Steve Braines has spent over twenty five years shaping dance music culture as an A&R scout, a manager, a label boss, and a co-founder of one of the scene’s most recognisable inclusive platforms. We caught up with him at IMS Ibiza this year to talk about how his career started, and the philosophy that’s carried him through it.
Braines is co-founder of HE.SHE.THEY., the award-winning LGBTQIA+ inclusive events series and record label, and previously served as Global Head of Events at Defected Records, where he sat on the senior leadership team overseeing Defected, Glitterbox, and D4DANCE across more than 20 countries. Alongside the events side of his career, Braines has built a long-standing reputation as an artist manager, currently working with SYREETA, Emily Nash, Bradley Skeng, and Luna. His management history reads like a cross-section of the last two decades of alternative and electronic music, having previously worked with Maya Jane Coles, Tricky, Magda, Tale of Us, KDA, and Catz n’ Dogz.
His entry into the industry, though, was far less glamorous than the CV suggests. Steve Braines started out scouting bands for free for Michael Morley, the A&R behind signings like M.I.A., Vampire Weekend, and Daft Punk.
“At the time, there was no budget for me to be an A&R guy, so I was scouting bands for free,” he told us. “And then I found a band, which actually he ended up signing, and suddenly I was their manager.”
That accidental first signing set the course for the next twenty five years. From there, Braines built his early reputation not through fees, but through volume and relationships, a lesson he says still applies to anyone trying to break in today.
“Ask labels for the parts for new songs, make remixes, say it doesn’t really matter about the fee,” he explained. “Once you’ve got two or three different remixes under your belt, you’ve remixed artists X, Y and Z for labels X, Y and Z — it makes it much stronger when you go and try and approach them for a paid remix, especially when you’ve got song stats and you can say: this person supported my record, this radio station played my record.”
It’s a strategy built on patience and proof. Do the work first, let the numbers speak, and let credibility compound. Decades on, with a management roster spanning house, techno, and beyond, and a platform in HE.SHE.THEY. that’s taken stages from Glastonbury to Coachella, it’s clearly a philosophy that’s paid off.