Sanctuary Records
British record label
Sanctuary Records Group Limited was a record label based in the United Kingdom and is, as of 2013, a subsidiary of BMG Rights Management solely for reissues. Until June 2007, it was the largest independent record label in the UK and the largest music management company in the world. It was also the world's largest independent owner of music intellectual property rights, with over 160,000 songs.
History
The company was formed in 1979 by Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor, who met as undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1979, they discovered Iron Maiden in a London pub and went on to manage the group. They named the record company after the band's song "Sanctuary," which was released as a single in 1980, and later included on American pressings as well as the reissued CD version of their 1980 eponymous debut album.
Sanctuary Records has historically signed artists that they consider to have long-term appeal.
Between 1989 and 1991, Sanctuary was co-owned by the Zomba Group, whose music publishing arm still held the music of Iron Maiden in 2001.
In 1994, the company diversified. Amongst the new media interests included a joint venture with screenwriter and producer, Raymond Thompson, which evolved into the Cloud9 Screen Entertainment Group.
The public source identifies “Sanctuary Records” as british record label. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sanctuary, Records and British.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1347984. VIAF identifies the subject as 125316590. The Library of Congress control number is nr2007006643. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2007, 1979 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sanctuary Records” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.