Heard Well—a company described as the first music label powered by social tastemakers and their communities—and Sony's RED Distribution have announced a partnership with the goal of building a next generation creative think tank for the marketing and distribution of music.

Under their new deal, Heard Well and RED will utilize the latter's 'stache media and its label services, which include radio promotion, digital sales marketing, manufacturing, distribution and more. Three new social influencers have been tapped to join Heard Well's team (Connor Franta, Amanda Steele, Lohanthony and JC Caylen) to create compilation albums, which have a history of debuting Top 10 on iTunes' charts. FYI, the aforementioned social stars have Twitter follower counts that range between 810k and 4m and Instagram follower counts that range between 1.7m and 4.6m.

“The concept for Heard Well has evolved into a team of smart, creative people with impeccable taste who reach millions through their amazing digital marketing strategy," shared RED prexy Bob Morelli. "RED and ‘stache media look forward to working with Jeremy, Andrew, Connor, and the entire Heard Well team in developing the best new talent in contemporary music.”

In a time that's digitally driven, as the popularity of streaming continues to soar, everyone seems to be scrambling to find the perfect model to get the biz booming again. Does the future lie with young bloggers, next gen spokespeople and hashtag enthusiasts? Can they find away to harness the vastness and immediacy of the Internet and use said powers for profit instead of piracy? Only time will tell, but many big players have been chomping at the bit for some time now. The shortage of hookers and cocaine has been quite pronounced, after all.