Spinnin’ personnel are hawk-eyed visionaries who see every option as a possibility and an opportunity to give people what they want before they even know they want it. They know instinctively how to build anticipation through one minute stings and teasers, build brand loyalty and to create a lifestyle at the click of a touch pad. This is how they have become one of the cornerstones of the international dance music industry today. DJ Paulette goes head to head with the MD and co-owner of Spinnin’ Records, poolside in Ibiza
Interview by DJ Paulette
In 2007, Steve Jobs said, “there’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ After forty five minutes in the collective company of three key players from Spinnin’ Records, I am convinced that this motivation powers everything that the organisation does. This foresight blended with crazy creativity and razor sharp sense of commerce has been giving Spinnin’ Records the competitive edge since its inception in 1999.
Fast forward to 2015 and I’ll let social network user stats speak for themselves: 5.2M dedicated Facebook users, 9,500,000 Spinnin TV Youtube subscribers, 1.34M Twitter followers, 888,197 on Soundcloud, 390,000 on Instagram 316,000 users on Spotify – each week takes them closer to becoming the Apple of the dance music industry’s beady eye.
Yet our interview nearly didn’t happen.
Somehow in the midst of some randomly dire Ibiza weather, his crammed IMS conference schedule and the Bermuda Triangle of the Hard Rock Hotel’s multiple choice of possible interview bars, our slot had to be rescheduled twice and with multiple calls to Holland, London and Ibiza. Eventually – and by 3.45 I was sitting (in the right bar area) with Roger Graaf who introduced me to Meindert Kennis (their Social Media Director) for a chat about A&R, music and the new Talent Pool beta site. Then by 4.10 pm (cue cheers from the gallery and a lap of honour from me) and two hours later than scheduled, I was sitting face to face in a sombre but noisily buzzing bar in the Hard Rock Hotel with Eelko Van Kooten – MD, co-owner and business dynamo behind Spinnin’ Records. Fresh from over-running TV interviews with an Indian and a French TV station, let it be the very mark of the man, that his first words to me were ‘sorry that this has taken so long’. Responsibility assumed. Since good manners and sincere apologies are my benchmark for the stand-up fabric of a human, then I mentally click ‘like’.
So it’s 1999 – how did the idea for Spinnin’ come about?
In 94 I was working for my dad who was in music publishing: he owned a company Nanada Music and a record label called Red Bullet. If your parent is an entrepreneur, you grow up with their excitement. So once I was able to start working for him I decided that I really liked the business part because signing writers, signing deals and working with talent – that was something I really enjoyed. Then you test a radio hit, or you have a cover version, you work with one of your writers then you deliver it to an artist they record it and it’s a hit. I get a lot out of creating that success together. With dance I saw that it’s international and it’s easy to make. You didn’t need a big recording studio at that time, so it was less expensive than recording an album or doing an artist album.
So I started as a music publisher in 1998 and I represented a lot of writers who made music that was released by other labels. But I thought that from the publishing and the talent perspective that that service could be handled better, that the promotion and servicing of the records could be handled better and certainly getting the records on an A&R / promotions level. Since I already had a busy job but thought it could be better, I thought why not start a label myself? So I looked for the right and talented guy that I could run the label with. I was already working with Roger and I liked him. Roger was working for another label and came to me as a publisher: I represented artists and writers and producers and he liked the music of my writers. So we had a meeting and we played through music. He said ‘Yeah, I want to work with this guy and that guy’. And I said ‘Hey, do you like your job? I want to start a label what do you think? I’m looking for a guy…’
We talked about it for a few months. Eventually we started the label in 99. We’re very different, I am more business, legal and management and he is more involved with the music / creative level, so we are very complementary. We don’t do the same things but we talk a lot together and we understand each other.
First we started out selling 100,0000 vinyl per year and after that CDs and CD singles. Because we are very close connected to each other, we know what we do, so we have a good feedback. We can discuss running the company together, future plans, trends, team members and throughout the years we have always tried to improve the whole organisation.
