Warner Records Inc., formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc., is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group and headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It distributes Gorillaz' music in the US since 2017.
History
Warner Records was founded in 1958 as the recorded music division of the American film studio Warner Bros, and was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations for much of its existence. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a convoluted series of corporate mergers and acquisitions from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. Over this period, Warner Bros. Records grew from a struggling minor player in the music industry to one of the top record labels in the world.
In 2004, these music assets were divested by then-owner Time Warner and purchased by a private equity group. This independent company traded as Warner Music Group and was the world's last publicly traded major music company before being bought and privatized by Access Industries in 2011. Warner Music Group is the smallest of the three major international music conglomerates that include Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Max Lousada oversees recorded music operations of the company. In 2019, the label was officially renamed Warner Records.
Role in Gorilaz
After EMI broke up in 2012, Warner Music Group aquired Parlophone Records, Gorillaz' label. Since then Warner Records has been responsible for the distribution of Gorillaz' music in the US, a job held by Virgin Records, before the 2012 EMI break-up.