What is the best-selling music label of all time?

“I don’t see a lot of money here,” says a faceless suit to Oscar Isaac’s painfully honest character in Inside Llewyn Davis. A cold, frank and very real response to a performance vulnerability. While I’d like to say we’ve wisened up in the 60 years since the setting of that film in the 1960s folk era, the realities of music labels remain very much the same.

Streaming royalties have squeezed out any genuine profitability for artists, so instead, they’re left to make up their losses in the rather scratchy landscape of touring. And like all bureaucratic powerhouses, the major labels have acutely sensed the desperate situations artists find themselves in and, of course, capitalise.

Naturally, there are labels across the country doing the diligent work of artist representation and support, giving relatively unknown and disconnected musicians an avenue through which their music can be explored. These small independents provide the bedrock upon which authenticity can flourish. That being said, they are mere drops in a very large and profitable ocean controlled by what was once called ‘The Big Four’.

These titans of the industry have been there since the beginning and behind the most lucrative records of all time. As the wheel of success kept on turning, so did their cash counters and have since gone on to dominate the music industry as a whole. They are EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, who in recent years have since gone on to be referred to as ‘The Big Three’, given Universal’s acquisition of EMI in 2012.

So for the past 13 years, three labels have largely dominated the scene, making a combined revenue of $29.6 billion in 2024, marking a 4.8% increase year-over-year, while independent labels, which are approximately made up of 10,000–15,000 names, made a collective total of $10.7bn in 2024. 

So in this battle royale of bureaucracy, who comes out on top? Well, given the fact that it was in a position to acquire another of the big labels, it comes as no surprise that Universal reigns supreme, with a current global market share of 31.9%, while Sony holds 22.1% and Warner 16%. Again, a relatively unsurprising statistic when you consider that Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the biggest-selling album of all time with 70million copies sold worldwide, is a Universal-owned record.

Who is the biggest-selling independent label?

There’s a long-running joke that the year of an Arctic Monkeys release ensures that Domino Records have another decade of operations. Their story with Domino epitomises the importance of an independent label, one willing to take creative risks and wholeheartedly back the authentic idea of a band and allow their success to repay their trust. Indie labels are the ultimate tastemakers and without them, music would slip into a bland sea of pastiche.

But the stratospheric success of the Sheffield rockers hasn’t quite made it clear whether Domino are the top of the independent charts; their latest recording profit was just over £4m in 2023. A figure that would have seen them fall short of XL Recordings, who clocked in a reported profit of £12.8m in 2023. Similar to Domino, they host some of the biggest names in alternative music and have helped build a brand of commercially successful, yet wildly authentic indie music. Some of their most recent releases include Fontaines DC’s Romance and King Krule’s Space Heavy, which perfectly personify the merit of independent music.

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