Well known for his opinion against major labels, the man who stamped the inspirational line, “free the music and your cash will follow,” has turned the tables and signed a two album deal with Warner Brothers Records. Ryan Raddon aka Kaskade explained to Billboard that the decision was made to simply grow his audience: “I don’t need the factory behind me. I just need help getting my music heard.”
Kaskade also explain that “the primary reason the deal happened [is to] get new music out there.” Though no news of an album release date have been announced yet, it seems as though the Grammy nominee is sitting on unheard music that will be arriving sometime throughout the year.
Without avoiding the obvious fact that Kaskade has always been a strong advocate for independent labels and artists – especially after only recently launching his new Arkade Label – he illuminated more details on his new decision:
“Although I’m a producer, I’m an artist first. I think a lot of majors look at electronic musicians as producers first – they say like, ‘Hey cool, we’ve got all these topline writers and this act we’re trying to break so can we get a room together and you can do this to it? And you can do that to it?’ It seems formulaic. It was important to me that my voice not be lost, and that anyone I was going to do business with understood that I enjoy songwriting, I singing, writing and producing. I don’t need the factory behind me, I just need someone to help me get my music heard by as many ears as possible. When I met Cameron Strang and shared my vision with him, I felt like, okay, this guy gets it. It’s not like he’s some dance music aficionado, but he understood how to build an artist and that was what was important to me. He’s not trying to put me in a box or make me his pet producer. It felt like the right place to go.”
In the end, Kaskade hopes his long time fans will understand the choice to go major label won’t be the start of any paramount change in his style and aesthetic. “That’s been so much of the formula for breaking dance music so far. Pair a producer with a hot-at-the-moment artist who has stuff on the radio and wait for the explosion. But that was never at the top of the list of things to do for me. And Warner is cool with that. They’re like, ‘You do you and we’ll get the music out there as far as possible.’”
Describing his upcoming music as “matured,” he said he is ready to go deeper and explore a new facet of electronic music. “So much of dance music up until now has been that and it’s a shame. There’s so much more out there. The good news is I think people are finally ready to hear it. They’ve scratched beneath the surface of what this electronic music thing is and they’re ready for what’s next. I’m going to give it to them.”
