Independent labels have historically anticipated developments in
popular music, beginning with the
post-war period in the
United States. Disputes with major labels led to a proliferation of smaller labels specializing in
country,
jazz, and
blues.
Sun Records played an important part in the development of
rock 'n' roll and country music, working with artists such as
Elvis Presley,
Carl Perkins,
Johnny Cash,
Jerry Lee Lewis,
Roy Orbison, and
Charlie Rich. Following the original pioneers of the music industry, many new labels were launched over the following decades by people with industry experience. R&B independent labels such as Savoy, Apollo, King, Modern, Mercury, Imperial, Specialty, Red Robin, Duke and
Vee-Jay Records were founded. Alongside, labels such as
King Records,
Sun Records, and
Stax which played a crucial role in the development of
jazz,
rhythm and blues, and early
rock and roll, genres initially sidelined by major companies, these independent labels were also responsible for pioneering both musical innovation and production techniques that major labels would later emulate, with
Atlantic being the first label to make recordings in stereo, while
Sun and
Chess introduced
slapback echo and makeshift
echo chambers. Additionally, independent labels were often the only platforms available for marginalized artists in America at the time, which included many
African-American musicians, as viable mediums to release and distribute their work.In 1959, guitarist
John Fahey established
Takoma Records, an early example of an artist owned label that became influential to the development of
American Primitivism. During the 1960s, rock label Elektra, R&B labels such as Motown, Stax records released singles and albums. In the
United Kingdom during the 1950s and 1960s, the major labels
EMI,
Philips, and
Decca had so much power that smaller labels struggled to establish themselves. Several British producers launched independent labels, including
Joe Meek (
Triumph Records),
Andrew Loog Oldham (
Immediate Records), and
Larry Page (
Page One Records). Independent labels gained further prominence in the American 1960s
underground music scene such as
ESP-Disk and
International Artists. Other independent labels included those in Germany's
krautrock scene like
Kraftwerk's own label
Kling Klang Records as well as
Ohr, Brain, and
Sky Records. Internationally, the situation was different. In
Sweden, three of the four biggest rock bands at the time were signed and saw great commercial success with independent labels. These included
Hep Stars (
Olga Records),
Tages (
Platina Records) and
Ola & the Janglers (
Gazell Records). According to
Företagskällan, these three artists secured an interest for minor record labels, a situation which otherwise would've led to 'the big five' having full control of the Swedish music scene during the 1980s. set up by the Gordon Mills' Management Agency & Music company. However MAM, like many of the small independents in the United Kingdom ended up signing a distribution deal with a major to remain viable, with MAM's records being licensed and distributed by Decca until it was sold to Chrysalis. During the
punk rock era, the number of independent labels grew as they became integral to the early years of punk rock musical distribution, as seen with
Beserkley Records in the US, who put out the
debut album of
The Modern Lovers which was recorded years earlier. In the UK, independent label
Stiff Records released the first UK punk single "
New Rose" by
the Damned. In
Australia, Brisbane band
the Saints had their first punk release outside the US, "
(I'm) Stranded", on their own "Fatal Records" label. This was followed by
the Go-Betweens releasing "
Lee Remick" a few months later. On January 29, 1977,
Manchester-band
Buzzcocks released
Spiral Scratch, which alongside the
Desperate Bicycles early singles showed listeners how to produce and distribute their own records independently at very low cost, inspiring a wave of
DIY punk bands like
Swell Maps,
'O' Level, and
Television Personalities who helped popularize independent rock releases. By 1979, independent record label
Rough Trade released the album
Inflammable Material by
Stiff Little Fingers which went on to be the first independently-released album to sell over 100,000 copies and enter the
UK Top 20. This success sparked major record companies' interest in independent music and by the end of the decade, the establishment of the
UK indie charts signaled the growing popularity of the movement. The
BBC documentary "
Do it Yourself: The Story of Rough Trade" stated that:Other notable early indie labels include
Mute,
4AD,
Factory,
Beggars Banquet and
Creation Records.
