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Kieron Donoghue launches new streaming-focussed indie label, Humble Angel

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 29 January 2018

Warner Music’s former VP Global Playlists Strategy – Kieron Donoghue – has announced the launch of a new streaming-focussed indie label, Humble Angel Records.

Donoghue joined Warner Music in 2014 after it bought his Playlists.net company. Last year, it was announced that he would helm a new imprint at the mini-major, Artists To Watch, which would sign acts and attempt to promote them through streaming alone. However, in October, he announced that he was leaving the company. As he did so, Artists To Watch was seemingly also wound up.

Speaking to Billboard, he explained that he’d basically been given no budget to run the imprint label, and his only means of promoting acts was through the in-house playlists he already controlled. However, he did achieve some success, and so left the major with ideas of how to do things better.

“The biggest lesson I learned [from Artists To Watch] was that you have to move fast”, says Donoghue. “You have to act fast to find new music and artists just as soon as they publish a song online – act fast to reach out to them, put a contract together and then sign them. Major labels can take weeks if not months to negotiate terms, draw up legal papers and so forth, whereas Humble Angel Records is designed to do it in days, sometimes hours”.

His first singing is pop artist Jazz Mino, who has released a cover of Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder’s ‘Together In Electric Dreams’ through the new label.

New acts are invited to submit music through the Humble Angel website.