Cross Ratio Entertainment

Overview

Cross Ratio Entertainment is a Singapore independent record label and entertainment company founded in 2015 by Dean Augustine, a music-industry executive with more than 30 years of experience (Music Business Worldwide, AXEAN Festival). Most trade-press coverage centers on a single headline — its exclusive worldwide distribution agreement with Warner Music Singapore (Music Business Worldwide, Music Week) — but the fuller, less-reported story is an eight-year climb: from an artist-management outfit for local singers, through a pandemic-era online music festival of its own staging, to a regional partnership with Universal Records Philippines, before landing major-label global distribution (AXEAN Festival, Bandwagon, Eksentrika, Music Business Worldwide). Warner Music has called it one of Singapore’s “most successful” independent labels, while Music Week described it as the city-state’s “largest” (Music Business Worldwide, Music Week).

From record-store management to running a label

Augustine’s career before Cross Ratio ran through the commercial side of the music business. He started at Tower Records Singapore and rose to general manager; headhunted by local retailer Gramophone, he ran operations and marketing and tripled its business; he was then scouted by Avex Trax co-founder Ken Suzuki to join the label S2S Inc., first as head of A&R and marketing and later as managing director, overseeing the label across Asia excluding Japan and worldwide (AXEAN Festival). During that stint he began developing and promoting local and international artists — work that, by Music Business Worldwide’s account, included Aiza Seguerra, MlCappella, Tay Kewei and Vanessa Carlton (Music Business Worldwide). In 2015 he founded Cross Ratio Entertainment in Singapore as a local record label to develop Singaporean singers for the international market (Music Business Worldwide, AXEAN Festival).

The company began as an artist-management business nurturing Singapore talent and then widened into a full-service operation: music distribution and publishing, digital marketing and PR, video production, project management and event management (AXEAN Festival). Its roster came to include Akeem Jahat, Alfred Sim, Belinda Lee and Derrick Hoh, alongside more than 200 artists it distributes, among them Carla D, Fauzie Laily, Gentle Bones and Narysal (Music Business Worldwide, Music Week).

A festival, a regional partnership and a hip-hop signing

To mark its fifth anniversary in 2020, Cross Ratio organised, curated and produced the inaugural Cross Ratio Music Festival, an online concert streamed on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and QQ Music in China (Bandwagon). The 30 October show featured more than 20 Singapore Mandopop acts — including Tay Kewei, Alfred Sim, MICapella, Derrick Hoh, Ling Kai, The Fleurist and Shelby Wang — hosted by Belinda Lee, with special appearances by Taiwan’s A-Lin and 9m88, Korea-based singer-songwriter Sam Kim and Gentle Bones (Bandwagon).

Two years later the label pushed beyond Singapore in two directions at once. It signed a regional partnership with Universal Records Philippines under which Cross Ratio would market and promote Universal’s artists in Southeast Asian countries outside the Philippines, while Universal retained its home market; the first release under the deal was the Julie Anne San Jose and Gary Valenciano duet “Di Ka Akin” on 5 August 2022, aimed at carrying Tagalog love songs across the region (Eksentrika). The partnership named Universal acts including Christian Bautista, Shanti Dope and TALA alongside Cross Ratio artists Tay Kewei, Alfred Sim, Derrick Hoh, Cindy Zhang, Shelby Wang and xxmxrcs (Eksentrika). The same month, Singapore rapper Akeem Jahat — known for his 2012 mixtape “Suke Hati Nenek Volume I: Akeemotherapy” and 2014’s “SeluDOPE”, and for rapping in both Malay and English — signed with Cross Ratio after years as an independent artist, releasing “Tandoori” as his first single with the label (NME).

The Warner Music Singapore deal

In 2023 Cross Ratio signed an exclusive worldwide distribution agreement with Warner Music Singapore covering new releases, catalogue management, brand partnerships, synchronisation deals, marketing events and the identification and development of new artists (Music Business Worldwide, Music Week). Augustine said the collaboration would help “put the music of our homegrown artists on the map” (Music Business Worldwide). Warner Music Singapore’s managing director Gerald Ang — who had taken the MD role in 2020 — said Augustine had built “one of the finest independent record labels in Singapore” with a strong C-Pop repertoire, and framed the partnership as a way to connect its artists with fans across South-East Asia, Greater China and beyond (Music Business Worldwide, Music Week). The deal formed part of Warner’s wider Asian expansion, which had included a partnership with Thailand’s What the Duck, the 2021 Pan-Asian dance label Whet Records and ADA Asia in Singapore (Music Business Worldwide).

What this profile does not claim

This profile corrects the previous version, which dated the Warner Music Singapore agreement to 2015; trade-press reporting places the deal in 2023. Beyond that, it does not independently verify the company’s claim of more than 200 distributed artists, nor does it rank Cross Ratio against every other Singapore independent label — “largest” and “most successful” are the characterisations of Music Week and Warner Music respectively, reported here as attributed. The Universal Records Philippines partnership rests on a single tier3 report (Eksentrika); no second independent source could be accessed to corroborate it. No profiles on this site currently exist for Dean Augustine, Warner Music Singapore, Universal Records Philippines or any of the label’s artists, so this rewrite adds no internal links — those entities are natural candidates for future profiles that would complete the link graph.