ONE MAN IS AN ISLAND

by Simon Glickman

“David Massey likes having hits and so do I,” says UMG topper Lucian Grainge. “That’s exactly why he’s our guy.” Massey, a seasoned record man who became head of Island under the IDJ umbrella, saw his label become a standalone entity following Grainge’s recent reorganization of Universal East, with its own A&R, marketing and other departments and partaking of Republic’s radio-promotion power. “You’ve got two superpowers coming together,” notes Republic chief Monte Lipman, who calls Massey “the consummate music man.”

Both Massey and Lipman are at pains to stress that the arrangement is a partnership. “This isn’t a takeover or a merger or a new acronym,” Lipman asserts. “We have an opportunity to participate in the label’s success and support his needs. At the end of the day, David Massey is the boss—and he’s going to do amazing things.” Massey, an affable Brit who spent a significant portion of his career at Epic, is clearly excited about the prospects for his Island—although after seeing us coming ashore to ask questions, he may want to head out for the open sea.

Let’s get into how your interaction with Republic is intended to work.
With all the projects on the new Island, our goal is to create a real story before the radio kicks in. It’s going to work very well in this structure where Island is a standalone label with its own marketing, its own digital, its own press and A&R, but with a strategic alliance with Republic. We see ourselves as a larger boutique label. The records Republic works at radio will already have a story created by us—will already have been developed by the Island team—and they will come in and take it to another level. Because we’ll be selective and focused, they’ve absolutely got the bandwidth.

I’m lucky enough to have had this strong relationship with Charlie Walk from my days at Sony, and with [SVP Alternative and Rock Promotion] Ron Cerrito, who really broke Oasis for me when I was at Epic. And IDJ’s head of Hot AC, Manny Simon, has moved over as well. We’ve experienced outstanding success with Manny, with #1s for Neon Trees, Taio Cruz, The Wanted, Avicii and American Authors; we’re very excited he’s part of the Republic team. So we have strong ties with them and we’re very excited about having this alliance with them and think it will be very effective.

Avicii is your biggest recent breakout—what’s next for him?
Avicii is a real success story for us; he’s over 6 million singles now, about 300k albums. The third single, “Addicted to You,” with Audra Mae on vocals, will be even bigger. It’s already huge across Europe and we expect it will be a summer monster. There will also be more new material from Avicii this year. He’s gone so much further on what will be his second album project, with a remarkable group of collaborators that will take his music to a whole other level. It’s going in a more alternative direction within EDM.

You also played a strong role in developing Iggy Azalea, who remains on Def Jam.
We’ve been involved with her for a year. She’ll be branded in the future as a Def Jam artist, but Island remains integrally involved in her development and marketing. We’re very excited about her smash single and fantastic album debut. Zeke Silvera, who helps with A&R, did a great job on the project.

Tell us about some of your most recent signings.
We’re very proud of Kiezsa, whom we’ve been developing under the radar for months. Her first single, “Hideaway,” came out last week in the U.K. and got the biggest pre-orders in Universal’s history. She’s already well over 100k today and #1 by more than double the #2 record, and we expect her to end the week with over 130k singles, which is a very significant breakthrough. We consciously decided to build her in the U.K., which has worked spectacularly well, and she’s expanding into Europe. We’ll be working her in the U.S. from now on and expect a summer breakthrough for her here.

The other breakthrough is Tove Lo. She has over 12 million streams on her Soundcloud. She is now beginning to explode at alternative radio, with KROQ and Live 105 leading the charge, and the sales and Shazam reaction are showing remarkable early signs of a major hit. Daniel Werner brought her to us a year ago; she’s a well-respected writer in Sweden, so we met her that way. The Hippie Sabotage remix blew up when we released her EP, and out of nowhere she sold over 100k singles in the first three weeks, before any airplay. So it’s a remarkable phenomenon.

We’ve also been developing a young artist named Cris Cab; he’s a Miami-based Cuban artist, but we’ve started him in Europe. Pharrell, who’s a big fan, identified him early on and is featured on Cris’ single “Liar Liar,” which has been a Top 3 record in pretty much every country in Continental Europe in the last two months. We’ll be working on him this summer as well. He’s gotten more than 12m views on YouTube.