London, England. Photo Credit: Benjamin Davies
Warner Music’s Atlantic Records UK and ADA UK have officially inked a partnership agreement with Candela Records, which bills itself as “the UK’s new label for Urban Latin music.”
The Warner Music subsidiaries announced their partnership with Candela Records – which “is an extension of UK based media group Latino Life, the driving force of Latin culture in the UK,” according to the parties – via a formal release today. Worth noting here is that the more than 15-year-old Latino Life media group publishes a magazine of the same name, and one of the entity’s co-founders, Jose Luis Seijas, co-founded Candela with Luciano Santana Pinto, who operates The Latino Shade Room platform.
As part of the Candela-WMG agreement, Atlantic Records UK and ADA UK are set to aid the just-established label “in signing and developing new artists, as well as distributing their current roster, including Angelo Flow and Esko, globally,” the release indicates.
And with Seijas overseeing operations, Pinto handling A&R, and Latino Life magazine co-founder Amaranta Wright serving as head of communications, the newly minted Candela Records, for its part, “will focus on developing the Latino sounds of London, which fuse the city’s unique urban beats with the sound of the Latin Caribbean and beyond, and on bringing this unique hybrid to the global stage.”
Addressing the partnership in a statement, Atlantic Records EVP Austin Daboh said: “The Latin music scene in the UK is growing incredibly quickly, and we’re excited to make history by becoming the first UK frontline label to partner with a UK based Latino label. Everyone at Atlantic and ADA is looking forward to shining a spotlight on this incredibly vibrant music scene and to finding the Latino superstars of the future.”
It bears mentioning on this front that Latin America’s music market grew by 15.9 percent in 2020, per the IFPI’s annual report, with streaming revenues having hiked by 30.2 percent year over year, accounting for 84.1 percent of the region’s total music-industry earnings.
The IFPI has continued to pursue legal action against “fake stream” providers in Brazil, Latin America’s largest music market, and stateside, the RIAA said in May of 2020 that a staggering 95 percent of Latin music’s U.S. income had derived from streaming during 2019.
Keeping these statistics in mind – along with the potential for international cross-promotion, given the prominent role played by streaming – a number of companies are making noteworthy moves in the space. ADA Latin quietly filled out its executive roster around Q4 2020, for instance, whereas Play MPE earlier this year announced ambitious plans to bring its music discovery and promotion tools to the Latin market.
