-launched online in Europe and is planning to expand to the U.S. in the coming months. It offers products that range from an $130 freestanding case that fits four CDs to a $300, 16-slot case designed to be mounted directly onto the wall. Launching a CD-based brand more than 20 years after CDs hit their peak feels like a counterintuitive prospect. After all, how many people even own a CD player these days? But Marius Brandl, Jewels founder, says the brands thesis is simple: Vinyl records have had their renaissance. CDs are next. [Photo: Jewel] Are CDs on the rise? Retro tech and physical media have experienced an undeniable comeback, in part driven by young consumers looking to cut back on social media. Gadgets like iPods (yes, those are considered retro), Game Boys, film cameras, and even pagers have seen a resurgence. And, as Brandl notes, that applies to the music industry, too. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl posted its 18th straight year of growth in 2024, generating $1.4 billion in retail revenue, its highest share of physical format revenue since 1984. Meanwhile, CDs may have fallen out of fashion in the mid-2000s, but theyre not a dead medium. In 2024, the RIAA reports, 33 million CDs were sold in the U.S., up 1.5% from 2023. [Photo: Jewel] For some fanbases, theyre becoming a more popular collectors item: Taylor Swift, for example, has a longstanding partnership with Target and tends to sell several versions of her albums in the format, including the upcoming Life of a Showgirl album, which will include three exclusive CDs. Charli XCX also gave the CD an injection of instant cool last summer, when her brat CDs sold out almost instantly. What’s interesting is the generation born before and after the year 2000, especially in Europe, have really, really been collecting [CDs], Brandl says. My feeling is that CDs will have a comeback. [Photo: Jewel] The making of a CD brand in 2025 Brandls idea for Jewela brand name inspired by the plastic jewel case that most CDs come inactually started back in the 90s, when he was in college. Brandl remembers attending a party where he saw a table strewn in CDs, and wondering to himself whether there might be a better way to organize and display them. [Photo: Jewel] At the time, Brandls concept of a grid-based display case received lots of positive feedback from his professors, who saw the CD as a promising new medium. He only made it to early development stages, though, before realizing that he couldnt find a way to both display the CDs and open their cases without damaging them, and the idea fizzled out. [Video: Jewel] When Brandls close friend convinced him to revive the idea in 2023, Brandl spent more than half a year developing the right blend of rubber to hold each jewel case inside his display prototype. The rubber, which lines two sides of each square-shaped slot,needed enough grip to keep the cases from sliding, but not so much that the cases would break when opened. The rubber was the biggest challenge, and also how to be able to make it not to be too expensive to produce, Brandl says. He adds that the acrylic, aluminum, and hardware that serve as the backbone of the displays are all premium materials sourced from European manufacturers, which has bumped up the brands price points. Instead of making it as cheap as possible with cheap materials, we thought, The ones who will buy this are probably the ones who like music so much that they have a nice Hi-Fi system, and they want new design solutions. Given that Jewel just launched, Brandl says its difficult to measure sales numbers at this stage. From inside his street-level office in Oslo, though, he talks with interested customers every day who stop by to take a closer look at the product. The people are from eight, nine yearsold to 82 years old,” Brandl says. I think the ones between 17 and 25 show the most interest. And I tell them, Your parents and grandparents and great grandparents listen to LPs. But the CDthat’s your generations physical connection to music.
