Steve Angello is going through a career renaissance. After ending a four-year stint as one third of record-breaking dance trio Swedish House Mafia (alongside Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso) in March 2013, Angello has been enjoying his new found freedom. His solo album Wild Youth is out via Columbia later this autumn as his record label, Size, celebrates eleven years in the business.
Featuring live instrumentation, string quartets, and kids’ choirs, Wild Youth has been in development for two years. Debut single Wasted Love, featuring Dougy Mandagi from The Temper Trap (and out in the UK on September 14), is already receiving international radio support. Radio 1’s Zane Lowe debuted the song as his ‘Hottest Record in the World’ in July.
“Wild Youth is a trip, I wanted to create an artist album that’s more than just 12 singles, I wanted to tell a story,” explains Angello. “It reflects my whole upbringing - the story goes from when I was born in 1982 to this day. I’ve been trying to translate those years and things that happened in my life into music and lyrics, and I think we did a good job.” The campaign for Wild Youth will involve an on-the-road art exhibition that will replicate “an arcade machine experience” and other “surprises” currently in the works.
During a whirlwind of success, Swedish House Mafia sold more than three million singles in the US alone; including smash hit Don’t You Worry Child. They were the first ever dance act to sell out Madison Square Garden. Forbes ranked the group third in its annual list of the highest-earning EDM artists in 2012, listing their yearly income as $14 million - and that was before their last four-month long tour, which encompassed 52 shows around the world.
It was the end of an era, however, and the three have since ruled out any reunion. Says Angello: “I feel like I’ve done almost everything I can as a DJ – I’ve played every venue there is. Swedish House Mafia were extremely successful and we had a great run, we played some of the most iconic venues in the world. We did something that nobody thought we would be able to pull off but we did it. It was a great ending to a great race.”
Born in Sweden, Angello’s first foray in music began at the age of 12, as a young turntablist fusing together hip-hop, breakbeats and ‘70s classics. Inspired by Moby, Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, he became immersed in Stockholm’s house music scene in his late teens. His rise to fame came with the release of a remix of the Eurythmics classic Sweet Dreams in late 2004, which was soon followed by a slew of tracks including Woz Not Woz, KNAS, Rave n’ Roll and Supermode. Producing credits include work with David Guetta, Taio Cruz, will.i.am and Usher.
In 2003, Angello founded record label Size, which has been home to artists including Avicii, Tiësto, Eric Prydz, Depeche Mode, Sebastian Ingrosso, Laidback Luke, Nicky Romero, Afrojack and Jacques Lu Cont – not to mention his brother, rising DJ/producer Antoine Josefsson. Alongside running the label, Angello helps support young artists by managing them during development phase while his creative agency, Rebels Studios, provides a marketing facility. Here Angello discusses industry politics and the future of the record business.
Why did you choose to release Wild Youth on Columbia Records rather than your own label?
The Columbia deal is more about finding a distribution partner; I do everything that has to do with the creative side of [the record]. One of the most important things is marketing and how you can have manpower – that’s something that people forget. Even though we’re moving into the digital world more and more, real marketing, physical marketing is the best thing in the world, still. When you walk down the street in Mumbai and see posters – that’s going to connect more than if I tweet something. Columbia can tap into the separate markets and have manpower in these countries and cities.
Some people would say that major labels are losing their power, would you agree or disagree?
They have their pros and cons. I think if major labels would focus more on being creative it would work to their benefit. All the streaming services and digital shops make it so much easier for us to distribute music, and the bigger you are as an artist, the easier the move is away from the majors. If you are Jay Z, you don’t necessarily need the majors to sell records because the hype, promo and press around it will sell records for you. I think they are still relevant, but I do think that creativity will always win in the long run. Independent labels like [Size Records] can do so much more because we don’t have any boundaries. We can adapt faster to change.
How is Size Records doing as a business?
The label expansion has been going extremely well in the last couple of months. We now have five [staff members] in Switzerland, there are six in Sweden and there’s about 14 in LA, just on the label side. We do publishing too and the creative agency is doing amazingly well. Now we’re focused on expanding and growing and don’t want to just be in the dance music pop culture that’s coming through right now, we want to go into different genres within our sub genre like electronic indie rock, more electronic singer/songwriter stuff, deep house and techier, darker dance stuff. I’ve always looked up to labels like XL Recordings and there are so many great labels that have done so many amazing things. I still believe in being a big independent because we have creative freedom.
Dance music has been an incredibly popular genre for a few years now, how are you going to ensure that your artists don’t just ride the wave and then sink when the next craze comes along?
Quality. It’s just about keeping quality and then working the music a little bit more and making sure that it’s better. You have to go through some kind of filtering process, everybody does dance music now and I think all the labels are paying ridiculous amounts of advances for stuff that shouldn’t even be in the charts. When I was younger everybody was a rapper and there were one million rappers out there. But then the guys that kept quality were the ones that actually stayed relevant. We’re going through the exact same thing.
Size has offices in Sweden, Switzerland and LA, would you ever open a UK office?
Yes, that’s the next step. London is the next stop... We’re looking into that now, I think it will probably open in the second quarter of next year.
How important is the UK when you’re looking for new signings?
The UK is the most important market in the world when it comes to music in general. In the UK, the radio stations are open minded - people play stuff that isn’t necessarily popular and make it popular, people have more balls when they choose the music and are more edgy. When I was growing up, my life revolved around the UK. I never see any other market as one where I would start a record or where I would push something because the UK has always been the most relevant in my lifetime. There’s no place like England that has given birth to more sub genres. I remember going to England in the early ‘90s when two-step was coming through and drum and bass and jungle - all of those things started there. The UK has always been super important for me.
