20 Music Week 01.02.13 PROFILE ULTRA RECORDS ULTRA’S MERRY DANCE
When Patrick Moxey founded Ultra Records in 1996, he was told “dance music will never sell”. Last week, he signed a revolutionary joint venture deal with Sony and helped launch the first ever global electronic music trade body to represent a $4bn genre. How times change...
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loose association with Miami’s Ultra Festival, which drew 165,000 people last spring; or perhaps from its YouTube page, which now boasts more than one million subscribers and two billion views. Its current roster includes North American
artists Kaskade, deadmau5, Wolfgang Gartner and Steve Aoki, whilst international artists it handles in the US include Calvin Harris, Benny Benassi, Alex Gaudino, The Bloody Beetroots and Congorock. Little wonder that Sony has chosen Ultra as a
partner to give the major a serious A&R stakehold in the world of EDM. The pair last week announced a new global relationship covering A&R, distribution, international repertoire and more. As a result of the partnership, Moxey has been
LABELS BY TIM INGHAM
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t’s widely acknowledged that while some amazing dance music was getting mainstream UK acceptance in the mid-1990s, the US simply wasn’t listening. As The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Fatboy
Slim, Propellerheads and more were scoring Official Chart hits on this side of the Atlantic, Patrick Moxey was being told in no uncertain terms that “dance music will never sell in America”. US radio was refusing to play anything too bass-
driven, whilst audiences were perplexed by acts bounding onto stages without guitars. Yet it was within this climate, astonishingly, that Moxey decided: ‘I’ve really got to set up my own US dance label.’ In 1996, Ultra Records was born. Moxey wasn’t
new to the game of signing and developing top- notch talent – a previous manager of hip-hop kings Gangstarr, he was given his first notable industry job by Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons.
ABOVE In the early 1990s, Moxey was picked by Pete
Tong to run Payday Records in the US through Polygram – and played a hand in securing the signature of a young rapper called Jay-Z. From there he moved onto Virgin, signing N*E*R*D, Kelis and Beenie Man, but the former student DJ craved to move back into the dance scene. Despite Ultra’s conception amid an arid time for dance successes in the US, it grew through credibility and some inarguably impressive signings (Roger Sanchez, Cascade) before Sasha & Digweed delivered the label’s first proper hits, selling more than 500,000 records over six albums. Moxey ploughed on in the face of powerful
adversity (while Ultra was still a fledgling outfit, he recalls being told by MTV “dance music will never work”), in the hope that one day the wider US scene would ‘get it’. And in 2013, boy have they. The explosion of the electronic music scene in
America has sent both record and ticket sales rocketing – you’ll recognise Ultra’s name from its
Associates [Left] Patrick Moxey with Ben Turner at the Midem
announcement of the Association For Electronic Music and [Right] Sony’s Doug Morris
named president, Electronic Music, Sony Music Entertainment, reporting directly to Doug Morris, CEO, Sony Music Entertainment. Sony will distribute releases from Ultra’s
recorded music division in North America via RED in the US and Sony Music Canada, while outside North America, Sony Music International and Ultra will share resources to promote and market Ultra’s artists worldwide. In addition, Ultra Music will help promote and market Sony Music artists in the US and Canada. And that’s not all Moxey has going on: at Midem 2013, he announced his involvement in the Association For Electronic Music – the new global trade body for a genre now estimated to be worth $4bn worldwide each year. Music Week grilled Moxey on Ultra’s Sony
relationship, the growth of dance (‘EDM’) – and whether the bubble is going to burst anytime soon…
It seems like young people in the US have switched allegiances in this generation from rock music to dance… Absolutely. If you're a 15-year-old kid right now nothing's cooler than house. Of course it’s popular
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