With his new album, Magnolia Sage, Jackson Dean put a different spin on his established gritty persona.

In his first Big Machine album, 2022’s Greenbroke, he declined to include more than one love song in the midst of the project’s swampy sound.

With this latest release on the newly formed Blue Highway label, he is fully embracing a relationship, returning multiple times to amorè as he explores more soul textures in the music on the heels of a January 2026 engagement.

If Dean is thinking differently about interpersonal connection in his material, some of his willingness to take musical chances is strengthened by another key relationship, his ongoing collaboration with producer Luke Dick (Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town). The two creatives met at a 2019 party celebrating “Burning Man,” a song Dick co-wrote for Dierks Bentley and Brothers Osborne, when Dean was a mere 18. It wasn’t long before they became a musical team.

“Sometimes you just click with somebody,” Dean says in a conference room at BMI Nashville, ahead of a party for his single “Heavens to Betsy.” “When I met him, I was like, ‘Wow, this is a plethora of knowledge that I have standing right in front of me.’ I never really know how to explain, like, what it is between us. He’s Sensei, I am student.”

That’s not a fully accurate description. Dick was indeed at a different stage of life at the time — mid-30s, married with children — but they think of themselves more as musical brothers than as teacher and pupil. Like brothers, they have a fair share of similarities, particularly their mutual passion for exploring new music from a range of origins. On this particular day, they’re enamored of progressive Canadian folk group The Barr Brothers.

They’re mutually obsessive enough to dive down deep rabbit holes to find the perfect guitar solo and flexible enough to jump at a last-minute opportunity to land a song in an outside project.

But they have their differences, too. Dean arrived at BMI in a crisp, black suit and speaks slowly, quietly mulling his words as he strives to capture an abstraction. Dick showed up in a bright, striped shirt and loose, comfortable, shitabaki-style pants, and talks more forcefully, finding the right phrases to turn an inanimate concept into something a bit more tangible. That mix of ethereal creativity and concrete reality was evident for Dick when he began exploring Nashville.

“I was 20 years old, and I rebuilt this double-wide trailer in return for engineering experience and a record to be made,” he remembers. “That’s how I got schooled [on the business] to begin with, driving down on the weekends in between jobs because I couldn’t afford a record, you know, raising a kid and figuring it out.”

After their introduction at the “Burning Man” party, Dean and Dick first wrote together in June 2019. There were no figurative fireworks that screamed “We’re going to work together for a while,” but it didn’t suck either. Their tastes seemed compatible, and there was enough promise that they continued to book more co-writing sessions.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” Dick says of that first co-write. “It could be something that just doesn’t move, there’s no chemistry or something like that. But it felt really good the first time. And to me, you’re following the breadcrumb of: Are you compelled to write again? How does he feel in there? Did he want to do it again? And so you follow these little breadcrumbs one step at a time, rather than getting ahead of yourself with creativity and relationship in general.”

Musical relationships are complicated. Every A-level creative comes with a team, and reading the full panorama of personalities can be the difference between a collaborative match and a disconnect. For a producer and artist, the relationship is even more central to the results; it can be the difference between a hit and a dud.

Dean and Dick’s professional circle overlaps significantly — they’re both signed as songwriters to Little Louder Music, owned by Eric Church and Arturo Buenahora Jr., who introduced the two.

Their partnership plays out in both the writers room and the recording studio. Dick and Dean co-wrote all but one of the tracks on Magnolia Sage, and they work to maximize Dean’s creative freedom and comfort in the studio despite the underlying pressure to accomplish as much as possible from expensive musicians in a pricy room as the clock ticks.

“I’ll get on the mic and just do what I do,” Dean notes. “You know, I heard somebody talk about Robert Plant one time, how he was one of the most interesting singers, because where you think he would go up, he’d go down and do something different, and where you think he’d go down, he’d do something sideways.”

Dick’s role in that scenario is essential. He’s established a familiar core of session players who provide continuity. That gives Dean a greater sense of safety, knowing he can take chances in the performance that he might not in another environment.

Dick is “creating the space for an expression that someone doesn’t know that they need,” he says, comparing his duty in that part of the collaboration to Dean’s role. “It’s the way that things fit together. There’s the ring, and then there’s the jewel.”

Seven years since they started their journey together, the artist and producer have developed a connection that feeds their individual creative needs while building Dean’s wider relationship with a growing audience. They’ve learned how the cycle of their collaboration works — making an album can be an exhaustive process, and once it’s completed, they typically need time to generate ideas for the next one.

