Label Guide: Asylum

Asylum Records founded in 1971 by David Geffen and partner Elliot Roberts, specifically to provide a record contract for Jackson Browne. Thelabel signed Tom Waits, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, The Eagles and Bob Dylan for two albums. Asylum's early releases were distributed by Atlantic Records.

Asylum was taken over by Warner Communications (now Time Warner, who later spun off its music holdings as Warner Music Group) in 1972, and merged with Elektra Records to become Elektra/Asylum Records. By the early 1980s, Elektra was becoming the more prominent of the two labels with Asylum turning into a secondary imprint, and in 1989 the company was renamed Elektra Entertainment. By this time Asylum's remaining acts had been shifted to the Elektra roster.

Asylum Records was first reformatted into an Elektra-operated country music label in 1992, then revived as an urban music-based label in 2004 which now operates under Warner Bros.