Warner Records is a Los Angeles-based frontline record label at Warner Music Group.
The company was founded in May 2019 as a “moment of reinvention” for the historic Warner Bros. Records company.
Warner Bros. Records was founded in March 1958 as an arm of Warner Bros. Pictures. The movie company’s “shield” logo was adopted by the record label and subsequently used within its own logo.
In 2004, when Warner Music Group was sold by Time Warner – splitting from the Warner Bros. movie company – it was agreed that Warner Bros. Records could continue to use the Warner Bros. name and logo for 15 years.
That deal term expired in 2019, hence the birth of Warner Records.
Warner Records: Leadership and artists
Since October 2018, Warner Records (then Warner Bros Records) has been jointly led by CEO & Chairman, Aaron Bay-Schuck, and COO & Chairman, Tom Corson.
Corson was formerly COO and President of RCA in New York. He joined Warner Bros. Records in late 2017, and was joined a year later by Bay-Schuck, who was formerly President of A&R at Interscope Records.
In November 2019, Bay-Schuck told MBW of his first year at Warner Records: “The No.1 way we’ve shown our ambition is by our aggressiveness and our building up of a world class A&R team. It was imperative to show managers, lawyers and anybody else paying attention that we have a point of view now.
“My goal is to define Warner Records so clearly that sometimes we don’t get to sign things because people know what’s not right for us as much as they know what is. I’m okay with that.”
Warner Records roster today includes the likes of Ali Gatie, Amy Allen, Bebe Rexha, Dua Lipa, Earl Sweatshirt, The Flaming Lips, Gallant, Gary Clark Jr, Neil Young, NLE Choppa, and Saweetie.Music Business Worldwide