“You gotta let the tank fill back up,” Dean asserts.

Even as he promotes Magnolia Sage, the fuel for the next go-round is already evident. Dick saw Dean perform recently for the first time in months, and he was already sensing that Dean had developed some new creative vocal and guitar threads that are worth exploring. Dean can’t identify what that new thing is yet, but it’s in the context of their brotherhood that Dick typically brings an undefined abstraction to a clearer form. They’ll continue indefinitely on that path until one of them needs a break.

“In my purest form, I really do want people to find ways to expand themselves,” Dick says. “If that’s with me, great, and if it’s not, that’s great, too. I don’t take things personally when it comes to this. I am personal about the music. I don’t take change personally.”

75 Years Ago: When Hank Williams Got Hot With ‘Cold, Cold Heart’

The country icon’s song generated a bevy of pop covers

Hank Williams built much of his reputation as a songwriter by taking the temperature of his marriage, and one of his signature songs followed a heated confrontation.

In the fall of 1950, Audrey was hospitalized with an infection, and the two got into one of their many arguments. While complaining about her, Hank allegedly told an associate she had a “cold, cold heart,” and he recognized it as a possible song title. He authored “Cold, Cold Heart” in a scant one hour on Thanksgiving Day and recorded it four days before Christmas at the Castle Studio in Downtown Nashville. MGM released it as the b-side of “Dear John” on Groundhog Day, and in the May 12, 1951, issue, it rose to No. 1 on Billboard’s country jockeys chart. The magazine featured three country rankings at the time — including a best-sellers list and another representing jukebox play — and “Cold, Cold Heart” became the fifth of 11 Williams singles to top one or more of those charts.

Pop icon Tony Bennett recorded his own version of the song that May, and in November, it began a six-week run on the list of best-selling pop singles, subsequently adding two more weeks atop the pop airplay tally.

Bennett’s recording was one of nine “Cold, Cold Heart” covers mentioned in the pages of Billboard during the final quarter of 1951, including cuts by Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington. In recent years, it’s been referenced in the lyrics of Maren Morris’ “My Church” and Sam Hunt’s “Hard To Forget.”   — Tom Roland

Two years ago when someone recommended that Lindsey Stirling reach out to ARKAI, a New York-based electroacoustic string duo, Stirling was immediately on board with the idea. The legendary genre-blending violinist primarily worked with producers who came to writing sessions with set backing tracks and were too nervous to recommend changes to her violin melodies. She rarely got to work with other string players.

“I was so excited to collaborate with someone who spoke my language,” Stirling says to Billboard about ARKAI. “We did a writing session, and afterwards, I was like, ‘That was so fun.’ My little string heart was exploding.”

ARKAI — which is made up of violinist Jonathan Miron and cellist Philip Sheegog — was equally as excited to work with Stirling. The two instrumentalists, who met as students at Juliard and have been making music together for almost eight years, looked up to Stirling for a long time.

“Lindsey Stirling is an icon for the string community, because she showed us all what’s possible,” says Miron. “She showed us how we could take the old instrument, this violin, and bring it into mainstream sensibilities.”

The synergy between the three musicians was instant, and in the two years since they’ve met, they’ve continued to cultivate it. ARKAI and Stirling regularly get together for writing and jam sessions. Last year, ARKAI joined Stirling on her “Master of Tides” cruise, a multi-day music festival at sea.

Most recently, the trio performed at the Gold Gala, an annual event that brings together leaders from across industries to honor Asian Pacific and multicultural trailblazers. During their set at the Gold Gala, ARKAI and Stirling debuted original music on stage for the first time — a reimagining of ARKAI’s song “High Noon,” off their Grammy-winning 2025 album Brightside.

Billboard sat down with Stirling, Miron and Sheegog to talk about their Gold Gala performance, what it’s like working together and what the trio is most excited for next.

You all just performed at the Gold Gala. What did it mean to you to take the stage at an event all about celebrating API identities?

Jonathan Miron: The Gold Gala is kind of like the Met Gala for the Asian community. So to get invited and to be featured at an event like that was a dream come true. Philip and I kicked off with a medley of iconic Asian soundtracks, and then Lindsey joined us on stage, and that was our first performance ever with Lindsey playing an original song. All these things coming together — we are still pinching ourselves, it was a crazy experience.

