When did you start working in the music industry?
I started working as a shop manager at Outland Records (a famous Amsterdam based record store) in 1995. After working there for 5 years I moved on to Edel Records from Germany which had offices throughout the whole world and had just opened an office in Hilversum (NL). I was in charge of Edel’s dance (Club-Tools) products and promotion in The Netherlands.

Among the successes were Moloko – ‘Sing It Back; and Bob Marley vs. Funkstar De Luxe - ‘Sun Is Shining’. After 2 years I met with the founders of United Recordings. I already knew Rob and Theor from my days at Outland and they needed new people for their growing record company. I always had the ambition to develop myself and it was a logical step for me to accept their offer.

What drives you to work in the music industry? What inspires you?
The unexpected. In our industry anything can happen that you could not have predicted. Like getting an e-mail from a deejay who really digs a record, a sudden request for a licensing deal or a compilation that unexpectedly sells over 300.000 copies. The unexpected coincidences make my job very interesting. It even involves the weather you know, a record can feel a lot better when the sun shines!

What is it that sets your label apart from others?
I think we tend to do everything with just a little more feeling. The people at United all believe in music and I think that this is noticeable from the records that we release. I believe that you can see and hear our passion in everything we do.

How would you describe the music that you release?
Basically it’s all about passion and experience. A track needs to touch someone and I can usually hear it when a producer has put his emotions into a production. Our artists do everything with passion and work from their heart. They are not in it to make the quick buck.

How many releases do you have in a year?
I would say we put out an average of 40 records per year. We do about 3 to 4 releases a month (including remixes and double releases) on our 5 active labels, which are Yakuza, Fundamental, Dedicated, Galactive and Intuition.

How do you promote these releases?
About 2 months before the release date we present the track to the top 20 deejays. These are all well known deejays of whom we think that they would play the track. We closely monitor their response and then send the track to the other deejays and review magazines such as MixMag and DJMag. After we have received the necessary feedback (i.e. promotion ammunition) the track is finally delivered to the distributor.

How many demos do you receive in one week?
We get about 20 demos per week. Most of them are sent to us by e-mail but occasionally people still send us a cd. I prefer to receive direct links to the tracks and don’t really like getting Yousendit links because it simply takes too long.

What happens to the demos that you receive?
Although I can’t always find the time I do try to listen to everything. It just takes some time to seriously check out a demo and I also want to give my feedback to the artist. I apologize to artists who haven’t had a response from me yet, this is often caused by circumstances. You know, sometimes a demo winds up in the junk folder or the Yousendit link has expired.

Why did you join I-dance?
I-dance is very user friendly and allows me to work a lot faster. It helps me to quickly find and filter quality tracks and makes it easy to quickly give my feedback to artists.

What’s the use of signing with a label these days?
Expertise. You can do a lot by yourself but experience is essential when the bullet hits the bone. You can find plenty of information on how to do things but a record company simply knows what’s best for an artist at a given time.

What do you think about the future of the music industry?
Well, when you look at what Madonna did with her Live Nation deal you can’t help but to think about the future of the industry. In the end the music is part of the artist and the artist is part of the music. I believe that the artist will play a more important role in the future. I think that the majors (big record companies such as EMI, SonyBMG, Warner and Universal) are slowly setting the blueprints for tomorrow but will leave plenty of room for independent companies who can move fast.

Downloads and copying changed the world and perhaps we will give away music for free to promote an artist. Like Prince did. We will need to change into management companies, you know, doing deejay bookings, publishing, merchandising, events and delivering music for commercials and movies. With some of our artist we are already following this path. We simply can’t solely depend on selling records anymore so you can’t escape from the 360 degree record deal nowadays.

Where do you want your label to be in 5 years from now?
As a complete music company which is responsible for the entire exploitation of an artist. Creating more synergy between all the different methods of marketing and exploitation will allow us to bring each artist to a higher level.

Many artists still think in the ‘old fashioned’ way. They have someone taking care of their bookings, someone else handling their publishing and a record company to put out their music. But these parties all have different interests. This doesn’t mean that the record company should do everything but there has to be synergy between all of the aspects.

What would you say to artists who want to make it to the next level?
Don’t give up at the first set back. Be driven and listen to the advice that you get along the way. Do something with the feedback you receive, be patient and never quit. Don’t focus on that one track that you sent to a label, make more tracks and improve your skills. Then you will take yourself to the next level!