Our story

Before founding Dark Arts in 2014, Joe Howden was working with Björk on the pioneering Biophilia multimedia album project. This experience of helping one of the world’s most original artists and innovators to realise such a groundbreaking digital project was the inspiration for our company. The spirit of innovation and creativity, alongside an immense passion for music has been in our DNA from day one.

Dark Arts is all about championing great artistry and helping it to thrive through compelling storytelling, proactive innovation and continuous improvement. The industry, platforms, technologies, trends and approaches evolve, but our underlying ethos remains the same.

We are focussed on providing a first class service and we take great pride in the many long term client relationships we have built and nurtured. Our roster has grown to include many truly iconic artists and the trust that is placed in us by them and their teams is something we value immensely.

Over the years the Dark Arts team has also continued to grow, with significant growth in the last 24 months in particular. And even though we now celebrate 10 years of Dark Arts, we are really just getting started.

Champions of catalogue

At Dark Arts we are passionate about the catalogue side of the business so we invest in research and development to better understand the challenges faced by catalogue departments, rights holders and artists. Our specialism in evergreen marketing and digital optimisation have grown from our belief that iconic music and stories should be a focus all year round, not just during a promotional cycle.

Setting standards

Through our innovation and agency services work, we aim to set industry standards for how iconic artists engage, grow and monetise their audiences. Our commitment to advance our clients’ interests, our industry’s future and our own development drives us and our artists forward.