So what were the tracks that Spinnin’ Records brought to the exploding dance music party in 1999?
The first release was the First Choice and The Player it was a number one release with Olav Basoski remixes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py2qOHazQqs so that was house again. Then early 2000 there was the new trend of trance coming up so we did a lot of Trance releases after that compilations. It is a huge benefit that the owners of the label are not DJs themselves because we are always looking for new styles of music and want to bring new artists to the table.
So who was responsible for A&R then?
Roger was responsible for A&R, initially we checked out records together but then the organisation grew and he became the head of A&R / head of creative together with Jorn (Herninga). Jorn first started out as DJ/vinyl promo and asking for DJ feedback. After three years we hired extra personnel – Anouska for our foreign export outside Holland, Jorn club promotion, after that we hired a radio promotion guy and now we have 46 people working for us in the office including management, publishing and Spinnin’ Records.
How important has radio play been to the Spinnin’ Records success story?
It’s a little different angle now because our online reach is huge so we can build success even without the radio. First in 2000 you had to have the DJs on it, then radio and TV – MTV was very important and TMF in Holland, so if you didn’t have the clip you could not be on the radio. There were always different external things that you had to do before you could reach success. Now through our online with social media we have a big following and we can promote our records directly to our followers without even the radio. We aren’t tied any more to external factors like radio or TV or shops or retail. That’s a big advantage.
Where do you see this going – basically if you are saying you are not tied to traditional way of marketing and promoting tracks – could this render the other media (TV / Radio / DJs) as toothless?
No, they are still very important. You can have a club hit but the ultimate for a DJ is to have your record on the radio because then we still reach the mass audience. If you have a playlist on BBC Radio 1 that’s the ultimate thing in the music world to reach the big audience with your record. And if you hear that the radio is playing your record and they are also mentioning your artist name it is still the best promotion for an artist. The problem is that radio is very specific and is reluctant to play dance: so the advantage is that if you don’t have radio at least you can promote directly to your followers or fan base. Five years ago if you didn’t have radio you were lost with your record as an artist but now you can do a lot yourself through social media or through your label.
So has there ever been a moment in the Spinnin’ history where you’ve thought ‘Oh my God, we’ve made a big mistake here’?
Erm…Erm…No.
But you have to look in the time frame. We saw that Internet had an advantage that you could reach your audience globally.
When was that lightbulb moment? And where do you see this going?
Around 2009/2010 when i-Tunes was coming up and when YouTube was coming up. It was already there but the kids didn’t find it, they weren’t using it but we saw that even though radio is very specific on not playing certain records, that does not mean that kids do not go for that. And now with the availability of the technology, computers, pdas, iPods, iPads, tablets and smartphones, the kids find it (that music) for themselves. They don’t have to be told by radio or MTV what to think or what to play
Now the kids from 14-24 years old are online practically all day – they want to be excited every moment so you have to bring them a constant flow of news, mixes, new records, new artists, live performances and we are the place online that can bring excited news all the time so that is our advantage.
A traditional artist like Robbie Williams, he does an album and then two years nothing – but now with the DJs we have a constant flow of records, constant flow of live performances and it’s an ongoing story.
So that’s why we see traditional artists taking tips from electronic music and they are having to promote in the same way.
Yes, It’s a whole different story now and that’s really exciting for me as an entrepreneur to see what is happening. You cannot compare now with 10 years, with 20 years ago. Even with the musical force and also with other retail business. And that’s what makes it so exciting because there’s a lot of opportunities, there’s a lot going on and you have to focus of course and get the right ones but it’s a really exciting time. You cannot say ‘Where are we going to be in three years?’ because I don’t know where I’ll be next year.
Today, Spinnin’ Records is the mother to 40 other labels. When did you decided to take on other labels?
