What was the first artist-owned record label?
With everyone from Chappell Roan to Raye currently weighing in on the debate surrounding record labels’ treatment of artists, it seems a revolt could be on the horizon sometime in the not-too-distant future. One of the major solutions to the dilemma, however, is simply independence – many huge acts have launched their own record labels to obtain the ultimate creative freedom, with the likes of the Beatles’ Apple Records and Elton John’s The Rocket Record Company among the most notable.
Even though the impact of these labels and the names behind them has been seismic, in many ways they were just following a trend that had been set long before them. For all the Fab Four and John were innovative musical geniuses in certain senses, the idea to launch their own companies was not one of those instances.
The notion of an artist-owned record label had come about some years prior, and it was one that changed the course of the industry forever not just in terms of stars taking back their own control but in also guiding new defining hitmakers towards the stratosphere. With all that to achieve, there was only one man for the job.
Who was behind the first-ever artist-owned record label?
The first ever artist-owned label was Reprise Records, founded by none other than Frank Sinatra. It was the turn of the decade into the 1960s and the singer went out on a limb in search of greater sonic independence, but the result was a record label that commands a seminal force in the music industry to this day and gained Sinatra his status as the Chairman of the Board.
Of course, at the time of Reprise Records’ launch, it helped that Sinatra had a string of famous friends who could jump on board to lift his new venture off the ground. Fellow Rat Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr were among the first to be signed, with that roster extending to the likes of Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, and a slew of other huge names within the first few years of the label’s inception.
It had all come about because of issues that ring hauntingly familiar to today’s state of affairs. Sinatra had been left unsatisfied by his treatment from Capitol Records and eager to break into his own league, he inaugurated Reprise Records with the release of his 1961 album Ring-a-Ding-Ding!. Naturally, over time, as the label garnered traction, the focus shifted – it was eventually sold to Warner Brothers in 1963, picking up names like Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, and Green Day along the way.
Although Sinatra’s original conception may now be a cog in the massive corporations that current artists are now railing against, it is clear that their defiance is rooted in the experiences that the Chairman had shared some half a century ago. It shines two lights on the issue – a lack of artistic freedom is endemic to the industry, so artists want to break out, but as their own labels grow bigger, they are surely just contributing again to the never-ending cycle. It’s an exhausting process that would never have existed without Reprise Records’s ingenuity.
