Head of Insomniac Music Group, Joe Wiseman, talks about the direction Insomniac is taking, leveraging the company’s global imprint, and the ‘many avenues that excite Insomniac as a label, talent buyer, or promoter.’ Insomniac’s distribution partnership with FUGA has ‘opened up new lines of Global communication,’ and Wiseman has advice for artists getting into the music space.
The following recaps an interview with Joe Wiseman as part of Downtown Music’s series, The Music Industry Lives Here. Downtown Music is a company DMN is proud to be partnering with.
Joe Wiseman grew up listening to reggae and rock and roll. “My parents were Deadheads. My first concert was a Grateful Dead concert when I was like 3 or 4 years old. [But] hip hop was probably the dominant genre that I listened to for my childhood and teenage years.”
Following the dance music and electronic music boom in America with artists like Justice, deadmau5, and Diplo, Wiseman got me into the dance music scene.
Now head of Insomniac Music, Wiseman talks about how “Insomniac became an important brand in the dance music space.’
“Insomniac is the world’s biggest dance music brand. Our footprint is global and people pay attention to what Insomniac’s doing — not just on the live side, but also what we’re doing on the music side.”
But the company began in 1993 when Pasquale Rotella, CEO of Insomniac, started his first show in an LA warehouse. “From there, it grew to festivals in Southern California. Over the past three decades, it’s grown into a multimedia company.”
The core business of Insomniac is events, and it has ‘become a massive brand on the event side.’ But the company also dove into other facets, including the record label space.
In 2014, Insomniac Records was officially launched as part of the Insomniac Music Group, an umbrella of record labels under Insomniac.
After becoming independent, Insomniac achieved ‘amazing new heights.’ Wiseman says it feels fantastic to see how far the company has come, “The size of the shows that I attended fifteen years ago, [seeing] where they are now — from the events to the records to everything, [it’s] awesome.”
Wisemen believes Insomniac has made its mark and become an ‘important cultural carrier of all things dance music.’ “It’s pushing the culture forward by educating people and taking it mainstream.”
When Wiseman joined Insomniac ten years ago, a conversation began about the direction Insomniac Records would take. “It was very much centered on commercial dance pop records.”
“I was working with our founder, Pasquale, on his radio show and getting a better understanding of his taste. It meshed with what my [taste] was at the time — trying to be representative of actual rave culture and electronic underground culture.”
However, taste evolves, and different genres emerge and fade. “Insomniac has been ‘very careful about not going to commercial with our releases.’
“[We want to] make sure we’re still servicing our fans and our audiences in the best way possible, while trying not to step on the toes or the territory of what a major label would be doing in the dance music space.”
Wiseman states that Insomniac is aware of what they do best. “DJ-focused music is our specialty. We want to be a chart-topping label on Beatport all the time. We’re consistently at the top of the most played charts by DJs.”
“Our real focus is we want to be streaming well with songs that DJs are playing — not just songs that are on the radio.”
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