Interview with Encore Agency's Newest Partner: Wouter Hummelink

12/18/2018

â€‹We talked with Wouter Hummelink, artist manager for Aiobahn, Lyente, and Skywalk, about his journey through the EDM Industry which has led him to Encore Agency and signing one of his artists to Warner.

What made you a fan of EDM in the first place?
At the age of twelve, I started listening to EDM. I became a fan of EDM when I was 16 years old and discovered the DJ duo: Yellow Claw. I really enjoyed their live shows and mixtapes, especially "Yellow Claw Mixtape 3." What really captivated me was their attitude of literally "I don't give a fuck what you think, we just do what we want." They did the exact opposite of the rest of the EDM industry at that time. Seeing their live shows really solidified my love for the genre. My friends weren't really into dance music like I was, but that didn't matter to me. I discovered a lot of other artists and a lot of them were playing near my hometown in a festival. I visited the festival and I really felt the magic and feeling of what EDM can offer.

What made you decide to get involved in the music industry?
When I was sixteen years old, I started my education as a social worker. I went through the motions to become that profession but I never felt like it was truly my calling. I took a break from school and started working in the service industry and all the while I was thinking "Is this really what I want to do fir my whole life?" After having the first-hand experience of working in the industry, the answer was definitely a strong "NO." So I thought to myself, "What do I like and what do I do the most." The answer to that was discovering new music and visiting parties and festivals. At the age of eighteen, I became the tour manager for Jesse Arends and Jacco Blank and become close friends with them. They had a few gigs and I had a car and a driver's license when most others didn't.

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A post shared by Wouter Hummelink (@wouter_hummelink) on Oct 22, 2018 at 9:18am PDT

I found that working with music related stuff truly made me happy and gave me energy to get through my day. So I decided that I wanted to study the business of music and enrolled myself in the Herman Brood Academy.

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New generation managersâ–¡â–¡â€â–¡ #manager #edm #music #edmlovers #dance #dancemusic #encoreagency #work #neverstop

A post shared by Camille van Gurp (@camille.mgmt) on Nov 2, 2018 at 11:53am PDT

How did you become involved in Encore Agency?
I knew Camille van Gurp, the original founder of Encore Agency, from school and we started our record label Tritone Records. However, after a year, we found that we couldn't give the artists the attention they deserved while we were running the label, so we decided to sell the label to someone else to focus on artist management. I started my own management company and Camille started his as well. After two months, there were many artists that wanted to join Encore Agency but Camille already had four artists to manage. So he had to start turning people away because he simply didn't have the time to give them the time they needed to be successful.

I had the idea to make a group of artists and managers to help each other out and grow bigger with each other, as you can't do this on your own, so I discussed this idea with Camille and we thought, "Why don't we start something together?" Camille asked me if I wanted to join Encore Agency because he needed help and could trust me. So I joined the company and brought my artists along with me under the Encore Agency banner, and that's where we are today!

What are some of the challenges you've faced working in the industry?
The thing that was very hard for me at first was networking. I tried to meet a lot of people at ADE 2016 but I couldn't find the right people to network with. I felt like I had nothing to offer because I was nervous and scared that I couldn't develop myself. At the start of 2018, I became more professional and my state of mind was, "I don't care, just do it." That mindset helped me with a lot of things in life: Don't care. Just do it.

What do you hope to accomplish next?
I want to make Encore Agency one of the biggest artist management companies in the dance industry, go viral on Spotify with my artists, and travel to world!

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@lyente just signed to Warner! Itâ€™s good to see that hard work pays off. I am looking forward to a succesfull cooperationâ–¡â–¡

A post shared by Wouter Hummelink (@wouter_hummelink) on Nov 2, 2018 at 10:58am PDT

A huge thank you to Wouter Hummelink for taking the time to answer our questions! Additionally, thank you to Camille van Gurp for making this interview possible!