And to look out into the audience, they were honoring people like Eileen Gu, and Jet Li. These are people we’ve seen on the screens. These are people we’ve seen kick ass at the Olympics. It’s unbelievable. And for us to be able to share our own music with these people is really an incredible honor.

I didn’t get to attend the Gold Gala, can you tell me more about the song you performed and why you wanted to debut it there?

JM: The song is called “High Noon,” and it’s off of our recent Grammy-winning album [Brightside]. So we have the version that Philip and I created together. But when we were in the studio with Lindsey in New York, we were like, “Maybe there’s a world where Lindsey would want to hop on one of our existing songs.” Philip and I were already planning on putting out a deluxe version of the album with some amazing collaborators, and we were like, “Well, Lindsey would absolutely slay on ‘High Noon.’”

PS: The original version, as many of our originals are, is like a massive cinematic IMAX experience. It’s explosive drums and huge synth walls and then our violin and cellos are screaming on top. But the melodic hooks were the things that we thought were the core, the DNA, of the song — something that can be translated. And so we asked, “What would happen if we kind of pulled [the hooks] a little bit towards Lindsey’s aesthetic? Make it a little bit faster, a little bit more dance pop-infused, a little more electronic-infused.”

It’s the combination of our two worlds. Hopefully when a fan listens to it, they say, “That’s Lindsey, but it’s also ARKAI, and it’s the two together.” It feels like a really great first thing that we’ve now put out into the world at this performance, and now we’re just really excited to see how people respond to it.

What is it like composing music all together?

Lindsey Stirling: It is unlike any other process I’ve ever done. Usually you’re working with guys that have tracks or maybe they’re playing piano. But there’s something about the reverberation of strings together that actually makes your heart swell. Maybe I’m totally biased, because I’m a string player, but we’ll just start jamming, and it’s so fun because we’re not locked into a tempo. We’re just playing, we’re feeding off of each other’s melody. And we record the whole thing, so we’ll go back and find the parts we love and then we’ll turn them into refined melodies. It’s so fun to write with them. I would do it any chance I get.

PS: Since Jonathan and I, for the last almost eight years, we’ve been a duo, we basically have only written with each other. We write, arrange and produce all of our own music, so we know each other inside and out at this point. We know how each other think, our tendencies and how we play. But now we’re adding in another creative voice, who is at the same time very similar because Lindsey is a string player and we speak that same language. But she also has her own unique vocabulary, style, melodic and rhythmic tendencies and sensibilities. And so throwing that new element into the creative mix that we’ve been working in for years at this point, I think that was really, really fun, because it keeps you on your toes.

Is “High Noon” a one-off or the beginning of more recorded music from you three as a trio?

LS: We’re gonna definitely do more together. We are doing some tour dates this summer in select cities throughout the U.S., so we’ll get to perform it more together. And we actually worked on some music for my album that will be coming out hopefully next year. I would love to have their voices on it.

I always kind of wondered, when you hear a violin baked into a track, would you be able to differentiate mine from somebody else’s? And it’s so true that we really all three — not only does the cello have its own voice — we all play very differently. We have a different way of expressing, we play different kinds of melodies. Everybody has their own voice and I’m excited to not only have “High Noon” to release this year, but also, next year, another track.

You all fuse classical sounds with more modern ones and in doing so, you show younger audiences that there are so many possibilities with string or other classical instruments. What does it mean to you all to introduce new generations to these worlds?

LS: For me, it’s always been really important to give people that kind of an option. I remember when I was a kid, there wasn’t much to play. It was classical music and maybe fiddle music, and there wasn’t really any other option. I remember I never wanted to perform at the talent show, because I was like, “Everyone will be bored.” So now, I would love for kiddos to feel like they could play something that maybe feels a little bit more contemporary, and they can be cool.

I also really hope that it goes beyond just string players. I hope that by being authentic and outside of the box, that people realize that whatever they do, they can they can reinvent themselves, they can step outside the lines — whether it’s being a feminist in a society that doesn’t support that or it’s sharing your poetry that’s really different. I just hope that everybody feels like they don’t belong in a box.

JM: It means everything to me and Philip. We feel so lucky to have had someone like Lindsey to look up to. She really did show us what’s possible. When we started doing our own thing, we were like, “You know what? If Lindsey can do it, maybe we can do it as well.” And I think that’s what we hope to leave with with young people, young musicians. And exactly like Lindsey said, it really translates across so many different disciplines and professions — this idea that it’s okay to think outside of the box and do your own thing. I would argue that now more than ever, society is going to require that out of people. With automation and AI and all these different things, we’re going to need new ideas. We’re going to need people doing different things, and that’s how you stand out. And so what we hope is that maybe our stories can inspire a new generation of trailblazers.