How long do your signings stay in development for?
It really depends. I let a lot of artists go because sometimes everybody is not as focused as you are or people are lazy. I think that people get confused today over what management is supposed to do and the same with publishing. Just because you sign a publishing deal, “Oh shit, now I’m going to be in nine movies and make $5m,” they don’t understand that we’re just there to help. We can make stuff happen but nobody can ever promise anything.
Some artists are developed for longer than others but the focus for us is to keep creativity flowing for a lot of young guys. They become younger and younger which is really weird - I’m meeting people that are 14 and they are great producers. When I was 14 I was still running around on the street playing football. I would say usually when we sign somebody I take them for a year of just proper schooling, where we go; “Okay, come with me for a while, we’ll sit in the studio for a couple of months, I’ll show you everything I know and help you with everything you need help with and just put it together.” It’s just about doing stuff that is fun for them because I had never had that shoulder to lean on. I was on my own from day one and I never had anybody to coach me, I had nobody to tell me what’s right or wrong. I want to be that big brother where they can ask me anything and we’ll help them if we can.
How many mistakes did you make along the way because you didn’t have a mentor?
A lot. I can’t even imagine how many times I got burnt on a deal - how many times I signed away a record to somebody and then realised five years later it was a 15-year contract.
Is there still a culture of shady deals being signed today?
100%. Since I’ve been running the label we get license requests every day that I think are shady. For example, they are like, “We want to sign this record for the UK but the artist has to put in a five option deal on five singles and we need a piece of live and we need this and we need that.” A lot of these young guys would probably sign these deals because they think it could be the moment where they break a radio record, but at the same time they would give away [revenue] from their live performances for x amount of years. There are a lot of these things they need help with. I was burnt so much, I’ve done this for 15 years and have probably screwed up a hundred times. Some of these guys really need coaching, especially now when it’s such a young genre. A lot of these guys are kids and parents don’t understand what they are supposed to do either.
What kind of deals do you sign with your artists?
We usually do management deals, sometimes 360 deals. If we pick them up from a very young age, we don’t do ridiculous deals when it comes to percentages and we always re-negotiate when they become bigger and self-sufficient. Sometimes we do 10% deals, sometimes 50%, sometimes 20%. I wouldn’t take management if we take from the booking fees. I wouldn’t want to be in two positions. I line them up like I would like an ideal management deal to be for me. We’re very careful, we want them to make money and we want them to still feel like they are artists and we are working for them, they are not working for us.
We have a lot of young guys we signed that don’t earn anything - those guys I could give a lot of money to just to be in the studio for three years. We give them an allowance and have big studio complexes in both Sweden and LA. We have almost nine studios, and make sure that they just sit and work, they don’t have to think about anything - they are getting fed, everything is taken care of, they can make music as much as they want and when they want to go out and tour, we’ll help them set up the tour. There’s a lot of stuff that we are very flexible with - if an artist calls me and says, “I want to buy a house, can you void the management fee for five months?” I’d do that because it’s important for them to buy a house.
How is your label still able to run a profit with that kind of flexibility?
We don’t make a profit on every artist, some artists are costing us more money than we make profit on. Everything is basically accounted to me anyway, my staff is their staff and I’m self-managed. I built the team that I want to have around me so they just tap into my team and make sure that everything is running smoothly. Obviously we’re making profit overall but we’re also putting so much money into the creative. We can have a record that might make us, say, £50,000, and I could have spent maybe £200,000 on creative. But money always comes back, we go and do live shows and then we can make a really big sum and put that straight into being creative. For me it’s all about that.
What would you change about the music industry and why?
Politics, first and foremost. Just seeing how people are working records nowadays and seeing how radio support works. For example, in America you need to hire one of 10 guys to get your record on the radio. It has to be more of an open format. In England I can call one of the producers on any of the BBC shows and say, “Hey I’ve got this great record I want to play you,” and they actually consider it and play it.
Do you not think that’s because you’re Steve Angello though?
It could be [the same for] a small guy too. UK radio is the best place to discover new music. If you think about all the specialist shows in the UK, they don’t have that here [in the US]. In England it’s cool to be a young radio guy playing your own shit, whereas here it’s cool to be big. If you sit and listen to BBC radio for a whole day you’ll discover artists that you never thought you would discover on radio.
What are your future plans or ambitions for you yourself as an artist and for Size Records?
I’ve already started my second album. There’s something about albums that really speaks to me as an artist. I’m going to continue with that and grow the label in size and become bigger and sign more interesting artists. I go to the office everyday and we just want to have fun, we don’t necessarily care about finances because we know we make money, it will be fine, it’s running. The record business is changing all the time and there are great opportunities for record labels out there - there are a lot of big brands in the world that want to break into the music scene but don’t really know how to. We’re here to open those doors. A lot of people are complaining about record sales being down, streaming is up, people aren’t making money on streaming, but at the same time there are one billion opportunities out there to make money, you’ve just got to find them. Every platform wants to accommodate a music listener because it’s one of the biggest movements in the world. Look at what Jay Z did for Magna Carta working with Samsung. He had a great campaign and gave away one million albums. A lot of people might say that it wasn’t the right way, but is there a right way? There are no rules; there were never any rules.