For 25 years, Shabs Jobanputra has blazed a trail with Relentless Records and his risk-taking approach has led to a treasure trove of hits, from The Artful Dodger, Joss Stone and KT Tunstall, to Tom Walker, Headie One, Bad Boy Chiller Crew and more. But as the storied Sony Music UK label hits a quarter of a century, its leader’s focus is firmly on the future. Here, for an exclusive digital cover story, Music Week meets Jobanputra to hear about what’s to come from the newly formed Relentless Music Group and discuss its new alternative imprint, US expansion and its extensive work in the Latin and Indian markets. Plus, of course, the thrills and spills of 25 years in business…
WORDS: JAMES HANLEY
PHOTOS: FRANK FIEBER
Whoever came up with the saying “nothing good happens after 2am” had obviously never met Shabs Jobanputra. It was well past the witching hour at Midem one year in the ’90s when the Relentless Records founder shared a brainwave with then Ministry Of Sound MD Matt Jagger.
“It was three in the morning and we'd run out of conversation,” reminisces Jobanputra. “No one was putting out vinyl from British R&B and hip-hop at the time so I said, ‘What about a label that did this?’ And [Jagger] said, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ That was our raison d'être, and six months later we signed something that led to where we are now.”
From that 3am ramble, came a business that would change the face of British music. The trailblazing Relentless Records spearheaded the explosion of UK garage and put Black British music firmly on the map, generating in excess of 30 billion streams along the way.
Founded in 1999 as a JV with Ministry Of Sound, Relentless has partnered with Sony Music UK since 2012. The firm turns 25 this month but, in typical style, the focus is very much on the future.
Today, Jobanputra holds court on the newly minted Relentless Music Group, which encompasses the company’s services, management and publishing arms and its Notting Hill Academy Of Music and venue Notting Hill Arts Club alongside the main label. Also on the agenda is news of its brand new alternative music imprint, its plans to open a US office and the latest on its work with Sony Music Latin and Sony Music India.
“To be involved in the business of music, like we have been for many years, trying to understand and work in other areas is good,” the president explains. “This gives us much more understanding of how the business is moving and means we can offer a unique alternative in the market for people who are passionate about music.”
Closer to home, Relentless plans to celebrate turning 25 with the release of a limited-edition vinyl box set featuring songs from artists it helped bring from the underground to the mainstream.
Among the tracklisting is the record that started it all for the label – the iconic Re-Rewind by the Artful Dodger and Craig David. Although truth be told, that was only plan B.
“We were after this other record by Y-Tribe called Enough Is Enough – I was adamant that it had to be the record,” admits Jobanputra with a grin. “In the meantime, we discovered this record Rewind, but I thought the Y-Tribe record was going to be the one and I was absolutely on my knees, crying, when I was told we hadn’t got it.
“Two days later, I got a call from the people who were licensing Rewind to us, saying, ‘It's yours,’ and ironically, it felt like a consolation prize. If you talk about sliding doors [moments], the Y-Tribe record finished at No.49 in the chart, and the other ended up being the opening of British garage and everything else. So where would we be now if I'd got the Y-Tribe record? Who knows?”
Ugandan-born Jobanputra had arrived in the UK aged five, unable to speak English, as a refugee from Idi Amin’s regime.
“My parents were into music,” he reveals. “My dad could play pretty much any instrument and my mum's a singer, so we always had music in our lives and my father clearly had an ear for music, which he's hopefully given me. And because my father's Hindu and my mother's Muslim – which was a difficult thing back in Africa and Uganda when they got married – a sense of being a slight outsider has probably always lived in me.”
Having signed the likes of So Solid Crew, Headie One, Daniel Bedingfield, Joss Stone, KT Tunstall, Lethal Bizzle, Tom Walker and Jay Sean, not to mention the viral children’s song Baby Shark, the South Asian entrepreneur believes his upbringing has factored into the artists he has gravitated towards.
“Relentless started out to try and do something different and maybe not fitting in was to our advantage,” he says. “I think the sense of who I am and what we've done has always been about the underdog, the person who comes from a different walk of life and wants to be heard. Whether it's Headie One, KT Tunstall, Cage The Elephant, whoever, they want to be heard. They want their message to come out, but it's not a conventional message.
“We've never done boy bands. We've never done pop because we're not here to do that. We're here to provide help and support to the underdog, the people who no one else wants to sign, rather than go to a show where there's 50 A&R people, because that's not our job. That's the job of a major label.”
Jobanputra, who previously launched PR company Media Village and co-founded Outcaste Records, says that pursuing a career in entertainment made him an outlier in his family.
“Going into music was not the thing to do,” he reflects. “You were second generation Asians, moving on, trying to become established, but it felt like whatever else I did, I wasn't that good at it, whereas this was the only thing I was all right at.”