PS: The name “ARKAI” actually comes from a Greek word that means “leaders.” And that was something that when Jonathan and I first started out, that’s what we wanted to be in the in the world of string players, and the classical world writ large. But we see ourselves just as the latest links in the chain, a chain that goes back to Lindsey and her contemporaries, which then goes back another chain to the pioneers before that. It’s this endless chain and our greatest hope is that in a couple years, we’ll see some other young group who comes up and says, “Because I saw what you were doing, I had the courage to write.” And I just echo everything that both Jonathan and Lindsey said, it’s so much more than music.

Speaking of being trailblazers, ARKAI, congratulations on winning your first Grammy! What do you think winning the award is going to change for you?

PS: To the haters who are going to hate, hopefully, it just shuts some of them up. In some ways, there are always going to be barriers and roadblocks and gatekeepers who have their own opinions, but our hope is that it is a sort of stamp of approval that shows people are willing to listen to you. Our hope is that it helps people to have the conversation, to be open minded, to be like, “Okay, we don’t exactly know where to put you in in our boxes, right? You’re outside the box, but you’ve got this stamp of approval, so we’ll listen to you.” And then hopefully, through that, they then discover something that they weren’t expecting.

JM: We got interviewed right after the Grammy, and one of the things I said was that I really hope that for people who have faced rejection — we have been shunned from different rooms — that this is a moment to see what is possible when you follow your heart and you take risks.

I hope that it’s just another indication of what is possible. Philip and I are indie musicians, we’ve built everything pretty much from the ground up. Lindsey is the same. And so this is just an indication to anybody out there that, if you have a vision for something, a passion for doing something, if you put your heart into it, you can achieve anything.

You three have spoken so in depth about taking risks and being trailblazers in your styles of music. With the risks you’ve taken and their payoffs in mind, what is something you are excited for in the next year?

LS: Personally, I’ve been writing a lot of music lately, and writing music, ironically, has always been really hard for me. I’ve always really struggled with self negativity. And it’s been really exciting that, for the first time ever, I’m not doing that. I’m enjoying the process, as everyone always tried to tell me I can and that I don’t have to be so hard on myself. I don’t know what clicked. Maybe the years of therapy have finally actually set in. Maybe it’s the meditation. I don’t know what clicked, but I’m so happy right now, just in general.

I don’t even have the fruits of the labor yet, I can’t even see if anyone likes anything I’ve written. But it doesn’t matter. I’m really just happy and I’m enjoying the journey, not just the destination. And so it makes me just really excited for not only this chapter, but what this chapter is going to bring with with my new music. Mostly I am so happy to be happy.

JM: Music is this incredible language. It’s this universal language. It’s how Philip and I met, it’s how we connected with Lindsey. I speak for myself, and I think Philip feels the same way, but we feel so lucky to do what we do, because we get to connect with people. I’m just so excited to be able to take that to the next level — whether it’s connecting with Lindsey and creating a new track that will move people or touring around the world.

I had a friend once that said to me, “There is no other job in the world like what you guys do where people stop everything that they’re doing in the day and just be in present and listen. And I think it’s just it’s the most beautiful thing, because we can get so overwhelmed with all the the noise in the world. So to be able to come down to the most essential thing, which is connection through music, is such a gift. And I just can’t wait to do more of that.

PS: One thing that I’m excited for is just to see how our music evolves by bringing in incredible collaborators. Because, as I mentioned earlier, essentially, up until this point, Jonathan and I, we have been solely working and writing together. We’ve been allowing our sound to mature and evolve. But now I feel like we have reached that with our record last year. Now this year, we’re collaborating already with so many incredible people, and putting all these new ingredients in the dish, and we’re getting inspired in different ways and pushed in different ways. I’m excited in a year’s time to look back and say, “Wow, there were ideas and worlds that we didn’t even know were going to be open, but through collaboration, we were able to find that.”

Duran Duran has standards, and they’re not slipping anytime soon.

