Business News Deals Labels & Publishers

Sony/ATV partners with social media-powered record label Heard Well

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 28 July 2017

Sony/ATV has announced a new music publishing partnership with social media powered label Heard Well.

Heard Well bills itself as “the first music label entirely powered by social tastemakers and their communities”. It basically gets ‘social media influencers’ to put together playlists. Then it releases those playlists as compilation albums. No, I’m not sure it’s quite as innovative as they make out either.

Anyway, this new deal will see Sony/ATV work with those playlist makers to identify acts to sign up to publishing deals. Which kind of sounds like the publisher is outsourcing its A&R. Some of the ‘influencers’ that Heard Well already works with are YouTubers Tyler Oakley, JC Caylen and The Dolan Twins, and Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas.

Sony/ATV’s US co-President Danny Strick says: “We’re excited to be working with Heard Well whose ground-breaking approach to music discovery in the world of social media is uncovering and promoting great new artists even before the usual research stage. With the launch of this A&R partnership we are looking forward to discovering some amazing new talent with them”.

Heard Well co-founder Connor Franta adds: “I am absolutely beside myself with how far Heard Well has come in just two years. From the compilations to the radio station to publishing, I’m THRILLED to see what Heard Well will tackle next. For now, we’re diving deep into the search for our first artist project and can’t wait to shed that spotlight sooner than you think”.

Heard Well already has an alliance with the Sony Music record company, having signed up to the label’s Red distribution business in March last year – and it now works with the consolidated Orchard.