AWAL's Matt Riley, Victoria Needs and Sam Potts have offered their take on how to adapt to the modern record business following a stellar year for the company.
The Sony-owned firm came out on top in the Label/Artist Services category at the Music Week Awards in May, having masterminded campaigns for clients such as Tom Misch, Little Simz, Djo, Laufey, Grentperez, The Beaches, Lovejoy and Jungle.
UK MD Riley has been responsible for signing artists that have reached more than a billion streams including Bruno Major, Rex Orange County and Tom Misch, and disclosed to Music Week how AWAL gauges success.
“We tend to measure ourselves by how an artist’s doing in their entire career, rather than accolades and chart positions,” he said. “But I think we’re now up to 26 artists that have gone from nought to a billion streams via AWAL and that record is pretty much up there with anyone.”
Riley, who has also supported the development of global artists Eloise, MorMor, Shay Lia and The Wombats, suggested that AWAL has progressed from being perceived as a stepping stone to a major deal, to a destination in its own right.
We go head-to-head with the majors and often come out with the artist because we’re far more flexible in what we can offer
Matt Riley
“We’ve seen artists like Little Simz, like Tom Misch, sign one record a time to us and re-sign to us,” he pointed out. “More and more, we’re super-confident that we can do long deals or short deals, and the artists will see the value.
“It’s gone from label power to artist power. You’re seeing across the board - at major labels, artist services, whatever - the deals are now shorter, but you have to show up and deliver. AWAL has always had the philosophy that artists have freedom, and if you’re going to give them freedom, they might not always decide what you want them to.
"It’s really competitive, but we go head-to-head with the majors and often come out with the artist because we’re far more flexible in what we can offer.”
Little Simz signed with AWAL in 2018, retaining the rights and releases through her own Age 101 imprint. The partnership was renewed in 2020, yielding the rapper's biggest-selling album to date in 2021’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (75,618 sales, Official Charts Company), which peaked at No.4 on the UK chart and won the 2022 Mercury Prize.
"You have to credit Paul Hitchman [global COO], who signed Simz to AWAL, and we’ve fulfilled her journey by backing her up and trying to do things in the way that Simbi wants to do them,” said Riley.
The speed at which a global hit can happen is pretty breathtaking. You need to be able to communicate between different countries and teams really quickly
Sam Potts
Speaking in the October edition of Music Week, Riley elaborated on the process behind Simz’s fifth studio album No Thank You (25,036 sales) dropping in December 2022 - just a week after it was announced.
“The music came in and she said, ‘We want to put this out in five weeks,’” he said. “Of course, that’s not the optimum plan, but we do it because we’re AWAL and we want to fulfil what the artist really wants. We want them to be the best they can be, but ultimately, they’re the boss and we’re not ‘no’ people, we’re, ‘Yes, how can we make this happen?’”
Elsewhere, dance act Jungle were named Group Of The Year at the 2024 BRIT Awards and performed their first Top 20 single Back On 74 (522,546 sales) at the ceremony. The track went viral thanks to its iconic one-shot music video, which inspired a TikTok dance craze.
“We’ve talked to TikTok about it and they were like, ‘That particular piece of content is absolutely the opposite to all of the best practices to make a track go viral’, but that’s the magic,” remarked AWAL SVP Needs. “It’s like we’re putting the kindling around the fire, getting the groundwork done and then the audience will spark it, and then we come along and pour the oil on top and explode it.”
Other notable AWAL-associated breakthroughs have included CMAT and Djo, aka Stranger Things actor Joe Keery, whose Top 5 hit End Of Beginning (681,260 sales) took off in early 2024 - two years after its release.
We have huge ambitions for Laufey in the coming years
Victoria Needs
“It was really good validation,” said Needs. “We know that we can deliver these massive global hits, but it was great to go out there and show everybody else."
“In a very short amount of time, we drove it from a record that had done very well and notched up millions of streams, but had been out for a couple of years, to a Spotify global No.1,” said fellow SVP Potts. “That was a total whirlwind. The speed at which a global hit can happen is pretty breathtaking and you need to be able to communicate between different countries and teams really quickly, because the audience goes lightning quick.”
Meanwhile, Icelandic-Chinese artist, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Laufey extended her deal with AWAL last year and dropped her second studio LP Bewitched (42,906 sales) in September 2023. She has close to 15 million monthly listeners on Spotify and sold out London's Royal Albert Hall in May. Needs is adamant there is still so much more to come from the 25-year-old.
"We have huge ambitions for Laufey in the coming years," she added. "The foundations are there seriously for a superstar-level artist to come through, everywhere from Beijing to the Philippines. We're dealing with an artist where there's very limited availability at the moment, but Max [Gredinger, manager] is phenomenal to work with and the ambitions for '25 are exciting."
Subscribers can read the full AWAL interview here.