The British new wave legends were, for the first half of the 1980s, the most popular band on earth, with the noisiest fans, and hits. One after the next. The awards came, including two Grammys, two Ivor Novellos, the Brit Awards’ Lifetime Achievement, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2022, their career was saluted with induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

One item the band hasn’t ticked off is a session at Glastonbury Festival, the grandaddy of the U.K.’s camping festival circuit. Speaking with The Times of London, frontman Simon Le Bon is keen to change all that… but with one important condition. “We want the right slot,” he tells the broadsheet. “We shouldn’t be below anybody on the bill.”

The English singer, who was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King Charles in 2024, a nod to his services to music and charity, clarified his position: “so, we’ll hold out because we’re a headline act — that’s all there is to it.”

The band has been asked in the past, but it wasn’t an opportunity the artists leapt at. “Well, we want to,” he assures, “but not in a disco tent at 3pm, which is what we were offered.”

Bandmates Nick Rhodes and John Taylor contribute to The Times’ feature story, in which they recount fame, talk drugs, and discuss the wonders — and horror — of technology. “Anyone who thinks AI will go away is certifiably insane,” says Rhodes, the band’s founding keyboardist.

The next chance for Duranies to see their heroes at Glastonbury would be in 2027. The event is taking a fallow year in 2026, in order to give the site, the Eavis’ dairy farm a year off, a pause that rolls around once every five years.

Duran Duran will get some outdoor action this summer, when the band headlines BST Hyde Park on July 5. It’s the setting of their triumphant concert in 2022, which gathered an estimated 70,000 fans.

Just last month, the band dropped “Free to Love,” a neo-disco collaboration with longtime producer and friend Nile Rodgers, and their first new music since their 16^th and latest album, Danse Macabre, which opened and peaked at No. 4 on the Official U.K. Chart in 2023. Duran Duran recently competed a residency in Las Vegas, ahead of run of U.K. and Continental European shows, starting June 19 at Denmark’s Heartland Festival.

SYDNEY, Australia — For all the column inches devoted to the resurgence of country, the dominance of pop and the steady strength of rock, it’s dance music that has the place jumping in Australia.

Of the hundreds of music festivals that sprawl out across Australia’s warmer months, roughly one in four pump out dance music — the most popular genre, according to data presented in Soundcheck, published in late 2024 by Creative Australia.

On the streaming side of the story, the IMS Business Report found Australia to be the third-largest market in the world for electronic music, trailing only the United States and Germany. Australians stream, on average, more of the genre than any other nation, the publication’s authors explain. In just one month last year, Spotify revealed Aussie dance cuts were streamed more than 1 billion times internationally on its platform, making the genre the most popular music export from the land down under.

TMRW Music is leading the charge. In one remarkable week in April, the Sydney-based music group, which includes the etcetc label, nabbed 60% of the tracks in ARIA’s Top Australian Dance Singles Chart, including four from FISHER (including the Gold Coast producer and DJ’s collaboration with Tones And I, “Favour,” new at No. 3); the Dom Dolla remix of Puretone’s “Addicted To Bass” at No. 4; and Yes Boone’s “All I Really Want” at No. 7. All six tracks appeared in the overall Top 20 Australian Singles Chart.

A couple of those TMRW tracks also made the leap to the Music Week Club Chart in the United Kingdom: Supafly & Greg Stainer’s “Girls” featuring Ca$h X at No. 16, and Jessi Lowkey x Cristiano Fry’s “I Know” at No. 20.

FISHER went on to collect the highest-selling single award for his track “Stay,” presented April 22 in the artist’s hometown.

The hits should keep coming with PNAU, the Sydney electronic pairing of Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes, whose 2012 collaborative remix album with Elton John, Good Morning to the Night, went to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart — a feat they repeated in 2021 with the remix of “Cold Heart” (with Dua Lipa), which topped charts globally. PNAU will release its new album AHHCade on July 31 via etcetc worldwide, a fresh collection that features the previously released single “Tu Corazon” with Mexican sister act The Warning.

Billboard caught up with TMRW Music Group CEO Tim McGee, etcetc Music general manager Aden Mullens, TMRW Music Group’s head of A&R Chris Fraser and TMRW Music Group senior marketing manager, labels, Lana Howlett, for a closer look at Australia’s vibrant dance space and how the Sydney label group is lifting the tempo.

Broadly speaking, Australian dance music is having a “moment” both here and internationally. What’s behind that?

Mullens: Dance music has become recognized and accepted as part of the mainstream globally. It’s now a multigenerational and multilingual genre, which has had a compounding effect on consumption.

