19. October 2015 | Interviews | Carl
Talk-Zone #20 Interview with A45 Music
Hello Noizefielderz, today we had the chance to talk with the A&R legend Reinhard Piel from A45 Music. He told us interesting news about his label, how to create a sampler, the new single from Scotty and much more. Don’t forget to send your Demotracks to him! Enjoy it!
Welcome Reinhard! When did you start with the label and why did you call the label A45 music?
Well, we started the label in summer of 1999 first based in a suburb of Frankfurt as a joint venture between EDEL (the biggest german independent music company) and myself. When we tried to create a good name for the label we started with big white sheet of paper to collect our idea. Starting point was, that I worked prior for company calles ZYX Music and we always ended up at the end in each catalog, list etc – so I wanted to form a new company, something better and put a big „A“ on the sheet. Then I thought about music related words and among others I put down 45 (for the speed of a record – rounds per minute) and of course also the word music.
Then I thought about another connection I had with A and 45 : A45 is the highway between my hometown and the office….. and this led at the end to the combination of „A45 music“ as well as to the colour of of logo: blue as the german highways have always road signs in blue.
Tell our readers something about the flowchart that will be needed for a new record release, like a compilation/sampler. How much time does it take for an A&R-manager to pick and get the best tracks together for a compilation?
For a new release like a compilation it needs the following flowchart: First you must have an idea of a headline/name of the sampler which is short, not yet used and best explains already what you are puting on the sampler. Then you must think about which songs may fit into your idea and if there might be enough interest in public for this. The calculation then must be based on marketing budget and sales expectation. If these „discussions“ lead to a „go“ for the sampler, you might have already spent 2 weeks or so. Then you start to check your own catalog for tracks and start to ask other labels for corresponding songs to be sub-licensed for the sampler….. usually this means another 3-4 weeks time. After and finally you go into presale and manufactoring (if you plan a physical product) and then after a total aprox time of 8 weeks your record might be in the store.
After a lot of successful productions like „Black pearl“, „God is a DJ“ or „Children“, Scotty has released an own composing with Aaron Ambrose – „Incomplete“. Let’s tell something about this new smash-hit.
Scotty – one of the Top Acts and DJs signed to us, has been very successful with Dance-Versions of famous pop songs or movie themes. His latest single – just climbing into Top 20 of nearly all Dance Charts in Germany – is nevertheless his own composition and an homage to love. It’s recorded and mixed on Mallorca (Spain). You can feel the spirit of the song, especially when you watch the videoclip and the deephouse mix by Heller & Ballweg. That fits perfectly into the range of songs, actually beiing in the Top 10 sales charts
If some of our readers wants you to send a demo-track. Would you listen to all of them and to which adress should the tracks be uploaded/sent?
Demo songs?! Sure we need them to find and create new hits, so everybody is welcome to send us his music demos. The best way is a link, via we-transfer, dropbox or soundcloud. But we listen as well to mp3s (smaller than 10MB please). Send the track to [email protected], but please do not send your catalog, always reduce what you send to one or maximum two songs.
What does a track need to raise the chance for a signing? Is EDM a must-have for it, cause it’s trendy at the moment or would other styles also have a chance?
Music is in first range: „selling feelings“ so listening to new songs we always try to find or create feelings and this is what a demo-song must have in addition of course to well produced structure and sound…. If this ends up in an EDM song or something different, as long as we got the feeling and a great groove, we hopefully will like it and and can find a market for it.
What makes A 45 different from other record-companys?
Different from other record-companies is, that we are possibly more open for various styles, that we work very internationally, so we also license tracks we know that will not sell in Germany, but may be hot for our partner in Korea – as an example.
A45 Music has got also some sublabels with versatile styles. What is the difference between those labels and which releases could be expected next?
We try to offer various music styles and feel that to market these best we need different packages and of coure also people around and working with the music. So we have labels for EDM,Trance,House,RnB and even for german Schlager and party music.
What is the most successful record and artist on A45 Music?
Most successful artists …. Depends a bit on territory but for sure SCOTTY and MARIO LOPEZ are both big ones for us and have had many chart successes. Best sold record for us was nevertheless KING AFRICA – La Bomba.
Which interesting projects could be expected next on A45?
Something very interesting comes from our deep- and techouse label „Flicker Rhythm“ which is celebrating its 10 th anniversary a great new compilation „10 years of Flicker Rhythm“ with 8 brandnew and hot deephouse songs from Chris Robin, Nvelope, Bela Bang, Samuel Fach and others. Something different we are going to try for Christmas with DJ Ostkurve who created a new „Jingle Bells“ theme for the clubs with a very funny video coming.
Let’s tell something our readers, that you always wanted to tell them.
Finally let me thank all our friends for more than 15 years enjoying our music and we are looking forward for the next decade.
Thanks for taking time to this interview.
More information:
A45 Music Website
A45 Music YouTube
A45 Music Facebook
Check these out!
