For something as big as Martin Garrix aligning himself with the Universal Music Group to have apparently happened four weeks ago and not so much as a whiff in the online space is a bit hard to believe and is sure to have anyone confused. Given all the commotion that occurred when “Animals” dropped and how the track went on to top the Beatport charts, you’d surely expect  such news to have been widespread and possibly have gone viral by now, right?

It all started when we noticed that Republic Records, which is a division of Universal Music Group that distributes music from acts like James Blake, posted Martin’s hugely successful single “Animals” on their SoundCloud page. If you go on to do a bit of digging, you see that not only is Martin Garrix listed as an “artist” on the Republic Records website, but they made a separate post on the 18th of September about the viral nature of his single “Animals”.

Although in doing a search on iTunes, it seems as if “Animals” was re-released on September 17 via Spinnin’ Records, however its now under an exclusive license from Silent/Republic Records. Now, there is only one missing piece. There hasn’t been an official announcement. All one can find is a September 10 post from radio station K94.5 FM in LA, who did a short piece on Martin explaining that, “he was signed to Universal Republic Records in the US roughly four weeks ago”.

So there you have it; the clear evidence in this curious case of the relatively-silent signing of Garrix to Universal. In an age where dance music is truly taking over, signings like these legitimize dance music to the masses, one huge single at a time. Congrats to Garrix, an artist that’s continuing to surprise everyone this year.