User:The-if-what

Matt O'Connor
Matt O'Connor, Owner & Managing Director of The A&R Department, is a music industry veteran with over 20 years experience in the national and international music industry. Matt is a musician, songwriter and producer, who over his career has written, produced and done A&R work on numerous top ten chart hits right across Australasia including - Sparkadia, The Beautiful Girls, Thirsty Merc, The Fumes, Shihad, Mia Dyson, Ash Grunwald, Epicure, Fast Crew and Cog to name a few. Matt has an enviable track record of 17 Top 10 ARIA records, 28 Top 40 ARIA records and over 1 million albums sold.

In the 1990s, Matt founded Mo Brown Productions, which quickly became the pre-eminent Hip-Hop and R&B label in Australia, and is credited with single-handedly reviving the Hip-Hop and R&B scene in this Australia. Matt continues to have a strong passion for urban music, and has worked with artists such as Savage, Deceptikonz, and Fast Crew, as well as numerous Australian hip hop artists through the Straight from the Art compilation.

In 2002 Matt was recruited to Warner Music Australia as A&R Manager, due to his A&R track record and uncanny ability to discover exciting new artists. While at Warner Matt worked to develop and release some of the most popular and successful mainstream Australian artists of the past ten years.

In 2007, having achieved monumental mainstream success and developed a formidable reputation, Matt left Warner Records to form The A&R Department. Free from major label constraints, Matt has been able to devote himself entirely to his passion for independent Australian music empowering independent artists to make great music and to get it heard. Matt's dedication to independent music through the A&R Department has struck a chord with a large number of Australian artists, who continue to turn to the A&R Department for comprehensive artist development, marketing and distribution solutions.

The beginning of 2010 has seen the roll out of the first roster of artists from The A&R Department. The first lot of releases - Botanics, Zeahorse, Cam Ewart and Israel Cannan have already started receiving wide spread attention in the first few weeks of release.