Andrew Klippel, Charles Caldas Featured in Billboard’s Indie Power Players 2025 List
Andrew Klippel, co-founder and director of Ourness, the music company that presented Genesis Owusu and Royel Otis to the world, and Exceleration Music founding partner Charles Caldas lead the Australian contingent in Billboard’s Indie Power Players 2025 list.
Billboard salutes Ourness after a breakout year for Royel Otis, who scored a first-up entry on the US Billboard Hot 100 in August 2024, with their viral cover of The Cranberries’ “Linger (SiriusXM Session)” opening and peaking at No. 94.
Klippel’s Sydney-based Ourness “achieved 10 times growth” over the last year-and-a-half, he tells Billboard.
“This has been the result of working with enduring and definitive artists and investing in developing them from zero, fuelled by instinct, without waiting for indications from outside sources.”
Andrew Klippel
For eight months of last year, the group toured in support of their debut full length album, PRATTS & PAIN, which dropped in February 2024 and went straight into the ARIA top 10, at No. 10. The group has been in the studio working on a follow-up.
Klippel was named Manager of the Year, the top honour, at the AAM Awards 2025, where he tipped off the next Ourness act to watch out for, Sonic Reducer.
“I’m incredibly proud of the Ourness team and our partners, who are second to none,” he tells Billboard. “Everyone has brought their best and worked around the clock to bring it home.”
On the meaning of the word “indie,” Klippel remarked, “There’s a cultural lineage to the term ‘indie,’ but I see it now as an important phase or a transition rather than a destination. It’s essential to embed the authenticity of an artist’s culture and exploration prior to the most distilled version, which is sometimes when an artist crosses over.”
Also namechecked by the US music industry “bible” is Caldas’s Exceleration Music, which recently executed the purchase of venerated British independent label, Cooking Vinyl.
Caldas is identified alongside fellow partners John Burk, Amy Dietz, Dave Hansen, and managing partner Glen Barros.
Charles Caldas
Leading Billboard’s list is Dana Biondi, partner/artist manager at G59 Records.
The Indie feature celebrates the most influential record labels, distribution companies and associations that are pushing the sector to new heights.
In 2024, more than half of all royalties generated by domestic talent on Spotify were by independent artists or labels, according to the Sweden-based streaming music giant.
A separate Billboard Power Players list last month identified the likes of Matt Gudinski (chairman/CEO Mushroom Group), Jaime Gough (managing director of Concord Music Publishing ANZ), and Simon Moor (managing director of Kobalt Music Group APAC).
Read Billboard’s Indie list here. And read TMN’s exclusive interviews with Klippel and Caldas.