Howlett: The Australian dance acts that are breaking through are not only incredibly talented, they understand how to build culture around their music in a way that feels distinctly local, uplifting, authentic and community-driven. As online platforms such as TikTok, Discord and Twitch amplify these communities, that spirit is reaching the masses in a way we, as an isolated country, weren’t previously able to. That’s now turning connection into momentum.

Fraser: Dance music has always been strong in Australia, whether the broader industry has recognized it or not. The culture, the community, the collaborative nature of the ecosystem — these things have been quietly compounding for years, and what you’re seeing now is part of the payoff.

Dance music has always had to work harder, build its own infrastructure, create its own pathways. And because the Australian market is genuinely tough to break out of and not naturally predisposed to support one-off commercial dance moments, it puts the onus firmly on real artist development and organic growth. The artists who cut through here have usually earned it, and DSPs locally are providing focused support that is helping give projects a platform domestically and on a global level.

And on that subject, what’s behind the success of TMRW/etcetc’s ARIA chart bonanza? Can you identify some special sauce?

Fraser: We’d been working with Puretone for a number of years on ideas to bring “Addicted To Bass” back to life, and when Dom’s version emerged, starting as a bootleg he made for his own stadium show in Sydney, it was one of those moments you hope for but can never plan.

That organic origin gave the record something you can’t manufacture. Luckily, the timing lined up, and working with Dom and [manager] James Fava and the team to bring it to a proper release was one of the most creatively rewarding experiences we’ve had as a team in a long time.

The fact that audiences are responding to it the way they are makes complete sense. It was a special record 28 years ago, and Dom breathed new life into it in a way we’d never imagined. I don’t know if any other artist would have committed as hard as he did to the brilliant bass/fish angle seen in the music video.

Yes Boone is a perfect example of artist development in practice. Three and a half years of patient development, helping him build a real community around his work, before the moment arrived where everything lined up. The way Australian radio got behind the record over summer was genuinely heartening, and that kind of championing from local broadcasters means everything for an artist at his stage. It’s not often you’ll see commercial radio championing a new artist in lock step with triple j, so to see that belief from day one is a moment we don’t take for granted. Now that momentum has started to pick up steam internationally, which we’re actively working to build on. Boone’s a remarkable talent, and audiences finding him here and abroad are recognizing that.

Despite the structural challenges around Australian artists and charts, the broader environment and institutional and government support is probably the best it’s been in a long time, which also makes a real difference. Bodies like Creative Australia are adding much-needed firepower to our ability to push for more meaningful global cut-through on projects, and hopefully, that support continues to grow for Australian artists over time.

Mullens: The wider TMRW team are really humming right now. From sell-out national Ministry of Sound shows, 150-plus unique tours in 2025, alongside 200-plus releases, we are working with a lot of experience and data to propel our artists’ careers, not just in Australia, but globally.

The group nabbed 12 of the top 20 on the ARIA dance chart. How does this rank among the label’s all-time success stories?

Fraser: We haven’t seen success converge like this all at once before, with multiple distinct entries near the top of the charts; that’s just the honest answer. But I think what makes it possible now, beyond the music itself, is that the company is in a genuinely great place operationally. The team is resourced and structured to execute across multiple projects simultaneously, which matters enormously when you have a range of developed and still-developing projects or opportunities all finding their moment at the same time. A few years ago, we might have had the music but not the capacity to maximize it. Right now we have both, and that feels like a meaningful difference.

How are you feeling about the landscape for indie labels here in Australia?

McGee: Twenty-five years in, the landscape for independent labels in Australia has shifted dramatically, particularly as traditional pathways to success evolve and they always will. The cycles of change are getting smaller, but electronic music has proven uniquely resilient. Constantly adapting and finding new ways to connect with audiences.

While the ARIA Singles Chart may not reflect the depth of local talent, the strength of the dance space tells a different story, driven in part by a great ecosystem of local events and festivals that are creating real viral moments for emerging artists who may not be touring internationally. Part of our strength is that we’re not just a recordings company. As the landscape of traditional radio and media changes, we have persevered within our own ecosystem, rather than rely on traditional means of support.

Whether it’s across recordings, agency, events, publishing or management, we have the means to support ourselves when these shifts occur.

For us, it’s an exciting time, and the future looks bright. In addition to our larger artists, we’re focused on developing artists with genuine global potential. Amongst them artists like Djanaba, Carter Walsh, Sumner and Alexa Leary and so many more of which we’re super excited to be working alongside.