We decided to use other labels because we have different genres and with an artist label you can identify the genre. The DJ driven labels: Fly Eye is Calvin Harris, Doorn is Sander Van Doorn, Musical Freedom is Tiesto, Wall Recordings is Afrojack – people expect the music from that artist, the music they play in their radio shows and club playlists. They’re identity labels. Then you have the genre labels: for instance, Spinnin’ Deep is deep house then it is about the specific genre and that’s more or less why we use sub labels. But every time it’s different.
It’s all about promoting the labels, their genres and profiles and it’s more about the people who are fans of Spinnin’ Records labels because they know what to expect.
Aside from this – there’s your Music All Stars Management side. Tell me a little bit about that.
We started a management company because we thought we could do a better job for the artist. We signed Martin Garrix and Oliver Heldens in management in 2012: we took them onboard when nobody knew about them. We started working with them on the music level because as a DJ you can communicate what you play because of the records that you put out. Producers like Martin and Oliver they can make tracks but the track is not a release so you need to steer them on the A&R / creative level but that is time consuming so if you have a management very much involved on the label / music and they work very closely together then you can have quicker results and success.
So in a way you are running the most modern label in one way with a very traditional ‘sign then nurture’ mindset which doesn’t exist in major labels any more. They don’t have the time or the budget.
Martin Garrix became popular not because of one record. ‘Animals’ was the 5th record. We had to release the other 4 smaller records to get the big record. Same with Avicii – ‘Levels’ was his big breakthrough but he was Tim Berg and Tom Hanks before – he had a lot of aliases and it took him four years until he had that big record. With Martin it was a little bit quicker because we spent a lot of time on an A&R level. Music is the essential and the best marketing tool for DJs to become popular quickly, but sometimes we experience other management companies who are not so cooperative. A management company wants a big label deal with a big advance where we say rather forget the advance we will invest a lot of time and start developing you instead. We help them set up their social media, get Twitter account, do Facebook, photo shoots, logo, find a booking agency – that’s what we do on a management level. In my experience, we know what is best for the artist.
Do they get signed to the management on an all inclusive / exclusive 360° deal then?
Yes, but then with each of the different companies because management is separate to publishing to the record label: each has its own set up so it’s not one deal covering everything it is three deals each its own service. This also works for writers and artists who don’t release on Spinnin’. The good thing is a management company normally hires a publisher, a PR company and has a meeting with all their people once a month. In our case we have all the people here and we have meeting every week with everybody involved. Very intense and concentrated work flow. The first two clients were Martin Garrix and Oliver Heldens and we can say that it was a very good co-operation. So the 360 in our company in our opinion works out extremely well. Martin and Oliver are superstars. They dream and were dreaming about producing, to have club hits and perform live, so now they live their dream and we are part of it which is great. For us it’s always about the talent. We cannot make music. So the DJ producer has to make his own music and he has to be talented.
Who discovered Martin Garrix?
It was Roger Graaf. I heard about him, people were speaking about him in Amsterdam. He was performing in a small club and his name was becoming popular so I said ‘let’s set up a meeting’. It took us a month to find him, then Roger had the meeting. Martin played one track in his laptop (he had 8 tracks) but Roger heard one and a half minutes of the first track and he said – ‘OK let’s work together’. He was hearing original sounds and he was hearing musical skills in the production and he was saying a 16 year old – he makes this kind of music , then he is very talented. Martin said ‘listen I have 7 more tracks’ and Roger said ‘forget about it, we’ll do it anyway’. And he (Martin) was a little bit disappointed in one way because he saved his best track till last but Roger was already convinced with the first one so then we started negotiating.
Speaking of new talent – The Talent Pool – how did that come about
In October 2012, we introduced the Talent Pool – it is an application that we created because we get a lot of demos and we don’t have that much time to listen to them all.
2012 seems to have been a pivotal year for Spinnin’. Why?
