One of Australia's newest music labels isn't so new any more, with Sydney based label XMusic this year celebrating their fifth year of providing support to Australian bands and musicians, with a venture into the overseas market last year increasing the reach of XMusic to a global scale.
Started in 2020 by by former Sony Music executive and current Australian representative for Better Noise Music, Tim McLean-Smith, XMusic was founded with a view dedicated to artist development, offering a traditional A&R development approach combined with modern rollout strategies.
The label supports a diverse group of rock acts, including Sisters Doll, Dellacoma, Karly Jewell, Electric State, Frankenbok, Engraved, Stormflower, and Wicked Things and recently signed their first international act, Blvd of Eyes. The rapid growth and exposure generated for emerging talent in this country has been immeasurable, even given the label's relative youth. Through showcase events and detailed release strategies, XMusic has seen their roster grow almost as quickly as their reputation, but now it's time to focus on themselves and give themselves a pat on the back of sorts with a series of celebration events locked in for Melbourne, Newcastle and Brisbane next weekend.
HEAVY sat down with Tim to go back over the last five years and the growth of XMusic. One of the topics was the role of XMusic in the music industry and the benefits for bands on the label.
"XMUSIC is actually a big part of a sports entity business that is due to launch in the next year or so," he replied. "It has been worked on for about five years now. The events that we do will have world-class music and and AAA artists so we are developing local artists to be a part of that as well. And from that we wrote some theme songs and started getting into some music, and then we started looking at bands and signing them, thinking it was going to be three or four bands for a little while and see how we go. But in the last three years, especially, it's growing quite well and growing a great reputation and opening ears to the point we are looking around and trying to help local bands get to a world stage."
In the full interview Tim discussed his vision behind XMusic and how it has grown from the early days. He outlined the benefits of having label representation and what bands should have in place themselves before approaching outside help.
He discussed some of the strategies XMusic employs in order to gain greater exposure for their bands and the basics and mechanisms of working with the artists on a personable level and establishing a rapport with everyone involved. Talk turned to next weekends series of birthday celebration parties as well as the limited range of XMusic alcohol and where to get it and more.
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