Former Syco MD Tyler Brown on new label Heatwave Records and emerging markets

Tyler Brown, former managing director of Simon Cowell’s Syco Music imprint, has spoken to Headliner about the launch of his new “borderless label” Heatwave Records and his ambitions to uncover global superstars from emerging markets.

Co-founded by Brown and Harold Serero, who recently held a senior A&R role at Ultra Music Publishing and the Payday Record label where he oversaw the company’s African music division, announced the launch of the label earlier this month.

Based in London, Heatwave Records describes itself as “a borderless label focused on connecting the dots for music worldwide, nurturing a global audience for our artists and having global hits”. It recently hired Andrew Birchall in an A&R role and plans to build a creative presence in several key territories around the world before the end of the year.

The label has already made several signings, with Nigerian artist Fido’s track Awolowo becoming the country’s breakout hit of the summer, going to No.1 on Spotify viral, No.1 on Apple Nigeria, No.1 on Shazam Nigeria, No.1 on Spotify Nigeria, and top 20 on the global viral charts and the Global Shazam charts.

The label has also announced the signings of Ivory Coast artist døpelym, whose track Guala went No.40 on Shazam in France and top 10 on the viral chart, and Firstklaz from Nigeria, whose track Gen-Z Area went top 20 on the viral chart in Nigeria and to No.1 on Deezer Nigeria.

Here, Brown sits down with Headliner to discuss the formation of the label, his ambitions for the future, and why the opportunities for artists in emerging markets have never been greater.

What inspired you to launch Heatwave Records with Harold Serero?

I’ve known Harold for a few years and thought he was one of the more impressive A&R people in the business. He was going out there, making signings, putting his neck on the line, and having some success with it, which is quite a rarity at the moment. And we always just got on.

I have another label called Funfair Records and in our A&R meetings my scouts were bringing in a lot of records from East and West Africa, and I just fell in love with them. The songs, the production, the voices I was hearing were really exciting. And they kept bringing these records in but they didn’t make sense for Funfair, which is predominantly a dance/pop label. So, I can either just be a fan or create a label that could work on some of these really exciting records and the artists behind them. I then had a conversation with Harold, who has had a lot of success in the Afro market. He signed Sarz, who is probably the biggest record producer in Africa right now. And he also signed Shimza who is the biggest DJ in south Africa, so it made a lot of sense.

We came together and shared the same values in terms of what we wanted to do and we wanted to approach it with a global perspective. Africa is very important for us and India is going to be a big focus, as well as the Middle East and some parts of Latin America.

How will you and Harold work together?

We’re both doing everything. There will be occasions on certain records where one might have a better relationship than the other so will take the lead a bit more, but we’re both across everything - A&R, marketing, the structure of the business. What we both have in common is a really strong work ethic, and you need that in this business because we are dealing with artists, managers, songwriters, and producers from around the world in various time zones. You have to be switched on 24/7. And weirdly we’ve signed all of our records on Heatwave at the weekend, which is quite bizarre. When the competition is sleeping that’s the best time to pounce.

Is the aim to elevate artists in these emerging markets within their own territories, or is it ultimately about bringing them to the mainstream markets?

It’s both. For example, Fido, who was our first signing, his record Awolowo is No.1 on Spotify in Nigeria right now and it’s his first single, which is quite extraordinary. But people have fallen in love with the record and are now falling in love with him. You go into these deals more often than not because you’re attracted to a record. We are using data to find records for sure, whether that’s TikTok, streaming, or Shazam, but you go into it with the motivation being around the record.

Then what you find is the record does well and you get to know the artist much better and the team around the artist. You find you have a really compelling artist with a really compelling point of view who understands how to talk to his audience. When we first started working with him, I think it was in week two of the socials being up, he already got 60,000 Instagram followers and ridiculous amounts on TikTok.

And Spotify are making a documentary about him called Who Is Fido? It’s being shot this week - he’s going back to his hometown to tell the audience where he’s come from, where he’s been etc. And we have an option on the deal, so we have a second single coming in November and then we’ll be looking to put out an EP early next year. So, the initial push is, let’s see how big we can make it in the home territory, but really for us the ambition for everything we sign is about trying to make these artists and records global. We hope over time he can develop into someone with the audience of a Burna Boy or Wizkid. That’s going to take years, but he’s got a real shot.

How have you been able to build your knowledge and understanding of these various territories?

Well, going back, Syco Music prided itself on working in a global music industry, and we were very fortunate to have multiple artists that were hugely successful in pretty much every territory in the world. So through that I’ve been able to do a lot of travelling and meet a lot of great people in different countries. Since then, through Funfair, which I set up after I left Syco, I’ve been working with a lot with producers and writers and artists across multiple genres and territories.

For example, last year we had a big viral hit on Funfair called AH TXE TXE with an artist called GIANT from Angola, and it was a big record in France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, so I’d had a bit of experience. And I spent some time on a show we were going to make a few years ago in India with Simon [Cowell] and got to meet a lot of people from the Indian music industry. They gave us a really good education on how the music industry is building over there. It’s been really interesting to see how it's grown since then – the market has come so far.

And obviously at the same time, there is nothing better than first-hand experience. So there has been a lot of learning on the job, going out and working with different people from different territories, whether that’s managers, agents, publishers, videographers, the DSPs. It’s a whole different network you have to build and maintain, and I think we’ve done a good job so far.

How big an opportunity is there for artists in these emerging markets to achieve global success?

There is more focus on that than ever before. The world is so much more connected with streaming services, and you only have to look in the African space - Burna Boy Wizkid, Ayra Starr. There are global superstars coming from these territories now, so it would be mad for the majors or the publishers not to have a close eye on the superstars coming from those territories.

What do the coming weeks and months look like for Heatwave?

We’ve got off to an incredibly fast start, which is a good sign. A lot of that is due to the excitement of us starting a new company and venturing into emerging territories and working with people we haven’t worked with before. We’ve signed four artists so far, three from Nigeria and one from the ivory Coast, and we have singles and EPs coming from them over the next six months, and every day we are talking about new artists. Our scouts are great, they know where to look, they have great taste. It’s impossible to say where we’ll be in six months, but we are definitely heading in the right direction.