Aberdeen dance music producer Chris Burke is closing in on 10 million online streams after quitting his job to pursue his recording dream.
Chris’ name has spread globally since making the plunge two years ago by leaving his job in recruitment.
His recent single Bad Girl, released in collaboration with chart-topper Klaas, was streamed 550,000 times on music platform Spotify in the first month of release.
Chris has collaborated with big names on the global dance scene including Grammy-nominated vocalist Jeffrey Jey and renowned DJ Christina Novelli.
He is currently working with American singer Sophie Simmons – daughter of KISS singer Gene Simmons.
Chris has almost 250,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, more than the 207,000 population of Aberdeen, with that number of listeners constantly rising.
With his reputation spreading around the world courtesy of tracks released via major labels like Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers, producer Chris, who has 122,000 followers on Instagram, hopes to tour Asia.
In the long term, Chris aims to smash 100 million streams.
He said: “After college I set up a recruitment company doing engineering stuff and did that for a few years.
“Towards the end of 2019 it got a bit quiet over the Christmas period and I was thinking if recruitment was what I really wanted to do.
“At that point I was 24 and I thought I might have another 40 years of this and I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted to do with my life.
“I thought music was worth giving a go.
“Then a few months later the whole country shut down with Covid and there was zero work anyway. I had nothing else to do so thought I would really go into the music.”
Leap of faith has already paid off
Chris’ leap of faith in pursuing his musical dream has rapidly paid dividends with the producer collaborating with top dance artists.
“To have more than eight million streams is unbelievable and hopefully it’s just the start,” he said.
“I’m looking to get much more than that.
“I would like to hit 100 million but that is quite a while away.
“It’s impossible to know how songs will perform when you put them online.
“Sometimes they can catch on like wildfire and get shared around on Facebook.
“There have been other times I thought songs would do really well and they haven’t.
“It’s strange sometimes to think just how many people are listening to my tracks.”
Working with chart-topper Klaas
His recent single Bad Girl was recorded in collaboration with Italian producer Audiosonik and influential German DJ and producer Klaas who scored a worldwide smash hit with Infinity 2008.
The track features deep male vocals and has a modern slap house chorus.
100k streams in 5 days on Spotify 🖤 Thank youhttps://t.co/NxGUBxcwZB pic.twitter.com/zgq1hrFT6L
— Chris Burke (@chrisburke) October 14, 2021
Chris explained: “Bad Girl is my biggest release to date and came about through my manager who has contact with Klaas.
“I had a demo of that track and he passed it onto Klaas’ team. Klaas was happy to work on it with me.
“We will go on zoom or Skype and usually when they are recording vocals I can have a bit of input such as saying make a change to that.
“It’s not been ideal over the last 18 months because it would have been good to have been there in person. However, we have constant updates on emails and also have video calls.”
Feel So High close to 1m streams
Earlier this year Chris released Just An Illusion, a collaboration with Jeffrey Jey who was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Dance Recording category in 2000 for Blue (Da Ba Dee).
Another track released this year, Feel So High, has racked up 835,000 streams on Spotify.
Chris said: “Each of my releases are in slightly different genres.
“Some will be pop-focused and others will be more house.
“Each one goes to a different label and I’m not exclusive to Sony as I have also had tracks on Universal and Warner Brothers.
“It’s really just a song by song basis. Some labels are better suited for different genres.”
Aspirations to play live in Asia
Chris has a new single set for release soon on Sony which will be his biggest to date.
Now that music venues, and countries, are opening up more with coronavirus restrictions easing Chris hopes to play live.
Ultimately he aims to perform in Asia in a bid to crack the lucrative market there.
He said: “The last 18 months haven’t been ideal because I would have been playing shows and meeting these people I’m collaborating with.
“Hopefully in the next year now that things have started to open up and I can go places it might be a bit different.
“I want to start playing shows and my manager talked about doing a small tour of Asia next year. However, that depends on travel restrictions and how things go on that front.
“With Bad Girl and I have a few remixes coming up for Asian artists the plan is to build a bigger following there. It is an absolutely massive market.
“The target is just to keep the numbers up online and trying to get more streams.”
Messages from around the world
Dance and electronic music fans worldwide have streamed Chris’ tracks on Spotify.
Renowned Dutch DJ and producer Tiesto also gave his support by playing Chris’ track Same Thing on his weekly radio show Club Life.
Chris said: “Every day I get messages from people about my music.
“I have had some feedback from some big DJ’s as well with Tiesto playing one of my tracks.
“The reception has been very good so far.”
