Monstercat purring with success
Success the new standard for duo who sift through more than 700 demos a week
Like most successful music labels Vancouver-based Monstercat began as a labour of love.
The Canadian independent electronic dance record company scratched its way from warehouse parties and a friendly file-sharing community into a global brand with millions of followers and platinum singles such as Marshmello’s Alone.
This is most certainly not your parent’s platinum sounds. This is modern dance music. Mike Darlington and Ari Paunonen met at the University of Waterloo, where a mutual appreciation for dance parties and developing online community for the music they loved led them to create a label in 2011 that didn’t follow traditional practices.
From the beginning the duo wanted to deconstruct the standard music industry label model and try to build a social media-driven structure for electronic music artists to release their creations.
It’s the sort of success story that comes from policies that promote the development of new businesses in hub centres.
“We started Monstercat at this great space at an accelerator centre in Waterloo, that we could afford, and started to grow the business with access to excellent mentors and it was key,” said Paunonen, the chief operating officer.
“As we grew, it became clear we were going to have to move. One visit to Vancouver we realized we were walking the seawall in light jackets, surrounded by all this beautiful nature and able to head to Whistler in a snap rather than face the brutal Ontario winter.”
So Monstercat relocated in 2012, bringing its core employees along for the ride. It was a brash move, but a wise one. The West Coast connection also really matters in the electronic music scene.
Dance music and urban fashion and culture are a big deal here, and just across the pond is the burgeoning Asian marketplace.
Unlike a traditional label, artists are licensed on a one-track basis, leaving them to develop their careers as they see fit.
Darlington, the chief executive officer, said the idea was to build recognition for quality while approaching marketing in a completely different manner.
As the label’s own promo material announces: “We looked at the problems within the music industry, asked ‘why not’ and have created the ‘how to.’ ”
The vast majority of the label’s audience arrives at its music via its YouTube stations Monstercat: Uncaged and Monstercat: Instinct, which have in excess of 6.8 million subscribers. Toss in Spotify (two million streams per day), podcasts and other streaming services and you can see the massive reach of the label attained by using its “new age label” approaches. It’s been a steady build from the original core of around eight employees, releasing 20 chart-topping albums on iTunes and growing into a live event juggernaut and full-service production and promotion shop.
“We’ve got somewhere between 45 and 50 employees working in 13 different divisions which are mostly quite traditional music industry infrastructure things you need to be a full-service outlet such as licensing, engineering, video, publishing, merchandising, event planning, etc.” said Darlington.
“The gaming side is quite apart and we are, by far, the strongest independents out there in the industry, in terms of our licensing and publishing. We just did all the music for Rocket League, which is one of the biggest games in the world.”
Darlington said adding events into the mix was really just to “make it fun.” That party-loving university student still lurks in there somewhere. The “fun” translates into a kind of exposure even the ’Net can never buy, too.
On July 20, the Monstercat stage at Belgium’s trendsetting megafestival Tomorrowland kicks off.
With the likes of Lowriderz, Tokyo Machine and Juno awardwinner Rezz appearing, it’s a serious talent showcase and bound to be packed. Monstercat acts are also appearing at such big-name festivals as Bonnaroo. Then, on Aug. 25, the label hosts its annual Vancouver Compound throwdown at its offices on Railway St.
Started last year, this free EDM party turns the office parking lot into a main stage and shuts down the street for a day of block-rockin’ beats. It’s just one more way to build community in Vancouver’s busy creative sector zone where the head offices are located.
Monstercat’s discography includes almost 50 compilations and best-of sessions, stacks of singles and remixes. In 2014 it added extended plays to its releases with Haywire’s Two Fold Pt. 1 EP.
All product is digital format. And they are churning them out.
“When we launched, it was three tracks a week and now we are up to four releases of all types of formats,” said Paunonen. “The digital era coincided with our arrival and a major resurgence of dance music and we have always been early to things such as Spotify and other technological innovations.”
“All this talk of the music business hitting rock bottom really hasn’t hit us,” said Darlington.
“If this is the bottom, heck yeah! We’ll ride it out and build on top of what comes next as we keep surging forward.”
Given that the label receives in excess of 700 demo submissions a week, culling through those to put together the choicest tracks in a compilation isn’t without its challenges. Time, obviously, is one of the key factors. But so is keeping in tune with trends, thinking of the potential for licensed tracks to find their way into TV, film or games and more. You’re only as good as your ears and Monstercat works hard to keep people in house who “hear” the big picture.
“We’re always searching A&R (artist and repertoire), building micro-communities with artists and producers and we have a relationship with pretty much every management agency or promotion group out there now,” said Darlington. “That was always the model we used. But the difference now is we can go work with the artists to develop their careers, making the introductions, the connections and more to keep them moving forward.”
This means that the two founders are becoming well-versed in the traditional major label methodology, too. They both admit to being ready to adopt whatever is the best practices for them from anywhere they might be discovered.
“When an artist comes to you and needs $100,000 to get things to the next level, serious math comes into play,” said Darlington.
“Majors understand that type of situation really well, how to optimize investments.”
“We’ve always been open to incorporating what works from any area, any little details, right back to when we were conducting our business from our bedrooms on Skype,” said Paunonen. “When we started, we were going to the university to use their internet to upload our albums because our home servers were so slow. Now we are going all over the world.”
Monstercat did 15 shows in China last year. Both partners admit growing demand for its products in Asia is a primary focus.
To that end, they have signed artists in Korea, partnered up with the Sunburn festival in India and are in negotiations with a few enterprises in Japan.
“It’s still very new and they are figuring out their economies for electronic music at the moment, so it’s a bit of a land grab,” said Darlington. “Electronic music is still just a blip on the market in most of Asia and places like Japan are still a 90 per cent physical market, which is problematic for a completely digital business.”
The economics all beg looking at, but both of these B.C. entrepreneurs see Monstercat purring loudly ahead.