EXCLUSIVE: Gregg Donovan on opening Wonderlick’s first international office

Celebrating their tenth anniversary, leading Australian music company Wonderlick Entertainment have today announced they’ll be opening an office in New York City.

After curating an elite lineup of Australian talent including Boy & Bear, Amy Shark, Grinspoon, Montaigne, Airbourne, Josh Pyke, The Paper Kites, Holy Holy and Pete Murray, co-owners and directors of the company, Gregg Donovan and Stu MacQueen are thrilled to reveal Wonderlick’s first international arm.

Since 2007, Wonderlick has grown from being a boutique management company to a music group which includes the management company, Wonderlick Recording Company (a record label joint venture with Sony Music) and Wonderlick Publishing (a joint venture with Sony-ATV Publishing).

Their roster has collectively sold millions of albums, enjoyed a series of top 10 records in Australia and internationally, and won more than a dozen ARIA Awards, including taking out the ARIA for Breakthrough Artist two years running with Montaigne scooping the award last year and Amy Shark picking it up last week, off the back of her now triple platinum single Adore.

Speaking to TMN, co-owner and director Gregg Donovan explained that the move had been a long time in the making.

“It’s been something Stu and I have wanted to do for a while, and it just seemed to make perfect sense to make that investment now. This is the kind of stuff I dreamed about having when I was a younger manager wanting to come up and do these things.”

“I think this has come either right around when I thought it would or a little early. I figured it was gonna take 10, 15 years to establish this as a proper, developing, long-term career act label. Stu and I were certainly planning for it that way.”

While Wonderlick covers managing, recording and publishing in Australia, the focus of the New York office will be the label side of things.

“It’s really about trying to further these relationships within the industry. A lot of the people we talk to within our Sony joint venture are in New York. So we want to really make sure we have rock solid relationships there and are really finding a way to drive through it.”

“We love a good radio hit, like the next guy, and we’re always really hoping those come out, but we never push those on our artists. We just want the artist to be the best versions of themselves and we want long-term careers for them.”

The age of streaming is also a driving force behind the decision to open Wonderlick’s first international office, with Donovan explaining that synchronisation and playlisting are two of the most important opportunities for artists right now.

“I mean, it’s no secret to anybody in the business that playlisting’s actually becoming, and will become, a much more serious issue for Australian artists because it’s gonna be difficult with a lot of the key playlists being built out of the Norther Hemisphere, being made by the editors over there. These relationships are gonna become more and more important.”

The office is now open, with more hires expected in 2018.