Podcasts

Music Made Me Do It: The Label Founder – Beggar’s Banquet’s Martin Mills

The story of the biggest independent record company in the world

We’ve all dreamt of starting our own record label. A fair few of us have given it a go. Fewer have made a success of it. And then one person has done what Martin Mills has.

Martin is the founding chairman of the Beggars Group – the biggest independent label in the world, that now owns (or co-owns) XL Recordings, 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade Records and Young Turks.

What that means is that Martin’s company is responsible for giving us albums by Adele, Grimes, Radiohead, The National, The xx, FKA Twigs, The Prodigy, Pavement, Pixies, The White Stripes… the list goes on and on and on.

Beggars has been his life’s work, and in this episode of Music Made Me Do It, Martin shares his story of how he turned a mobile disco first into a record shop, and then into the biggest and most important independent company in music today.