Ian Carey has DJ’ed in over 50 countries, sold over one million records across every format and regularly waxes the floors with other A-list djs at the most pumping spaces on the planet…but let’s face it, he is best known for his stand-out house music hit Get Shaky. The soundtrack hit the charts as part of the 2008/09 southern hemisphere summer to such a furor that it made him a double platinum selling artist in Australia and came within 140 units of the #1 ARIA Single Chart position. The Miami-based DJ recently released his new single Shot Caller to Australian radio with similar fervor. A self-confessed audio freak he talks to OutinPerth’s Aja Styles about the future of house music.
What do you currently love about the music industry? I like the fact now that artists are selling direct online. We’ve been able to cut out the middleman and that’s a really great thing. It’s more of a direct sale situation from the artist to the consumer. It’s something that’s only recently happened in the last couple of years and I think it’s a really great thing.
You’re not at all worried about piracy? Piracy is a problem – it’s a good thing and a bad thing. Piracy does help to promote records when people are passing them around on blogs, especially for new artists who aren’t discovered yet, aren’t signed to major labels yet, piracy can do good things but also in the end we lose sales for it.
What about things you don’t like about the music industry? When you’re working with the major labels, especially the ones here in the States, they have this system that’s been put in place many years ago and they’re not very eager to change it, so it’s like sometimes you find yourself banging your head against the wall with these kinds of things and they need to move ahead and accept the way things work now.
Who would you say have been your biggest influences? Over the years, Eric Morillo was a big influence. He’s one of my favourite DJs of all time, mostly because of his business sense and the way he’s marketed himself over the years and just made himself an icon. As far as lifetime achievements, someone like Quincy Jones – he’s produced so many big hits over the years, Michael Jackson has been a really big artist for me and he’s been producing a lot of big hits. In recent times, Timbaland is a big, iconic hip-hop producer for me.
What is happening in the DJ scene in terms of where music is headed? I’ve moved back to the States about six months ago and I’ve been working with a lot of artists here and it seems to be that the new thing that’s happening here is a kind of mash-up with R ‘n B and pop music with dance, with house – the kind of stuff we do is really taking (our) influence into the big R ‘n B/hip-hop records.
So who’s contributing to that? David Guetta doing records with Akon and Kelly Rowland is one example. All the new things I’m hearing, like for example I mentioned Timbaland, who is a big influence and I’m remixing his next track with Katy Perry at the moment and it’s a dance record – it’s a four-to-the-floor club record. So all these kinds of guys are starting to make stuff that sounds like what we’ve been making. It’s a really cool thing.
What’s your advice to Australian artists? There’s been some big artists come out of Australia, recently. I think the main thing is just to make big records – when you make big records that people are buying and playing, it doesn’t matter where you come from.
Ian Carey is playing at Summadayze on January 3.
Aja Styles