In 2012 Facebook was really coming up and at that time Spinnin’ was receiving a lot of demos – up to 150 demos per day. We don’t have the time to listen to everything so we wanted to have a place for servicing upcoming producers, so that at least they get some attention rather than sending it in and nobody replies. The Talent Pool means they can do something productive with it. We invented this application so that anyone could upload their production and leave it directly within our system and it worked out better than ever expected. Even if it is not released on Spinnin’ they can use this as a platform to promote themselves and their music. As a young kid you want that. People are less with Soundcloud now because it is becoming a paying platform and at least with Spinnin’ you get attention and for free.
Have you had any big artists through the talent pool so far.
Merk & Kremont.
When I asked if there has ever been a moment in the Spinnin’ history where you’ve thought ‘Oh my God, we’ve made a big mistake here’ I was referring to the 13 September 2013 tweet about a new Pioneer CDJ console for female DJs which looked like a neon blue washing machine drum. As a female DJ who had supported Pioneer products and the Spinnin’ label pretty much from inception, that was a ‘wtf’ moment for me. Who posted that tweet and why.
We thought it was funny and we completely underestimated the impact. We totally underestimated the power of one tweet. That’s it. That’s in short what happened.
Spinnin’ online wants to be a platform not only about music but about the things around us, about life, about lifestyle, so we want to post information, educate, tell jokes, post interesting news stories and so look a little bit away from releases because if you look at other record label platforms on social media, they only post about releases and the kids don’t want that.
This, however, was a bad joke and it backfired. I replied on Twitter asking everybody to understand that it was a joke, then that started a lot of discussion again. It came back to us – then Meindert and I spoke about it over the weekend and said ‘hey what is this?’ It was never intended to offend or to be offensive. But this was the impact. All of a sudden we realised that the whole world was looking at us and paying a lot of attention to Spinnin’. It was never meant to be offensive or sexist or racist – women vs men – it had nothing to do with that. So I replied and we took it off and we apologised.
The trail of that tweet went from the UK printed press to the Huffington Post.
Yes. The only thing that you can do in those situations, don’t go into details just apologise and that’s what we did. And now every post is taken care of before. We never realised we had that much power.
I think it hit home more because there aren’t any other female DJs on the Spinnin’ roster. When you look at your artists – the only women are Nervo – maybe it seemed more important because there isn’t that presence.
It’s not that we don’t want to release female producers. That is a deeper thought but that’s not something we even thought about or are occupied with. Then we realised be careful. This is the impact we can have. We never thought it like that because we do what we like, we are not busy with marketing shares or market shares we want to bring people what they expect, new music, new styles, new dj artists, free downloads, video diaries, competitions, exclusive material. It’s important that we engage and excite our fan base. We are passionate in what we do. It is more important than money or revenue. In big record labels you see that it is far away from that passion but we are in it BECAUSE of that passion.
From the power of a tweet to the power of everything. Your socials reach is phenomenal. Is there any platform that Spinnin’ isn’t on?
Pinterest. I did ask Meindert why we are not on it and he said it’s too far away, it’s not interactive and the kids are not on it. I looked at it, and it’s stylish, floating, clothing, picture based but I’m not the expert on social media so then I asked Meindert and his team the question.
Meindert has been with us 6/7 years. Like music, I have a great team and I am very lucky that these people grow with the company, you become older more experienced and the company grows with the person so that’s really great. We have a great team, yeah it’s a family but everyone is very good at what they do. Social Media, marketing, branding, we have one guy doing art direction and logos, Roger with music, Jorn with styles and trends. So we are really lucky with that.
And beyond the socials – talking about engaging – they say singles don’t sell but Spinnin’ puts out a ton of releases / tracks. In fact you’re proof that it can actually work. So what’s the key?
Not always of course … but what’s the key? You know we have a saying with Spinnin’ that ‘it’s all about the music’. It’s a combination of very good music and very good promotion. In both areas you have to improve yourself all the time. If you are a trend follower you will never have a number 1 hit because you have to do something different to stand out. Joe Stone with ‘The Party’ –with Montell Jordan (a recent Beatport Number 1), Martin Garrix with ‘Animals’ and Oliver Heldens with ‘Gecko’ – there was no record like that. It’s curious. BBC is looking for records that are fresh and different. We tend to find and bring that kind of record. Everyone recognises the song but it’s something different. Something new.