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E-Commerce
As press releases go, it was a mic drop moment. On September 4, OpenAI announced that it was coming after LinkedIn. And it was coming after job search specifically. For those unfamiliar with the story, it was reported across multiple sources that not content with torpedoing Google, education, interpersonal relationships, and entire industries such as psychiatry or management consultancy (both smugly considered untouchable until about 15 minutes ago), OpenAI is now coming after the age-old industry of human resources. Specifically, the $300 billion company wants to streamline the process of hiring by automatically matching candidates to roles via context alone, without the need for titles, résumés, applications, or screeninga fully automated, frictionless match between resource and need, run at zero cost in a fraction of the time it would take Becky from HR to book meeting room 14B next Tuesday, but with near-infinite scope and efficiency. Its yet another cold, logical extension of artificial intelligences purported ability to reduce human intuition down to a series of predictable algorithmic factors. LinkedIn Dethroned? Now, lets be fair. OpenAIs proposition assumes (probably rightly) that virtually all future roles will require some degree of AI knowledge or fluency. Moreover, the press release breathlessly proposes an OpenAI Academy, one that will train the machine-picked workers of the future on how to best serve their artificial overlords. But will this really be enough to dethrone LinkedIn? An incumbent platform of over 1 billion people who now spend the bulk of their time not in job search or hiring, but in perpetual AI comment-discussions about the nature of authenticity while posting Canva-selfies of their weekend getaway to Puglia? Perhaps we should first recognize that human resources is one of the oldest and most safeguarded functions within the corporate world, holding out defiantly as personal assistance, finance, and even marketing have been variously usurped by automation. Its a curiously old-fashioned industry in many respects, relying on judgments about physical appearance and behavioral norms such as eye contact and punctualitycharacteristics that in any other sector would be subordinated to ones ability to deliver value or output. But recently, HR has gone through something of a transformation, and its safe to say that LinkedIn has been at the heart of that. In fact, the worlds largest business platform been an unwitting catalyst for an onslaught of AI-driven fraudboth from candidates (either building fake AI profiles or even replacing themselves in Zoom interviews with omniscient AI avatars), or from dubious recruiters (leveraging advanced AI tools to build fictitious companies in order to solicit payment or personal details). The market is now flooded with AI cover letters, AI résumés and AI-curated portfolios, while on the other side of the table, the screening process is often (and increasingly) handed off to AI scanning software, in order to save valuable time filtering out unsuitable candidates before proceeding to a final interviewone that may ultimately be conducted and processed by an AI avatar. Surely then its simply a short step to full automation, one that removes these very ghosts in the hiring machine? Perhaps. But Id suggest that any scholar of organizational psychology would hold a very different view. The intangibles We can look, for example, at evidence highlighting the predictive power of nonverbal cues such as vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language in forecasting later job performance. A 2022 Harvard Business Review piece, on the other hand, cautioned that automated interviews may be prone to missing these types of intangible characteristicspotentially valuable employee attributes (say, curiosity or resilience) that might only be registered via live human interaction. Yet suffice to say, these same factors are also deeply subjective. Economists have long shown that reliance on intuition and first impressions can also be a major source of bias in recruitment, perpetuating disparities around race, gender, and class. AI proxies Whatever the case, the stark reality is that we now find ourselves in an era where a growing majority of both candidates and recruiters are using AI as proxies. And in this world, the very notion of authentic observationwhether helpful or notis starting to erode. ButI hear you cry as onesurely HR isnt just about hiring? Its about people management, professional development, organizational health, and so many other things? Yesexcept that of all these functions, hiring has historically required the highest amount of dedicated resource, training, and physical presence, far outstripping what can now be done by AI in areas such as coaching, psychometric testing, and even therapy. If we delegate the very function of organizational building itself, what remains must necessarily become diminished, at least in part. To circle back then to OpenAI, perhaps iterative machine learning will finally win out. Perhaps time might tell us that the match between employee and role is near-flawless in an AI, dehumanized world. And yet, it may also be this very unpredictability of human nature that will represent the biggest loss to a future workforce. And as to the suggestion that OpenAIs hiring platform will take down LinkedIn itself? If it can somehow balance hiring efficiency with the high level of fluffy, eye-pleasing pseudo-business interactions that now so predominate on LinkedIn itself, perhaps. But to do that, youd need to first understand a little of the idiosyncrasies of human nature, in order to build (and foster) an appropriately sticky forumif only for the reason that business is a gateway into so many other areas of recreational and emotional life. And doing that, Im afraid to say, still requires a deeply human sensibility.