1980s: Compilations, post-punk and indie music The late 1970s had seen the establishment of independent distribution companies such as Pinnacle and Spartan, providing independent labels an effective means of distribution without involving the major labels. Distribution was further improved with the establishment of 'The Cartel', an association of companies such as
Rough Trade Records, Backs Records, and
Red Rhino, which helped to take releases from small labels and get them into
record shops nationwide. with the first number one being "Where's Captain Kirk?" by Spizz and his band (billed on the record as
Spizzenergi). "Where's Captain Kirk?" had been a constant seller for Geoff Travis'
Rough Trade Records, but never got into the chart compiled by BMRB (
British Market Research Bureau) as a lot of independent stores were not chart return shops and because a more accurate way of collating sales via
EPOS (electronic point-of-sale systems) had yet to be introduced. The chart was unrelated to a specific
genre, and the chart featured a diverse range of music, from punk to
reggae,
MOR, and
mainstream pop, including many songs in the late 1980s by artists like
Kylie Minogue and
Jason Donovan on the
PWL label. Even though
PWL's releases were mainly
Hi-NRG-influenced
disco-pop the label was independently distributed and did have a music fan (
Pete Waterman) at its helm, of which the label was closely associated with. Whether indie fans dismiss
Stock Aitken Waterman as cheesy pop or not, this was as true for Waterman as it was for
Ivo Watts-Russell (
4AD), Alan Horne (
Postcard),
Daniel Miller (
Mute),
Alan McGee (
Creation) or
Tony Wilson (
Factory). The UK Indie Chart became a major source of exposure for artists on independent labels, with the top ten singles regularly aired on the national television show
The Chart Show. By the late 1980s, the major labels had identified that there was an opportunity in indie music and so teamed up with many of the main figures of the indie scene to launch indie music record labels. WEA (Warner/Elektra/Atlantic) teamed up with Geoff Travis and él Records' Mike Alway to launch
Blanco y Negro, followed a few years later by Alan McGee's Elevation label (even though some indie fans viewed this development in a negative way, WEA set up
Korova in 1979 for Zoo Record's
Echo & the Bunnymen, with Zoo Records being the Liverpool-based label of Bill Drummond and David Balfe). The term "
alternative" was increasingly used to describe artists, and "indie'" was more often used to describe a broad range of guitar-based rock and pop. The "explosion" of the dance music scene in the mid- to late 1980s found labels such as
Warp,
Coldcut's Ahead of Our Time and Wax On Records set up. In Italy production teams like
Groove Groove Melody and the FPI Project would make and release
Italo dance/piano house records under many pseudonyms and license them individually to various record labels around the world (such as Beggars' Citybeat label). Instead of going down this one-by-one deal route,
Cappella's
Gianfranco Bortolotti set up Media Records in Brescia, northern Italy to release his 'commercial European dance music', a set-up which included fifteen studios featuring various production teams working almost non-stop on a huge number of records (usually promoted by a 'front' of models-turned-singers and various rappers) and, in the 1990s, a UK arm which would eventually turn into hard house label
Nukleuz, known for its DJ Nation releases. The dance music scene also proved beneficial to independent labels who compiled and marketed TV-advertised compilations, especially when Virgin teamed up with EMI to launch
Now That's What I Call Music, a number one hit that would see CBS and WEA (the future Sony BMG and WMG) move into the market with their rival
Hits compilations and Chrysalis and MCA team up for the short lived
Out Now! brand. Morgan Khan's
StreetSounds/StreetWaves was the first independent company to run up a number of hits in the UK album chart with a run of various artist dance music collections and started off business in the pre-Now days of ''Open Top Cars and Girls in T'Shirts
, Raiders of the Pop Charts and Chart Encounters Of The Hit Kind
. In fact, apart from a few soul music compilations billed as Dance Mix - Dance Hits'' on Epic and a few throwback disco collections, Khan's company was the only label regularly charting with music that could be classed as with club or dance until Stylus Music teamed up with
the Disco Mix Club (DMC) for their Hit Mix series. Coming before the Acid House-era the first Hit Mix album in 1986 still had a large amount of pop hits from mainstream chart stars like Kajagoogoo, Kate Bush and Nik Kershaw, but Paul Dakeyne & Les 'L.A. Mix' Adams mixed 86 tracks onto four-sides of vinyl, while follow-up releases would start to feature more house tracks by people like Krush and Nitro De Luxe. The start of the 1990s would see the founding of two independent companies who would go on to chart numerous dance music collections in the new compilations album chart, Blackburn-based
All Around the World (AATW) and the
Ministry of Sound.
