From Billboard (edited)
When a knee injury ended a promising soccer career at the
age of 15, Alex Wilhelm, became interested in music.
He learned to play guitar, interned at recording studios and read books by industry giants like David Geffen’s “The Operator” and Jac Holzman’s “Follow The Music.”
Scouring the Internet for music for 16 hours a day, Al began tracking Katy Perry two years before she signed to Capitol Records in 2007, and discovered OneRepublic a year before Timbaland brought them to Interscope.
He launched his Crazed Hits web site on February 2, 2008, to feature musicians who were unsigned by record companies and unpublished.
He found content on Myspace and other places online.
In his first month, he came across a young songwriter named BC Jean.
"I said to her, 'send me all the songs that you have,'" he said. "She sent me 10 songs, and song number six was a song titled 'If I Were A Boy,' and I was like, this is a smash hit.
"So I posted that song, and a couple months later Beyonce recorded it." The next year Jean signed to Clive Davis' J Records.
A few months after he featured Jean, Al got a call from Epic Records prez Charlie Walk, who'd heard about the site. Walk liked the fact that Wilhelm worked out of his bedroom just outside of Berlin. He thought he could identify talent that would have a global appeal.
In his first year of operation, Wilhelm featured LMFAO,
Ke$ha, Owl City and Drake, all unsigned with
small followings.
In 2009, he
featured tracks by Nicki Minaj, Mike Posner, and Brantley Gilbert,
who wrote two songs that became hits for Jason
Aldean. By then, the whole industry was watching.
By 2010, Wilhelm was getting 100 pitches a day and regularly communicating with record company execs. He also received an invitation to serve on the Grammy Awards committee.
Now, he's gone to work for a record company as a talent scout signing new artists.
