Biography


Early life
Brinslee was brought up in Amsterdam. His parents are Frank (guitarist and post office executive) and Dinie Verkerk (accountant). He has a brother (Fred) and a cute little niece named Amber. His childhood was rather unblemished, except for some issues with Dan's early interests in grafitti arts and skateboarding. Dan's education consists of computer technology, although only applicable to the early "640kb days".
After finishing a mandatory 14 months of militairy service in 1988, Dan started working for an electro retailer and managed to work his way up to trainer and eventually to assistant shop manager over a period of 6 years. Dan broke the annual record of generated sales income for a single sales representative, 3 consecutive times, leaving a mere 240 employees behind him and establishing himself as the company's number one seller. Obviously, sales were not much of a challenge to Dan, so in 1994, he jump started a musical career at the new founded record label ID&T Music & Entertainment.

ID&T Music
With the Dance scene's commercial taboo of the early ninetees, Dan accepted the challenge to establish an international network of partners that would distribute, license and sell the ID&T records and artists. Within 3 years time, ID&T Entertainment went from scratch to 3 million Euro annual turnover, a logistical department, a mailorder service, 4 A&R managers, a publishing department and a major compilation deal with European TV merchandiser Arcade. Another 3 years later, ID&T counted over 50 employees and Dan's department accounted for over 10 million Euro on a yearly basis. In 1996, ID&T offered Dan a position as Chief Executive Officer.

Working with artists
Despite his corporate success, Dan's main interest was drawn to the creative process of artist management and record production. ID&T offered to invest in a professional recording studio, but Dan declined and resigned. Late 1996 he invested in his own recording studio and artist management agency. Over the next 7 years, he would produce, promote and establish renowned and respected Dance artists such as RBA, Delirium, DJ Astrid, Tommy Pulse, Walter Solo and Enrico Riva.
Dan's productions have been topping international Dance- and mainstream charts, with highlites RBA and Delirium establishing his status of hit-producer.

Warner Music
Major Record companies like Warner Music and BMG had Brinslee high on their list of priorities, but Dance music was always second in line to USA and UK product. In a period of 3 years time, Dan released 72 EPs and 1 recording album, scored three international chart hits and his tracks were licensed to several international compilations, al together resulting in over 25 million record sales worldwide. Renowned licensor compilation series include ID&T's Thunderdome (3 million copies worldwide), Bravo Hits (350.000 copies per issue) and the Dome (225.000 copies per issue).

Kremlin, Amsterdam's super club
In 2002, Dan obtained a major share in Amsterdam's reknowned super club Kremlin. Kremlin was the originator of the Progressive Trance hype in the Netherlands, supported by major Dutch radio channels such as Radio 3 and Radio 538. Dan saw Kremlin mainly as a platform to promote his own artists and moved forward Dutch Trance diva DJ Astrid. Astrid had been playing national events for Holland's leading promoters ID&T, Q-Dance and UDC and was up for the challenge. On a recording level, Dan had already established Astrid's required international profile, prior to this opportunity. The Kremlin residency took the DJ Astrid project to new hights and an extreme flow of international license requests, remix requests and booking requests finally gave Dan the recognition and satisfaction he had been striving for. Also financially, things were on a rise.

Highlites in the Kremlin episode were the Two Days of Kaos festival in 2004, which set a new all time visitors record for the Kremlin venue Marcanti Plaza, the Kremlin Love Parade truck in Berlin 2004 with Miss Jarea and DJ Tiesto, the Dance Valley festival hosting tent with over 10.000 visitors and perfomances by Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Underworld and many more through the years.

Changes
Marcanti Plaza bankrupted by the end of 2004, leaving Kremlin without a proper location. Dan and his partner decided to call it quits, except for a few festival hostings and some licensed events in Rio and Miami. Additionally, Dan's main artist and investment DJ Astrid suffered a nerveous breakdown and had to go through extensive therapy. Dan had generated enough income by means of his successes and decided to leave the music industry for what it was, at least for the time being.

In 2005, Dan married Magdalena Lipska and moved to Norway to start a luxury chain of self-service tanning salons and a distribution firm for tanning equipment, cosmetics and accessoiries. His new business move was an instant success and Dan is currently anticipating new moves on the entertainment market.

danDont.com
Having devoted himself to distribution, licensing, publishing, artist devellopment and production for over 13 consecutive years, Dan has gathered extensive knowledge on many aspects of music business. Having learned many things from many people through the years, Dan decided that he wanted to give something back to the community. Through his danDont Audio Community, Dan communicates with beginning producers and offers tutorials, video training and advice on music production, legal matters and creative aspects. The community rendered over 1200 members and over 400 unique visitors daily, in the first year of it's existence.


Welcome the the world of Dan Brinslee!