TMN RETROSPECTIVE REPORT: Watson Launches Eleven – 2001

TMN celebrates two decades in this ever-shifting music industry by taking a look back at the key moments – both triumphant and tumultuous – in the Australian music business.

2001
WATSON LAUNCHES ELEVEN

John Watson and current MD of EMI John O’Donnell co-founded Murmur Records in 1994, an imprint of Sony which signed many of alternative music’s leading lights throughout the ‘90s: Silverchair, Something For Kate and Jebediah, to name a few. Watson quickly left the label to manage the young Silverchair, and when the band’s contract with Sony ended, he formed Eleven: A Music Company in order to control their record releases.

Eleven was more than a Silverchair subsidiary though, with Watson signing Missy Higgins, whose debut Sound Of White was the highest selling album of 2005, Little Birdy, Paul Mac, and Gotye, whose Making Mirrors album charted in over twenty countries, and spawned the monolithic Somebody That I Used To Know.

Our year on year reports are published courtesy of the Australian Music Industry Quarterly magazine. For your free copy click here.