It sounds a little trite, Martin Mills is well aware of that: “But we're kind of a family.” These include the indie rock group The National, Queens Of The Stone Age, The xx and Radiohead.

All of them prominent and some Grammy-winning bands who have been working with Mills' Beggars Group for years.

"They're no longer with us because they once signed a deal for six albums and can't get out of it," says Mills.

Rather, they valued the togetherness.

And everything that a major label can do for them beyond a large advance payment, you can do just as well anyway.

Benjamin Fischer

Editor in business.

  • Follow I follow

With Adele, however, the most prominent member of the family has now left in favor of a major (Sony Music).

She has just decided on a different path, says Mills soberly: "That's okay, we still get on well, and everyone is happy." That the rights to her first three albums are still with the Beggars Group and so on the new one Well deserved Adele hype, it certainly does its part.

From Oxford to label boss

The 72-year-old Brit has every reason to be satisfied. His “beggar group” - named after the Rolling Stones album “Beggars Banquet” - is one of the largest and oldest addresses in the world of independent music companies. So all those who do not belong to the cosmos of the industry giants Universal, Sony and Warner Music. In addition to a publisher, labels such as 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade and Adeles alte Heimat XL Recordings operate under the Beggars umbrella. Beggars holds 50 percent of the latter three. The group recently had annual sales of around $ 79 million. No comparison to the billions of the majors, but a handsome sum for an indie.

Mills is the sole owner of the group. The growing interest of powerful financial investors in music rights is unlikely to change that. "I've already said no to so many offers," says Mills, "in the meantime people have probably stopped asking." He once studied politics, philosophy and economics at the elite forge Oxford. “But music was my first love,” he confessed to the FAZ in 2012 with a good amount of pathos, which he likes to resonate in the music industry even in press releases on sales.

From 1974 onwards, Beggars was initially a small network of record stores in London, where the punk scene also grew a little later.

The original label of today's group was founded by Mills and college buddy Nick Austin three years later.

With the engagement of the musician Gary Numan, they hit the bull's eye early on.

Austin got out at the end of the 1980s, but musically more luck followed.

Over time, the Pixies, The Prodigy or Vampire Weekend worked together with Beggars.