Dirty Hit, home to The 1975 and Wolf Alice, expands its global footprint with a U.S. operation in Los Angeles and a new affiliate in Australia.
Leading the Sydney office is Rachel Jones-Williams, who will oversee label operations for the region as General Manager, Asia Pacific.
Jones-Williams joins the independent music company from Sony Music Entertainment, where she most recently served as senior manager, national promotions & communications at Sony Music. Prior to that, she worked as national promotions manager at Caroline Australia, Universal Music’s label services business.
Launching a new record label in a pandemic isn’t without its challenges. “It’s definitely a strange time,” Jones-Williams tells Billboard. “In a normal world we would be seeing a debut tour from Beabadoobee and The 1975 would have been returning around this time for an arena tour. Like the rest of the industry we’re doing our best to adapt to the times and find creative ways to ensure we can still keep building a connection with Australian audiences without our artists being in market.”
Ingrooves Music Group is the digital distribution partner with Dirty Hit Australia, through an exclusive global deal announced in late 2019.
Jones-Williams has hit the grounding running. “We’re using this time to strategically plan for the future,” she explains. “As well as working towards a domestic roster, we’re focused on continuing the development and building a local story around some of the recent signings out of the U.K. and U.S.”
It’s early days, she admits, but “it feels like we’re off to a good start” by introducing Dirty Hit’s artists to domestic radio. BRIT Awards “rising star” nominee Beabadoobee is currently one of the most-played artists on the national youth network triple j, while No Rome and a pair of Oscar Lang singles have been added.
Following the launch of Dirty Hit USA, setting up in Australia “feels like the natural next step in the global expansion of the label,” notes Dirty Hit founder Jamie Oborne in a statement.
“Our ethos as a label has always been to maintain and develop a roster of diverse and culturally important artists and an exciting and forward-thinking team with a distinctive identify, across a global sphere,” he continues.
Established in London back in 2010, Dirty Hit’s roster also includes Pale Waves, Ben Leftwich and The Japanese House, all of whom will release new recordings in the year ahead.
