Isa Cruz

When Hayden Mann ’27 started making beats for his friends in middle school, he never expected that it would land him a record deal.

Mann, under the name HAYDO, has numerous viral videos and over 100,000 streams on his online remixes. In July, he signed with Too Future/Alt:Vision Records, a label owned by Sony.

Now, he has to balance being a full-time student with releasing new music.

“If you told me six months ago that I’d be with a record label and putting music on Spotify, I would have laughed,” Mann said. “I’m still kind of processing it.”

Growing up in Orange County, Calif., music has always been a part of Mann’s life. Throughout middle school and high school, Mann played the cello, piano and experimented with making electronic music. As he grew older, he found himself stepping away from music amid other time constraints.

However, sophomore fall, when he took Introduction to Electronic Music with Assistant Professor of Digital Music Badie Khaleghian, his passion was reignited. The class furthered Mann’s understanding of sound design and track composition, helping him take his musical interests to the next level.

“I liked playing piano and cello, but a lot of the time playing pieces that are already composed is kind of limiting.… With electronic music, the possibilities are pretty endless,” Mann said.

Come finals week, Mann was looking for a break from studying. Wanting to take advantage of the software from the class before the subscription ran out, he started remixing his favorite songs and posting them to TikTok and SoundCloud.

After his first remixes of “Lovers” by Anna from the North and “Caroline” by Aminé gained a combined total of over 100,000 streams on SoundCloud, he was equipped with the confidence to keep going.

That summer, Mann says he locked himself in his room and continued to make music. The success of his next remix of “2 On” by Tinashe during that time put him in the spotlight, and he started hearing from record labels and producers interested in his music.

“I was really excited. I was definitely surprised because I had a vision, but I wasn’t as defined yet for my production,” Mann said. “So it came out of nowhere.”

At the time he got signed, his parents had no idea he was releasing music online or that it was gaining traction. When he told them about the record deal, they didn’t believe it either.

“The label reached out under Sony, and I was convinced it was a scam at first because I had only released three bootleg tracks,” Mann said. “I didn’t really respond, but then they reached out again, and I realized, ‘Oh wait, this might be real.’”

He also started to hear from fellow DJs and producers that he looks up to, and some of the  artists whose music he was remixing. Tinashe liked some of the content he was producing with her music on social media, and Anna of the North reached out to him directly.

Mann formed valuable connections in the industry and learned about how professional DJs curate their sets when they emailed asking for files of his songs for their own sets.

As a math and environmental studies double major, he is now learning to make space for his musical aspirations and his academic ones. Between balancing club soccer with clubs in Boston reaching out for him to DJ, Mann has a busy year ahead of him.

“I have passions at school, and I’m thinking about continuing research after college,” Mann said. “I’m just gonna take this as far as I can alongside school and see what happens.”

Mann’s current “niche” is combining popular rap and pop songs with the structure of house or garage music with his musical inspiration primarily stemming from the genres of U.K. garage and house music.

Mann’s next remix of “No Type” by Rae Sremmurd is dropping in October. In the future, Mann is looking to hone his production skills and eventually start releasing original music beyond solely producing remixes.

With a record label by his side, Mann can’t wait to continue refining himself as an artist and see where it takes him.

“While I found success in this for now, I want to take it to the next level at some point,” Mann said.