Despite garnering a reputation within the industry as something of a maverick, Jobanputra is coy about the term.
“All we've tried to do as a label is be different,” he suggests. “And after 25 years, hopefully there’s a degree of pedigree about what we've done and who we are, and a bit of clarity about our purpose. From Rewind onwards, we've kind of tried to do the same thing: you take a risk on Artful Dodger, you don't really know. And then you take a risk on Mackenzy Mackay, Baby Shark… You're taking risks on things that other people don't really want to do, and that's fine. We'll do that and we know more often than not we'll fail, but the odd time we might get lucky.”
To celebrate 25 years of Relentless, we quiz Jobanputra about the future of his business, the secret of its longevity, the A&R landscape and much more…
Let’s begin with Relentless Music Group. Now that everything you do sits under one umbrella, is this a sign that you view the future of the company as one with several different arms?
“What's good about the group is that it enables the label to have a very sharp focus on where it needs to add value. It's good to have a diverse set of businesses within music, but our focus is Relentless Records. But the other businesses are helping to shape Relentless Records in a more acute way. Relentless Records is, I would say, much clearer about what it needs to do and not trying to do all the other things. It just does what it does well and lets the other parts of the business do what they do.”
Was ramping up your label services offering a response to how well artists are doing on services deals?
“Well, I think artist services companies have clearly really eaten into the market share of recorded music companies. As Relentless Music Group, we can also offer that as an alternative to the artists, in terms of building partnerships with artists and managers in different ways so they can perhaps get the best of both worlds. The gestation period, the length of the time that artists need to be signed for to achieve major commercial success, is taking longer, so the business model has changed, and therefore success coming from those areas has worked because artists have been able to take a longer time to develop. That's clearly something that recorded music companies, particularly in 2024, have had to take on board.”
Did you see this shift coming?
“I think it was always inevitable. It's healthy because it means the labels have to be on their toes. You have to be really thinking about where we can add value and become stronger. But I think it's clear to most people that what record labels and recorded music companies do still has a real value, in a different way, to what the artist services companies do.”
How will the fact that you’re planning to open a US arm of the UK label impact what Relentless does?
“We’re looking to take what we do here and hopefully to have a position out there in the US in 2025. It's just inevitable, we're going to have to have people out there trying to help us do what we do. This year has been so many American labels trying to sign UK acts, and the UK acts wanting to sign out of the US. So I think for Relentless to have a position in the US is key, because we want to try and develop our artists from there, and also help us to try and make sure we sign the artists with a position in the US and not lose them just in the US labels.”
Continuing on the international thread, you’ve been partnering with Sony India and Sony Latin in recent years. Does the same thinking apply as with domestic repertoire?
“Yeah, but these are artists that have huge followings and have lots of potential in the UK. What's been exciting has been the different approach of the artists and their managers. They have a global approach to records, whereas a lot of the UK labels have a UK-out view, and it makes such a difference. We've learned so much working with them, because the methodology gives us a whole different framework and a prism to think through. It’s not just, ‘Will it work in the UK? Will it get to Europe? Will it get a bit of North America?’ This is a much more global approach from the off.”
Are you involved in seeking out new acts from those markets to sign?
“We work with both labels trying to close artists on a global basis. More so with the Indian market than we are with the Latin markets, because they're Spanish speaking. The partnership is great because the UK has really worked for global groups, but we've also grown our share with them over the years. The particular triumph is the growth of the Latin acts [in the UK], from Rauw Alejandro to Maluma. You wouldn't think there would be such huge growth in a largely English-speaking market, so that's been really exciting to watch.”
What’s your general take on India as an emerging market?
“Well, India is quite interesting. The potential is so great, the market size is already great, but the growth is slow in India in terms of Spotify streaming, because trying to convert free to paying has proved tough. But, for the UK, it's not, there's real growth for Indian-based music in the UK, and we're seeing that, not just in music, but film. We work quite closely with the film industry here, and you can see when a record lands, the explosive nature of those records and artists on YouTube very quickly, how that does transfer reasonably well – although not as well as we'd like – to streaming. But I think the actual market in India for paid subscribers is not growing as fast as everyone thought it would. But for the music from India, travelling globally, it is doing very well. Here and in Canada and markets like that, there's real, significant growth.”
Does the UK market need to be more receptive to talent from overseas, emerging markets in particular?
“I think the UK is incredibly open to music from everywhere. I do think that's a bit of a challenge for us, because, as you know, the UK chart is dominated by music that’s not from Britain right now, and that's a real challenge for us going forward.”
Why aren’t we seeing acts from non-English speaking territories higher up the charts here?
