Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at the past and future of the iconic label
News broke this week that iconic record label Warner Bros.
Records has changed
its name and logo. Now known as Warner Records, this is the first time the
label has made any huge changes to its outward name and appearance in its more
than six-decade history.
The lapse of a 2004 deal between Time Warner and a group of
investors, which stated that the company must use the Warner Bros. Records
branding for at least 15 years, this year led to this penultimate part of the
company’s rebranding process.
The new name and logo follow a handful of recent changes to
the label’s staff. In 2018, Warner’s US branch got a new Co-Chariman and CEO in
Aaron Bay-Schuck and a new Co-Chairman and COO in Tom Corson. The UK branch
named Phil Christie its new president in 2016. Warner
Chapel also got a new name and logo of its own this month, as well as a
couple of new co-chairs. That’s not to mention that the company left its Burbank
headquarters of 44 years in March for a new one in Los Angeles.
Said Bay-Schuck and Corson in a press
release about the changes; “For the first time in the label’s history,
we’ve had the opportunity to create a distinct, modern identity entirely of our
own. The timing couldn’t be better, since we all feel the label is at a moment
of reinvention that builds on our legacy, while moving into a future driven by
fearlessness and creativity. We have a growing roster of world-class artists, a
rejuvenated team, and an incredible new location. It’s a new day for Warner
Records, an iconic label that was born in the California sun, and is at home
everywhere on earth.”
Christie’s approach to the rebranding is less flowery and
more artist-based, noting in the release; “We’re signing and developing the
next generation of British artists to move global culture, so we wanted the
Warner Records brand to have the power and freedom to mean different things to
different people around the world. A new logo isn’t meaningful on its own, and
our label will always be defined by the originality of our artists, our music
and our people.”
Formed as the music division of the Warner Bros. film studio
in 1958, Warner Records has become an iconic company in its own right. The label signed its
first big artist the Everly Brothers, in 1960. Though the company had a few
successes with the Everlys and a couple of other early artists like Petula
Clarke, they found it hard to produce hit records during their first decade of existence.
After a handful of buy-outs, first by Seven Arts in 1967, then by Kinney in
1970, Warner finally hit its groove in the late 1960s and early 1970s, signing
a wealth of popular artists and developing into a major label player in the
music industry. Over the years, the label has been home to many of the industry’s
biggest artists, including Madonna
(on Sire), Prince,
Grateful
Dead, Red
Hot Chili Peppers, Green
Day (on Reprise), My Chemical Romance, Fleetwood
Mac and Black
Sabbath, to name only a few. Warner, along with its acquired labels like
Sire, Reprise and Atlantic, is currently the third largest record label behind
Universal and Sony.
Like with anything new, there are some who feel like some of
these changes weren’t thought through. The new logo, especially, has been getting
some flack in the day since being revealed. Featuring the company’s name in
bold, white block letters set against a black backdrop with a large white
circle to the left of the words, a design far from the roundedness of the
original shield logo, the
company has described the new design
as “artful simplicity and impactful typography that are ideally suited to the
digital world,” with the circle “suggesting a record, a sun, and a globe, [as]
a nod to the label’s past, present, and future.” Not everyone is seeing it as
such, though, as many people with former ties to the company have been calling
the new design “bland,” “uninspired” and “generic at best.”
Though some may not like the changes, the newly christened
Warner Records name and logo are now part of the label’s more than six decade
story. With the rebranding, the company completes a transformation that has
been years in the making. Now, Warner looks towards the future, continuing to
focus on their artists and usher in a new era of musical creativity.
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