Favorite Non-Major Record Label


What's your favorite record label when you want to get away from what the majors want to sell you?
biomimetic
Moment, most live traditional Indian music, tablas and sitars and such. Unreal sound quality.
Not a record label but a distribution Seller of Indie Artist....www.cdbaby.com is where I hang most of the time.

L
I have a few... I guess the one I listen to most happens to be Pierre Verany, a small French oufit with a pretty good catalogue of mostly classical music. Hyperion would be close, though.
Red House Records is my favorite. Get a copy of "A Nod to Bob." It's a fantastic tribute to Mr. Dylan and a nice introduction to Red House artists.
Bloodshot Records is another good one.
As Lngbruno said, cdbaby.com is a great place to find new music.
Alia Vox - I'm partial to the performances of Jordi Savall and his wife anyway, but it happens to be his label and the recordings are top notch.

Rounder for blues - has some fantastic contemporary artists.

Sub Pop - Though it's really becoming what many may call a "Major Label" they seem to always be coming up with innovative talent.

Stiff...well, I just always liked their logo: "If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a fuck!"

Marco
Lost Highway. Quickly becoming a real major label, having released albums by Elvis Costello & Van Morrison. Mostly known for alt-country & singer/songwriters such as Lucinda Williams, Tift Merritt & Ryan Adams. Cheers,
Spencer


Telarc - recently bought by concord
excellent sound quality and a good stable of musicians
Reference Recordings; MA recordings; Propius; Red House "Nod to Bob" is a superbe HDCD recording. Is Telarc still is business?
french "alpha",spanish alia vox for classics and german Morr music for pop/electronica.....
I love the Lost Highway label. I had forgotten SubPop got bought, but they did, didn't they...
Mapleshade ... always seem well-recorded, and some nice off the wall stuff. Also a fan of Lost Highway (been a huge Tift fan since the beginning), and frequent cdbaby customer.
Would Matador be considered non-major? Curious what you folks think constitutes a major vs. non-major label?
glossa of spain consistently produces sonically exemplary discs for classical music from the periods renaissance to 19th century.

this label is distributed by qualiton.
I'm gonna add Kill Rock Stars - everything I've heard off that label out of Washington has been pretty ok.
In the Classical category - of course, the small Europeans are good (like those mentioned above) - but IMHO, by far the greatest "sleeper" is MHS (Musical Heritage Society). Many of their reissues are sonically better than the originals (mastered beautifully by Bill Kipper at Masterdisk), and many of their home-brewed recordings are spectacular (especially those supervised by Dr. Kurt List). When you see these for $1 in the Thrift stores - Buy Them! (unless you live in the S.F. Bay Area :)
i've really been enjoying a lot of stuff on putumayo world music label recently.

lots of fresh sounds and very nice recordings on this label. it seems that so far this label has not conceeded to mass commercialism like many american labels. i hope it stays that way for awhile.
Rounder - is that non-major? I was buying allot of their blues (and allot of artists that dont fit into a typical genre)back in the 1980s and 90s.

Relativity Records - great in the 80s and 90s for metal and they had players like Steve Vi and Joe Satriani (sp)?

Megaforce Records - a lot of great metal bands from the 80s