“They may not be charting in the Top 100, but the level of streams that they are getting on a cumulative basis over a long period of time is really strong. It’s about how you view the success of what music from Latin America or India or anywhere else is doing here, the population of Britain definitely shows a desire to hear a cross-section of music. It may not be in the chart, but the catalogue is really showing growth, and you can see those pockets becoming bigger. Really, for us, success is about growth of this stuff, not necessarily charts, but growth for the artist in the market and how tickets are selling, alongside the development of their brand.”
In light of all the label is doing now, will we see the shape of the roster change?
“Yeah, actually I've just come out of the A&R meeting! We're going to go into some new things next year, we're starting a new imprint which you're the first to know about, it’s an alternative music imprint that we're just signing our first acts to. We've got new A&R people who are going to work with us on it and it’s an area where British music feels really buzzy right now, somewhere we really want to grow. It feels like something that we've not really done, apart from things like Cage The Elephant in the past. So that feels really exciting."
Can you disclose any firm plans for the new imprint?
"It is really about working with artists perhaps that Relentless wouldn't have worked with in the past, and an exciting new part of the Relentless story, working with alternative acts across the piece from a really early stage. So it feels really exciting to us that we can do it and something new that we can offer. More generally, the [whole] roster, the sound of what we do and the deals that we're offering are changing, because that's where the industry is going. So, more partnership-based deals, looking at how we're working with managers and artists and what they want. So whether it's a Relentless deal, a Relentless artist services deal, which is a hybrid model, it's definitely all those things we're looking to grow into, because that's what the artists need."
Away from the artists, Notting Hill Academy Of Music is another key facet of Relentless Music Group. How would you sum up the impact it has made so far?
“It's about how we help people like myself get a start in the business that I didn't get, providing all the tools and the skills and the ammunition to go and do it their way. What is important is that we're teaching people – and we had students in the A&R meeting just now – where the business is at. That's the most valuable thing it can teach people. Knowing how business is done in real time is an incredibly valuable asset for young people to be able to protect their rights and develop their own businesses. It means they're ready for the industry world and understanding the challenge of tour support, the challenge of understanding how much a YouTube play, radio play, or a stream is actually worth. It’s also clear that the music business has made a major change in allowing more diverse thought and more diverse cultures within it, and Notting Hill Academy Of Music has been very much trying to drive that. I hope, over the last eight, 10 years, in a very small way, that we've been part of it, because so many people that have gone through the Academy are in all aspects of the British music business.”
Of course, reaching a milestone anniversary also offers an opportunity to look back. How do you feel to have hit a quarter of a century?
“First of all, I'm surprised we've got to this point. It wasn't the intention at the start and it’s an odd feeling, in the sense of I've always had this [outlook] that the best is yet to come in terms of music and to not look back, because obviously things move so quickly. We’re a little bit more established, and hopefully it gives artists, managers and the team more confidence about who we are, what we stand for and what we've tried to build. It certainly feels like there's so much more to come.”
What has 2024 been like for the company?
“It's been one of the toughest years we've had – and I've had – in the business. To get any share of voice and artist cut through has been incredibly hard [due to] a mixture of factors. Our thing has always been to try and break one act a year, but that is now really difficult. So many things in the market have changed and now it's about super patience, real development and staying the course with things, even more so than before.”
Do you expect that to yield more positive results next year?
“We hope next year, absolutely – whether it's Mackenzy Mackay, Lewis Fitzgerald, Tim Gallagher, or other things that we've got coming up. Artists that have broken, whether it's Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, have been at it for a while and there’s been a paradigm shift about what you sign and when you can break it. People talk about the major label system [being] defunct or dysfunctional; it's always been dysfunctional, but its dysfunction is what’s given labels like us opportunity. Our role as Relentless has always been to do the things that other labels perhaps don't want to do. That won't change, but how we judge success has and will.”
So, enlighten us, what does it take to be a president of a record label for 25 years?
“Patience. Over 2009 to 2011, we assumed Relentless into Virgin Records, which I ran for two years when Terra Firma owned EMI. My self-starting entrepreneurial spirit had thankfully got me to that place, but I then understood another skill that I didn't have, which was learning to really listen a bit more in meetings. That made me understand the broader context of decisions. Having both independent entrepreneurial spirit, alongside the listening aspect, also made me understand what has been a torrid political ride through the music business. The politics of it, like anything, are great, and trying to put things that you think are the end of the world in context has been really important.”
Why do you think you’ve been able to make it this far?
“Doing things from Rewind to Baby Shark to So Solid Crew are all highly distinctive. Would they have been given the airtime, or the love and attention elsewhere? Who knows? But we've at least tried to disrupt the order a little bit. I still get excited when I hear someone saying or doing something in a different way.”
