Head of A&R Jeff Drake talks Ministry Of Sound’s local success

Ministry Of Sound Australia are going through a purple patch at the moment. The rise of EDM music, and commercial radio’s recent deference to the style has seen the Australian branch of the independent dance label enjoy a new level of sales and radio success, with their recent singles routinely selling Platinum, including Joel Fletcher and Savage’s triple-Platinum, ARIA #2 single Swing. We spoke to Jeff Drake, the Head of A&R at Ministry Of Sound Australia, about their recent high times.

A number of artists – dance or otherwise – are benefitting from the worldwide success of EDM. Have you found this detrimental in any way, either in terms of new competition or others flooding the market?

Not particularly. The music and releases still have to be quality and the teams behind the artists and music still need to know what they are doing. Plenty of people are trying their hand at EDM and a lot of them are have no idea what they’re actually doing and are wasting a lot of time and money and, in some cases, are ruining artist careers. But this doesn’t really impact what we are doing: the audience for dance music is a very savvy one and they have a keen ability to identify a lack of authenticity. The ‘me too EDM’ people are years behind where the actual sound is at, and audiences know it.

Was it a hard push to convince radio to play these singles?

I actually think radio have been very progressive in embracing dance music as a daytime fixture. There has always been a selection of dance music played across all networks so the sound wasn’t completely unfamiliar, so in this context it wasn’t a hard sell but rather a case of having the right songs when radio audiences made their taste for more dance music known. I visited the Nova team last year to give them a heads up that the Melbourne Sound was really a huge sound and that we had a number of songs and artists we were very excited about, but this was never a hard sell but rather a case of sharing a genuine excitement for this sound and movement.

You’ve had a number of successful local records recently. What was the first record that exceeded your expectations, sales-wise?

Bring It Back by Will Sparks & Joel Fletcher. When I signed Joel as an artist my plan was to release three club-focused tracks that build up to releasing Swing as the radio and hopefully chart single. I am more than happy to admit I never expected Bring It Back to race up the iTunes chart the way it did, and ultimately become a Platinum-selling daytime radio record. Its success meant I fast tracked Swing and released it as the follow up. Funnily enough now, as I work on Joel’s international release plan, I am sort of working backwards in focusing on building his grass roots audience and showing the world he isn’t a one off hit song but a legit artist.

Joel [Fletcher] appeared on So You Think You Can Dance, which may have been considered a controversial move, especially in the eyes of purists. Is that something you considered?

No, not even a little bit. It happened organically and there was nothing contrived about it. Joel’s grass roots are in clubs as one of the pioneers of his sound and this didn’t change just because he appeared on TV. If an artist was manufactured and put on TV in an attempt to pass them off as a credible dance music artist then the purists for the sound would see this for what it is – rubbish, but Joel isn’t that, he is the absolute opposite of that, and I’d go so far as to say his earliest fans are proud of what he has achieved. Look how far he has taken something that started in the bedroom studios of a handful of Melbourne teenagers.

Now that you have a number of local artists charting on the ARIA Singles chart, has your promotional strategy changed at all?

Not hugely with regard to how we approach records locally. The same fundamentals to a successful record apply, and just because one club-focused song transitioned to radio and the charts, it doesn’t mean all will. The early adopters of this style of music are still discovering it before it’s on the radio and I still view them to be the core audience.

The biggest change in the past year or so for me is the international focus. Australian dance music producers are of a world class standard now and I think people both here and overseas are finally starting to realise this, so I really think about our artists as being worldwide and approach their releases with this at the forefront of my mind.

Your compilation CDs continue to be high sellers, despite most of the world moving to digital. Why do you think these have continue to sell? Was there ever a discussion to discontinue these?

The compilations are absolutely still a huge focus for us and definitely not something we are looking to slow down on. There are lots of radio shows, podcasts and other ways to consume dance music, but the key is adding value for the person buying the release, and I think this is something we still do to a high standard. There are well-known songs of course but you’ll still aways find future hits on our releases. We regularly have singles start their life from a compilation. I think people can grab a MOS compilation and know they’ll get something custom-made for dance music fans that has a good balance of well-known and new music.

Swing is obviously a fairly old track (at least in the world of radio singles), and it seems an odd choice to remix. How did this come about?

It’s definitely not old to an 18-year-old. I remember Swing the first time around as many others do but watching it performed live by Joel and Savage together it was really clear that for a huge segment of the audience this version was the only version they were familiar with. Savage’s voice is so distinct and translates very well into the dance music spectrum. He has that tone which doesn’t really put him into specific time or space, which is something I love about him as an artist. As to how the song came about, it was Joel’s idea and he produced the song just for his DJ sets and then I got in touch with Savage and we worked it out from there.

Any new local signings or upcoming releases you think will be big for MOS?

We have some amazing music coming up on the labels. Uberjak’d and SCNDL are producing some amazing music at the moment and I believe are two Australian artists that will become international stars.