So if you were going to give a young producer a piece of advice what would that be?
Make sure it’s the best quality you can have. Compare it with other records that are already on the radio because it has to be good, it has to be at the highest level. It has to be a record that is original in sound and melody and try to be innovative. Don’t use sounds that were there one or two years ago. Two years later people are still copying ‘Animals’ and ‘Gecko’. That is not the record that we would sign. BBC is looking for records that are fresh and different so we look for those kind of records. It can’t be a copy of something that has gone before. Be creative.
So what about something like Fatboy Slim and Idris Elba’s cover version of Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown Funk’ – would you sign that?
‘Uptown Funk’ is a great record. I love it. But we would never sign a record like that. Be creative. BBC won’t put it on the playlist most likely although Fatboy Slim is huge so maybe. But we would never sign a record like that because we know how radio works and thinks. Why is someone who was standing out because of new sounds doing that? Of course you can do what David Guetta or Flo-Rida is doing a lot – takes parts of successful club / radio records and puts them together in one record because a club record has a sound and a melody line that is familiar. But Guetta is a big artist and has a huge fanbase so it sells and works but a smaller artist wouldn’t get away with it. It wouldn’t work. It could work but only as long as the artist is huge.
And what are your thoughts about the future of artist albums?
On Spotify you are listening to a track not an album so that’s the game changer. Even the major labels like Universal with Tiesto are not making artist albums anymore. ‘Clublife’ is Tiesto’s new album and it’s a compilation: ¾ his own tracks ¼ is remixes of other artists. An album comes with artwork and you buy that collection as a fan but now with Spotify and streaming – people listen to tracks not albums.
Today’s audience is absolutely internet driven. We have a big engagement and where we are headed, I think we will fulfill it.
This is my dream.
With internet it’s very easy to make music and to share it – via Facebook or your own platform. Problem is there’s a lot. If I buy shoes, I search first for the brand. If three times I go for the brand and it goes to Zalando, the fourth time you go straight there. Otherwise you have to google and search. The same with music.
So on Spotify and the other portals you can listen to all music – so what is the music you are going to listen? You want to hear the ‘track of the moment’, the one you hear on the radio, your artists that you follow or the genre. Spinnin’ wants to be the genre dance that you say ‘Spinnin’ and then you know what you’re talking about. With our competitors like Sony or Universal – you don’t know what you’re going to get – it can be all genres. With Spinnin’ you know what you’re going to get. On the internet, you want to search and go to place where you know what to expect but always in advance of the trends.
Kids want to adopt their own styles, their tribes…the kids they don’t listen to the radio, they don’t read the papers and they don’t watch TV, so where are they going to be – online, so how do we promote our music – online.
Online, festivals and maybe through actively creating tribes like Ushuaia’s ‘Antz’. Do you see Spinnin’ as having a residency soon in ibiza?
No but we do already have the Spinnin’ sessions that we do in cooperation / partnership with Alda Events. We’ve had a meeting with Sunburn in India so we are going to do hostings there in December and this Summer you can find us in Mysteryland. First we do hostings on festivals and then we do separate Spinnin Sessions parties. Spinnin’ Sessions is a radio show and an event that you can go to. That’s the platform, so you can see the stars of Spinnin’ – it makes the online experience human and the live experience is what Spinnin’ is all about.
Has there ever been an artist that got away?
Oh yeah with Hardwell we talked a lot. We said ‘let’s set up a label together’ but then he set up his own ‘Revealed’. It was a good idea and he’s a great guy. You know, we do well, you can’t have everyone. Sharing is caring.
Thank you, Eelko for your time and may dance music’s crystal disco ball continue to shine and spin in yours and Spinnin’ Records’ favour for many years to come…