1990s: Dance music, Britpop and alternative rock Both All Around the World/AATW and the Ministry of Sound would be founded in 1991, the former by Cris Nuttall and Matt Cadman, the latter by
James Palumbo, Humphrey Waterhouse and Justin Berkmann (though initially as a nightclub in South London, before it became a record company). Originally AATW would focus on singles and would issue a compilation album once in a while as a tie-in with a local
EMAP-owned radio station such as
97.4 Rock FM in Preston, Lancashire (Rock The Dancefloor - All Mixed Up), while the Ministry of Sound moved into compilations quite quickly with the release of their
Sessions series. Over the following decades, album brands such as AATW's
Clubland and
Floorfillers or the Ministry of Sound's
The Annual and
Euphoria (with the latter brand picked up from Telstar) would turn-up in the compilations top 20 so regularly that the majors became interested, with Sony taking over Ministry of Sound's record company and AATW getting into a joint-venture with Universal Music TV, which ended up with the firm running
TV channels in the 21st century based on
Clubland and Universal's
Now Music brands. Also in 1991 Rough Trade Distribution went bankrupt,) and others to be sold off in part to majors. In the case of Factory, one of Tony Wilson's beliefs was that "musicians own everything, the company owns nothing", which caused problems for the firm when it was going to be taken over by Roger Ames'
London Recordings (a 'boutique' semi-independent label which followed Ames from Polygram to Warners when he became CEO). London Recordings did not have to buy Factory out right because the artists owned the masters and so London could pick and choose which acts they wanted, dealing with them directly (though due to problems with the administration, London did not get the rights to New Order's catalogue for a couple of years and so a company called CentreDate Co Ltd was set up to license them back to London). However, not all indie record labels failed in this era due the problems with Rough Trade Distribution, some failed because they did not stick to their niche and tried to take on the majors at their own game. David Mimran's Savage Records (known for British band
Soho and their Smiths-sampling indie-dance hit "Hippychick" in 1991) was set up by the Swiss teenager in 1986 and funded by his multi-millionaire father. Due to the almost endless financing of his father and the fact their A&R manager (a Swiss record shop owner called Bernard Fanin) had industry experience, the label managed to make it into the 1990s with a number of dance and hip-hop hits by artists such as Silver Bullet and A Homeboy, Hippy and A Funky Dread (issued on Savage's Tam Tam dance label). Around the time Soho had their top ten UK hit, Mimran decided that Savage would not just be a British indie, but would be an American major instead. Savage Records went on a spending spree in America, which resulted in them opening plush offices on Broadway, hiring Michael Jackson's manager
Frank DiLeo and signing
David Bowie to a massive $3.4 million record deal, all which ended when Mimran's father, Jean Claude, cut finances. In the end Bowie's Savage album,
Black Tie White Noise only just made the US Top 40 albums chart (but was a number one in the UK for Savage's distributor BMG via their Arista label) with Savage Records being a record label whose 'story' Telstar and Sanctuary would follow to a lesser extent. One independent record label who was having a better time than Savage Records in the early to mid-90s American marketplace was
Epitaph Records. It was Epitaph that released
The Offspring's 1994 album
Smash, which would become the best-selling independent record of the 1990s. The album was certified six times
platinum in the United States and sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. In the UK, the indie chart was still a valuable marketing tool (especially when targeting readers of the NME, Select and various student publications) and so the Britpop-era gave rise to the idea of the 'fake indie'. The 'fake indie' would be a record label owned by a major company but whose distribution did not go through the parent company's distribution arm, going through an independent in order for those records to be eligible for the indie chart. Acts promoted this way initially included
Sleeper on BMG's
Indolent Records and
Echobelly on Sony's Fauve Records. However, at this point its worth noting that Sony owned half of Creation Records at the time (with Alan McGee too important within the scene to be labelled a 'fake'), that Fauve Records was set up as part of a labels deal between Epic and former dance music label
Rhythm King and as the bands got bigger the releases ended up going through major distribution channels like
Arvato (its also worth pointing out that
BMG would be seen as being one of the largest independent record companies of the 21st century after Sony BMG was dissolved).
Richard Branson sold the independent label he co-founded with Simon Draper and Nik Powell (
Virgin Records) to Thorn EMI in 1992 and a few years later decided to launch a 'new Virgin Records'. This 'Virgin2' was set up as
V2 Music in 1996 with staff from Branson's company working on V2 at the same time as the
V96 Festival (both record company and festival would use similar 'V' branding, as Branson could not use the full Virgin name for any projects involving music). This British independent label would be joined by other V2 Records around the world, with V2 Records Benelux founded in 1997, a record company which continues to operate to this day.
