Happy 10th Birthday, Select Music: Stephen Wade Looks Back

Tonight, Australian music talent company Select Music celebrates its tenth year in business. When it was launched in 2005, the risks were enormous and the potential return was often small when compared to the outlays. But with a current staff of ten and a roster of almost 90 acts, Select Music has become a launching pad for local acts as it continually improves itself and the calibre of its roster. If the past ten years of its life were converted into a linear graph it would show a singular ascending line.

When founder and owner Stephen Wade sits down with TMN at the Select Music offices in Sydney, he explains why, a decade in, a company best known for its sold-out tours and artists’ longevity won’t be celebrating with a career-spanning live show featuring their most prized acts.

“For me personally, I went: ‘everybody knows what we fucken’ do’.

“The truth is, in my mind we’re celebrating more all the amazing people that have helped us over the ten years, because trying to build an agency in this country is not easy.”

Select Music had a dream run from 2007 onwards, but it had a rough start. Like all of his compatriots, Wade started the company out of a love for Australian music. A touring musician himself (his grunge band The Fergies got its name after the Duchess’ toe-sucking debacle) and venue booker for, at one stage, around 30 venues in New South Wales, Wade sat on the other side of the fence right up until his late 30s.

“I just got to a point where I’d made some really good money in other parts of the industry and I just thought well, I either try now… Because ten years ago you’re right on the cusp of the Internet age,” says Wade. “The discovery of music was a little less controlled so you could find your own acts.”

Select Music Owner Stephen Wade

In the early ‘90s the Sydney booking agency world was one company, Sam Righi’s Harbour Agency (now operated under Gudinski’s Mushroom Group). It broke open slightly in the mid-‘80s when CM Murphy made his name with INXS and started rooART and Petrol Records, and when Owen Orford left Harbour Premier in 1989 to work for Trading Post Agency (TPA). Wade saw the opening up of the market and recruited ex-Harbour/Chugg Music staffer Scott Leighton in 2005 who Wade says “gave him legitimacy”. At the time Rob Giovannoni had been working in Korea and when he returned, rounded up the Select Music team. Of course, with Michael Chugg, Michael Gudinski, Michael Coppel and Paul Dainty offering catch-all services to acts at the time of Select’s launch, it wasn’t smooth sailing for Wade.

“Literally, the first couple of years were fucken’ hard,” he admits. “We were going up against acts who were the biggest in Australia.”

For a moment Select was operating on a level which didn’t appear to interest the bigger agencies at the time. The agency took notice of the post-boom of the record label and as the label sector’s prominence began to slide, starting working with emerging acts like Bluejuice, Josh Pyke, Midnight Juggernauts and Laura Imbruglia.

“We actually had to go into a different realm where we A&R’ed our own acts,” tells Wade.

It worked. In 2006 Select released a mixtape of tracks by its ‘under the radar’ acts; it featured none-other than Dappled Cities, The Ex-Patriots and Something With Numbers. Wade was managing Something With Numbers at the time and saw the band go on to play the mainstage at Big day Out following the release of Apple Of The Eye (Lay Me Down).

Things finally came unstuck for the agency when its signing Josh Pyke gained national ubiquity with Middle Of The Hill. The song went to #19 on the triple j Hottest 100 list in 2005, was nominated for an ARIA in 2006 and in 2007 his record Memories & Dustwon Best Adult Contemporary Album and Producer of the Year (with Wayne Connolly) and was nominated for Breakthrough Artist and Best Male Artist.

It could be said that Josh Pyke changed the goal posts. 18 months in Select had its first act stolen – “You’re not in the industry until someone’s stolen something that you’ve loved off you” – and every year following Pyke’s initial ARIA win, nominations for Select Music acts grew. Boy & Bear won five ARIAs in 2011 and last year Select artists had the most nominations they’d ever had. The same can be said for triple j Hottest 100 placings; last year 14 of its acts were included and of the 60 Australian acts in the list, 1 in 4 were Select-signed.

“As cliché as it sounds, we just went out and chose acts that we thought could do something,” reflects Wade. “[…] What I say to the younger agents now ‘if you go and see the act and you think that you could see them onstage one day at The Enmore, then we need to get in there and try and represent that act’.”

Select Music now has 15 acts who play The Enmore, many of its acts’ releases have achieved Gold and Platinum certification and it counts five wins of the coveted triple j Artist of the Year Award and two Unearthed Highs (Asta, Japanese Wallpaper). Its most recently concluded tour with Passenger (aka Mike Rosenberg) saw him sell 5,000 tickets at the Enmore and pack the Sydney Entertainment Centre, and most recently he was added to Ed Sheeran’s upcoming Australia and New Zealand stadium tour. When Wade signed Passenger five years ago he was busking on King Street and following that, didn’t have a booking agent anywhere else in the world for three years.

“The mantra that we worked from is that we build careers,” Wade states. “That’s what I try and say to the guys, it’s not about us. Nothing we do is planned around the agency or trying to make the agency bigger or trying to make us money, it’s actually all about the artists you represent […] Of course, if the artist makes a shit-load of money of course we’re going to make money.”

As testament to this, many of Select’s artists will be attending the milestone on Tuesday, including The Preatures, Josh Pyke, Thelma Plum, Seth Sentry and San Cisco.

Wade’s view of what Select Music has done for the past decade, and will continue to do is clear: “We ride on the coattails of incredibly talented human beings. […] For me it’s never about being the biggest. That’s not what motivates me because big doesn’t mean the best. I want to be the best.”

Wade is an advocate for the cause Beyond Blue campaign for. Select Music will bring out the buckets on Tuesday night to raise funds for the charity.