Who was the last act to make you feel that way?
“With Mackenzy, I absolutely feel that. He's got something to say in his own way and it feels exciting. There are a couple of new things that we're chasing right now where I'm not sure where they’re going to go. It could be a total disaster, but it could be something amazing. That's the difficult bit – finding the things that we absolutely believe in and are therefore willing to lose your shirt on. I've lost quite a few shirts, but you can hopefully buy another one and it may not fit as well or look as good, but it will keep you warm.”
In terms of signings you’ve missed out on, are there any you still kick yourself about now?
“Oh, so many. And it still hurts, it’s so painful. What was the biggest one? Well, Amy Winehouse was one I didn't want to do because I was doing KT Tunstall and Joss Stone at the time, and I didn't feel I could, even though I met her when she was 16. That’s one I probably look back on now. There was a gentle industry buzz, but not a big one. Were I in a different place at the time and didn't have the female artists we were working with, I think we could have got quite close, because we were doing that area quite well. I would say one would definitely regret not working with someone like that, because you could tell then she was someone very special.”
On the other side of that coin, are there acts you didn’t sign that, with hindsight, actually fared better taking a different path?
“I think there's a lot of artists you talk about that you really think, 'Oh, that could do something.' There was a thing which we didn't do, there was a Norwegian thing called The Fox, which we were absolutely crazy for. But I think because of the nature of what we do, we have offered on some pretty crazy things that seemed properly outlandish, and they probably were, but you've got to do those to then do a Swedish House Mafia or a Deadmau5, you've got to put your name to these things. It’s hard to be specific because there are so many things we didn’t get. Not getting the Craig [David] album deal was a blow, because obviously we had that record and we wanted to carry on. There are lots of things where you can look at it and you can get really upset, ones that you really wanted. James Blunt, James Morrison, Damien Rice... And then there's stuff that we put offers in for and didn't get and I can't remember most of those, but by the nature of what Relentless does, it's going to go into some funny places and make some funny offers on things that do probably not make sense, but that is what we have to keep doing to try and find the rough diamond.”
In terms of those more unconventional projects, how much does Baby Shark stick in your mind?
“I think it's been an exciting journey in understanding how to work with the kids market [and realise] how global it is and the techniques and their methodology of making things work, which are similar to what we do in some aspects, but also greatly different. It's one of those things, one of those pieces of art and music that somehow has managed to capture a moment, which every two-year-old on to probably five goes through. But the whole thing had been set in a commercial market which really wanted it. There was an appetite at the time, and it perfectly met that moment. After that, it's become really much harder to create that moment and have that share of voice.”
What’s the biggest risk you ever took on a signing?
“Giving Swedish House Mafia a million quid. I remember thinking at the time, ‘What are we doing?’ A million pounds was a lot of money, but thankfully it paid off.”
Where do you think A&R is at now?
“The A&R bit of finding unique talent hasn't changed; the bit that is really tough is staying the course. You can't just do what most labels have done, which is sign, have a look at and then drop; you've got to sign and keep believing. Two, I think making records now and finishing songs is so tough. That process of forensically making records is painstaking – six months to a year on one song – it takes so long to finish music that sounds like no one's touched it.”
Why is that?
“Because the record-making bar is so high now, particularly in the US. The quality of music, the quality of thinking about simplicity, about message, about pace, about tempo, about lyric, the bar is so high on all of that stuff. Our record-making bar in the UK has had to leap forward to get anywhere near where the bar is globally.”
How worried are you about the UK’s apparent inability to produce mainstream breakthroughs at the moment?
“It's clearly worrying. Culturally, Britain has not helped itself on the global stage for many reasons, but we have something that's really powerful. It's quite interesting that so many US labels still want to sign UK artists and there's been a lot of that in 2024. So there's no shortage of talent, but it's what you're doing with the talent, how you develop the talent and how good the records are that you're making from that talent. That is the scale of the challenge for UK labels and it is enormous. You can't live in your own fantasy world of believing that just because it's British, it's going to be fine. It's not.”
Finally, what comes next? Both for your business and on a personal level?
“Trying to find the next one. That's the job, isn't it? And after that, who knows? I enjoy it. I don't know what else I would do that would give me this level of frustration, pain, turmoil and joy. The label has definitely changed me and I don't know if it’s always been for the good, because it has had a major effect on my life. I've put everything into it, and at times it has been incredibly tough to keep believing in what we were doing. We've taken some high risks and that was incredibly draining, because it has gone wrong. No one ever talks about when it goes badly wrong, but it has gone horribly wrong at times. But I’ve held on to little bits of success over the years to know why I'm still doing it. Otherwise, I’d have left it a long time ago."