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E-Commerce
You dont need a perfect jump shot or the exhaustive knowledge (or opinions) of Stephen A. Smith to land a career in sports. You can get far on passion and a desire to spread that love of the game throughout an increasingly fan-driven world. Sports marketingwhich encompasses everything from managing multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals and crafting social media campaigns for local teams to coordinating fan activation at the Super Bowlis one of the most robust components of the sports industry, which is worth at least $500 billion globally. To understand the state of play in this arena, Fast Company analyzed nearly 2,800 job listings on Google for Jobs between April and June 2025. We classified hiring organizations into four types: property rights holders (e.g., leagues and teams), media organizations, brands, and agencies. And we divided the jobs themselves into three categories: strategy, creative, and experiential. We then looked at the salaries, job requirements, and locations involved. The results reveal an industry thats more accessible and geographically diverse than you might expect, with plenty of opportunities for people lacking in both educational pedigree and, presumably, athletic ability. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} Whos HiringProperty rights holders account for the highest number of jobs listed for any organization type, at about 34% of listings. And its not just the most recognizable leagues and teams looking for help, though the L.A. Clippers are in the market for a director of sales innovation. Miami University, youth sports company 3Step Sports, and the United Football League’s (UFLs) Memphis Showboats are all hiring. Media companies (such as Amazon and NBCUniversal) account for more than 26% of jobs; brands (think Nike, Lululemon, and Red Bull) represent more than 20%, and agencies (like Playfly Sports, Excel Sports Management, Two Circles, and Endeavor) make up more than 18%. But these different types of organizations arent uniformly looking for the same kinds of people. Media companies are the likeliest to hire for creative roles, with 41% of listings geared toward jobs developing and shepherding content. Agencies and brands are disproportionately likely to headhunt for people working in strategy, with those roles accounting for 60% and 52% of openings, respectively. And property rights holders need people to promote game day, making those kinds of companies the most likely to hire people to fill positions in experiential marketing. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} GeographyAlthough remote work accounts for the highest number of listings, two cities emerge as sports marketing hubs: Atlanta and New York. (Chicago is a distant third.) What explains Atlantas prominence? Its home to five professional sports teams: the Hawks (NBA), Dream (WNBA), United (MLS), Falcons (NFL), and Braves (MLB). Its also the HQ for brands known for getting their names in front of sports fans, such as Coke, Home Depot, and Delta. Charlotte, at No. 5, punches above its weight with its three major-league teams. Its also home to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, plus branches of major agencies like Octagon and Wasserman. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} SalaryAcross organization types, salaries start out roughly the same (north of $50,000 on average) and increase mostly in lockstep. Nike, despite 2024 revenues being down nearly 5% year over year, is among the brands shelling out the most, offering about $250,000 for two upper-level roles. Amazon MGM Studios is among the highest-paying media companies, dangling $223,250 for a senior-level job. As far as agencies go, Game Seven and Saatchi are the top spenders. Game Sevens $375,000 for a global head of accounts is the highest salary in our entire dataset. Full-Time Versus ContractThe vast majority of sports marketing jobs are full-time, at about 81%. The second most common type of employment are internships at more than 8.3% of openings, followed by part-time jobs at 7.7%, and contractors at a surprisingly low 3%. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} EducationIf youre looking to break into the industry and havent even started your freshman year of college, your best bet is to major in marketing. Forty-five percent of listings that stated a preference for any educational degree mentioned marketing in particular. But thats not your only option. The next most common requests are business (28%), communications (24.1%), sports management (15.2%), and journalism (7.4%). Brands are the most likely employers to ask for marketing degrees: 73.3% of jobs at these companies require them. But theres a good chance you wont need a degree at all. The majority of agency and media listings dont ask for one. Neither do nearly 40% of listings from brands nor 30% of listings from property rights holders. Of course, whether employers quietly prefer candidates to have one is another matter. MethodologyWe extracted jobs from the Google for Jobs search module monthly from April to June 2025, resulting in 2,774 jobs when duplicates were removed. We used a combination of Gemini and manual tech token search to extract information on salary, company type, job type, and educational background. The categorization of jobs as full-time or contract/internship and their geographic locations were contained as separate structured fields in Googles data. Monthly and hourly salaries were standardized to yearly rates by multiplying the rate by 12 for monthly salaries, and by 2,080 for hourly salaries.
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E-Commerce
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