Who is interscope records owned by

I think patience was, and still is, really good advice. As the head of a label, what do you do most differently from your counterparts? And Interscope has always been slightly left of center, trying to move culture. So we have the best relationship with the film companies and have done partnerships with Disney on Black Panther , Warner Bros. Instead of just putting up a song and shooting a video and trying to get it on the right playlist, we wanted it to have that special shine.

How do you deal with artists? You have to build a trust with artists. When I came in here, I was a new person and a lot of the artists had been here for a long time. The relationship between artists and labels has changed a lot in the streaming era, with artists arguably gaining more autonomy than ever before. Before, you either had to just jump behind a single or not. You started Fueled by Ramen in an earlier era of the music business. If you were starting a record label today, would you do it differently?

I think I started a record label at the right time, because the internet had just started taking down the barriers to entry in the music business. I broke artists through street marketing and through the internet.

With a new artist, you have to think: What do we think of the music, and how are people engaging with it?

Is there a particular thing you do every day to unwind from work? Interscope specializes in producing the sort of music of which other, more traditional companies are wary; hard-core, gangsta' rap, alternative fringe rock, and the sub-genre known as Goth are all a part of the company's roster. In an industry famous for its eccentric, iconoclastic characters, Interscope co-founder Ted Field upon first glance might seem an anomaly. Born into the Chicago area Marshall Field family, Field was slated from childhood to follow in the family's footsteps, first attending prestigious private schools, then running the family fortune, which included the Marshall Fields department stores and the Chicago Sun Times.

From his childhood, however, Field proved himself to be a rebel and risk-taker. After spending much of his adolescence in Alaska, Field moved from school to school, finally becoming involved in race car driving and, later, fund-raising for the Democratic Party. At the same time he started his record company, Field also founded Interscope Communications, a film production company which eventually produced such film hits as 'Three Men and a Baby,' and the thriller 'The Hand that Rocked the Cradle.

Besides Field's abundance of financial resources, Interscope had another advantage from its inception: the expertise and reputation of Jimmy Iovine. Iovine had been involved in the music industry for several years and had been a producer for acts as various as the New York-based singer Patti Smith to the phenomenally successful pop band U2. Between Iovine's inside influence and Field's high-profile financing, it wasn't difficult for Interscope to find further backing, both in the form of monetary support and publicity, in Time Warner, a huge company which was involved in all aspects of the entertainment and communications industries.

Time Warner's music production division saw in Interscope an opportunity to share in profits from music which the publicly owned company could not otherwise overtly touch. Shortly after the establishment of Interscope, a small rap label called Death Row Records was started by former professional football player Marion 'Suge' Knight. In , Death Row produced Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic,' a rap album filled with explicit, violent lyrics, the nature of which were to set the standard for gangsta' rap for years to come.

Although Death Row had successfully produced 'The Chronic,' the company could not find a distributor for the album, as most well-established labels found the contents too controversial. Seeing profit in controversy, however, Interscope stepped in and agreed to distribute the album, thus establishing an intimate partnership with Death Row.

Interscope's gamble proved a success; 'The Chronic' was one of the biggest albums of the decade, selling almost four million copies, and helped to make the company a real contender in the music industry. Death Row's Dr. Dre pioneered gangsta' rap, and other Death Row artists, all of whom were distributed by Interscope, were not far behind: the rap artists Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tha' Dogg Pound, and Tupac Shakur were all part of the label's roster during the s, and they all sold millions of albums.

Soon after the distribution of 'The Chronic,' Interscope began producing other artists as well, focusing particularly on hard-core alternative music, such as that of the bands Nine Inch Nails and Primus. The popularity of Nine Inch Nails allowed the band to create in conjunction with Interscope a small, alternative rock label called Nothing Records, which Interscope distributed.

Some said Jimmy was not a guy who could run a record company. Tom had been at Capitol. We were kind of a ragamuffin band of guys starting a record company. The odds were heavily stacked against us.

Of course, a lot of people love music, and Whalley was initially unwilling even to meet with Field. In a deal negotiated by none other than David Geffen , Iovine signed on. Iovine had gotten his first break from the Brill Building great Ellie Greenwich. Nirvana had ushered in the alternative revolution. Everyone there has contributed mightily, and Ted did a terrific job. It was Field, for instance, who initially got interested in Bush.

Interscope has built its extended family of labels — which includes Death Row, Trauma, Nothing and Aftermath, among others — partly on what can be termed the Great Man Theory of Music. When Interscope executives spot someone whose work excites them, they jump and jump hard. The payoff: Interscope affiliated itself with one of the most influential and popular artists of the decade and also ended up with the offshoot Nothing label and its massively successful band Marilyn Manson.

No doubt to the amusement of the outspoken rap critic C. DeLores Tucker, Interscope is also distributing a gospel label. I always feel, if you build it, [fans] will come. People have come to Interscope in a big way. Not everything Interscope has tried has worked. They can make the earth move if they want to. And some industry insiders have long suggested that Interscope greatly overpays artists, a criticism that first surfaced with the signing of Helmet.

So obviously we did the right thing. Consider the comically overheated article that attacked the label by going after its parent company, the Seagram-owned MCA, this past November in a small Washington, D. Not long ago, such rabid demonization had a real impact on two huge American conglomerates when, in a widely chronicled tale, Time Warner, on the verge of exercising an option to buy the remaining 50 percent interest in Interscope, bowed to pressure and dropped the label instead.

This left Interscope, after considering other options, to become partners with old pal Doug Morris — also deposed from Time Warner — in his new home at MCA, which had recently been acquired by Edgar Bronfman Jr.

It turns out, the things that have made MCA what it is today have been the incredibly stupid decisions of Time Warner. Iovine is quick to credit Death Row with giving popular music a shot in the arm. Those folks at Death Row were the Rolling Stones of their time. What is it about the middle-aged Iovine that makes it seem so easy for him to bond with young rappers from South Central Los Angeles? But I just knew they had great music and that they were a bunch of guys who wanted to make it out of the ghetto.

So is Field. Absolutely not.