2000s: Hip hop and R&B , one of the pioneering artists of the underground hip hop scene, whose success helped bring attention to independent hip hop releases and influenced many musicians. In 2001,
Daptone Records records would be founded in New York, a funk and soul label known for
Sharon Jones,
Charles Bradley and a lot of the musicians who would appear on
Amy Winehouse's
Back to Black album in 2006. As the indie hip hop or
underground hip hop scene began to grow, so did the attraction of creating independent labels for the genre.
MF Doom and
Madlib's collab album
Madvillainy sold over 150,000 copies, making it
Stones Throw Records highest selling underground album. In 2004,
Telstar Records went bankrupt in the UK after giving
Victoria Beckham a £1.5 million record deal. Like Savage Records a decade earlier Telstar did not stick to their niche (they started off as a compilations label - similar to Ronco and K-Tel - before signing children's TV stars and dance acts to their XSRhythm and Multiply labels) and tried to operate in a similar marketplace to their compilations partner, the original BMG company.
2010s: Heritage acts and re-issues In the 2010s, due to platforms such as Bandcamp and SoundCloud, a number of the larger indies moved away from signing unknown acts instead acquiring back catalogues and working with 'heritage acts' (for example, those popular in a pre-digital age). New independent
BMG, which had been spun-out of the Sony BMG joint venture that included Arista and RCA, ended up with the catalogues of
Echo,
Infectious and
Sanctuary (the biggest independent record label in the UK before it went bankrupt), while
Cherry Red Records, who had a few 'heritage acts' like Hawkwind on their main label, were mainly concerned with their re-issue labels such as 7T's Records (1970s music), 3 Loop Music (indie music) and Cherry Pop (mainly chart pop from the 1980s). From 2013, Warner Music had to sell a lot of its catalogue in order to please various anti-monopoly and merger commissions or trade bodies, after buying the large part of EMI (
Parlophone) that UMG was not allowed to keep hold of after acquiring the remainder. In 2016,
Radiohead's back catalogue was sold to
Beggars (XL Recordings),
Chrysalis Records was sold to
Blue Raincoat Music (now including recordings by
Everything but the Girl, Athlete and
Cockney Rebel), while the rights to albums by
Guster and
Airbourne went to
Nettwerk. In 2017, WMG went on to sell the catalogues of a number of other artists to independent record companies, including
Domino (
Hot Chip and
Buzzcocks),
Cherry Red (
Howard Jones,
Dinosaur Jr. and
Kim Wilde),
Fire (
The Lemonheads and
The Groundhogs) and
Because Music (
The Beta Band and various French acts).
2020s: K-pop, grime Apart from a couple of appearances from Kylie Minogue and a few releases on XL Recordings, the Official Independent Singles Chart Top 50 would be alien to anyone who remembered the indie chart from 1990. It is now more likely for grime, dance and K-Pop artists to be in the Top 10 than indie bands, with the chart of 20 November to 26 November 2020, having KSI and Craig David at number one with their BMG released single "Really Love", BTS at number two with "Dynamite" and AJ Tracey at number three with "West Ten". Apart from re-issues and oldies by people like the White Stripes and Arctic Monkeys, the nearest to a new indie band hit is pop guitar band
McFly at number 30 with their song "Happiness", only charting after a special called "McFly: All About Us" was broadcast by ITV on 14 November 2020. After having his own independent record company in the 1990s which charted a number of releases in the main UK charts, prog rock singer
Fish decided not to sign up to the
Official Charts Company when he released
Weltschmerz on 25 September 2020, an album self-funded, marketed and distributed from his home in Scotland. As he did not partner with a record label like BMG, he missed out on a top ten album chart placing when early sales revealed that he would have been number 2 on the UK midweek charts behind that week's chart topper, the Partisan-signed band IDLES. On the Official Independent Albums Chart Top 10 for 8 October, IDLES would be number one with
Ultra Mono with acts from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s taking up a further seven slots (including compilations from acts like Slade and new albums from people like
Hüsker Dü's
Bob Mould). According to Korean newspaper
Kyunghyang Shinmun, K-pop company
Big Hit Entertainment had revenues of 484 billion South Korea won ($436 million US dollars) for the first three quarters of 2020, a period which did not include the release of the Billboard album chart topping
BE by BTS, but did include the period when the label bought into Han Sung Soo's
Pledis Entertainment. In October 2020, Big Hit Entertainment floated on the Korean stock market with founder Bang Si-hyuk giving the members of BTS shares in the company and his stake in Big Hit making him the sixth richest person in Korea. ==Worldwide Independent Network (WIN)==