Hey guys and girls,
I hope all is well over there! 🙂
I know I’m a bit late to the party with this post (it’s February already..), and I haven’t updated the website in a while. I’ve had a good reason though! 2022 has been so incredibly busy with amazing projects and opportunities, I just didn’t get the chance to properly work on the website. I have a whole new design planned, together with some fresh new demos and ideas, but that won’t be coming out until later this year.
On the Ghost Production front, we’ve worked on a lot of really cool projects; both bigger projects for established artists as well as fresh projects for upcoming artists. The vast majority of them landed on the better / bigger labels, something I’m really happy with and of course proud of. On a personal level, I’ve also ventured more into other types of co-production projects. Projects I’m more personally involved with, also when it comes to the business and promotional side of things.
Hel:sløwed
One of the projects I’m personally involved with is Hel:sløwed. This is not just a co-production kind of thing. Together with good friend Misja Helsloot, we’re really doing this project as a duo act. We’re focusing on combining melodic house, progressive and techno with a bit of trance. We’ve really just started going with this project, as it was supposed to be a fun little side-project, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Just in this past year, we’ve worked with Armada Music, Spinnin’ Records, Sony Music, A State of Trance, Black Hole Recordings, Pure Trance, and more. One of the positive aspects is that I kind finally talk and show a bit more in-depth information on a project I’m involved with, instead of having to fall back on the typical ‘Non-Disclosure Agreement’ that’s normal for Ghost Production work.
So this last year we’ve been setting up the foundation for the act. And within that year or so, we’ve managed to rack up over 3.5m Spotify streams, multiple charted tracks, a ton of big DJ support and, played both clubs and festivals. Our latest release, our remix of Grooveyard – Mary Go Wild was released on Spinnin’ Deep. Reach #4th place in the overall charts for most supported tracks on 1001 Tracklists, and is currently sitting at #36 in the Global Dance Chart. Meaning that based on downloads, streams, Shazam, airplay data from Radiomonitor, and plays by leading deejays, it’s currently one of the most popular dance tracks worldwide.
The strategy we’ve used is the same one I tell my clients and people I work with and also have written articles about on this website. Setting up a brand, doing your homework, building up a network, releasing good music and, promoting the released tracks every way possible.
2022 – The Music Industry
Last time I predicted more and more bass & tech-house crossovers, as well as future rave and melodic house & techno, to become increasingly popular. And over the last year that has definitely been proven true. The styles dominated the sales and streaming charts.
1001tracklists ‘A State of Dance Music 2022’ again gives us a very interesting insight into what the DJs have been playing this year. Combining this with Beatport’s ‘The Best of 2022’ gives us a pretty good overview of what has been hot and happening over the past year.
With ‘Acraze – Do It To It’, ‘James Hype & Miggy Dela Rosa – Ferrari’ and ‘Mau P – Drugs From Amsterdam’ dominating the DJ Support charts as well as sales charts, together with tracks from artists like Anyma, Meduza, and more.
When looking at the data, we can see melodic house & techno, and bass-house making the biggest leaps in terms of DJ support. What’s interesting though is that trance is also on the rise. Something I think has to do with having a strong connection to the current Melodic House & Techno, something I’ll get into later.
2023 – What’s next?
For this year, I think it’s pretty safe to say we can expect an upward trend for the genres mentioned earlier. But I also expect trance to be getting more appearance in the mainstream and commercial market. Potentially even with big pop artists doing crossovers with a more melodic trancey sound. Especially considering artists like David Guetta and Tiesto falling back to more melodic stuff.
The crossover between the underground and commercial market has also been very interesting. Especially with ‘Eelke Kleijn – Transmission (Joris Voorn Remix)’ making the step from one to the other getting a crazy amount of support, reaching national charts, and getting on regular radio playlist rotation. Something that doesn’t happen often for a track that’s pretty much instrumental.
From that perspective I see the current melodic house & techno moving towards a more progressive and trancey sound, while trance is opening up to a deeper sound. These genres are slowly moving toward each other and gaining more popular traction.
So the safest bets in terms of hype right now are the tech-house / bass-house crossover, which has been going strong for the last few years now. The hyper-commercial slap-house dance tracks, especially combined with a melody from a classic track as well as melodic house & techno and the trance crossover.
Of course, your old ‘regular’ house and dance are still going as strong as ever. Commercial house with classic 90s influences from the like of Sigala, Galantis, Joel Corry and, more. As well as more disco-influenced tracks from artists such as Fred Again, Purple Disco Machine, and even Alok nowadays.
One trend is that some styles seem to be doing a bit faster BPMs – with some house tracks going upwards towards 130 bpm instead of the 124 to 126 BPM it has been for the last few years. And we see something similar in techno and dance overall too. We’ll have to see how that progresses throughout the year though.
Same as the year before, in 2022 we also saw most of the best-selling labels on Beatport focusing on the deeper styles. With Defected, Toolroom, Afterlife Records, Drumcode, Anjunadeep, Repopulate Mars, Glasgow Underground. And of course Spinnin’, Ultra, and Armada all have their own focused deeper sub-labels as well.
When it comes to DJ Shows – the most influential DJs of the last year have been Tiesto, Oliver Heldens, and Armin van Buuren. Which I expect to continue this year – giving a nice mixture of house, techno, and trance. All of them becoming increasingly melodic. Which I think is always a good thing ;-).
2023 for Ghostproducer.nl and Michael de Kooker Audio Productions.
This is literally a copy and paste. But same as the past few years, in 2022 we’ve had a returning client percentage of over 95% again – meaning an overwhelming majority of artists who worked with us on a project came back for more – something we’re extremely proud of. It always feels a bit like bragging, but to us, this shows that we’re on the right track with what we’re doing.
Anyway, thank you for your continued support. If we’re already working together; a massive thanks again for working with us! And if we’re not working together (yet): if you have any questions, you know where to find us.
I want to wish you a happy, healthy, and amazing 2023, – and if your new year’s resolution is to make some waves with your music career; you can find our contact details on this website. 😉
Kind regards,
Michael de Kooker – www.ghostproducer.nl