Brian Eno Is Restarting Opal Records After Thirty-Five Years

Opal Records is coming back. Brian Eno founded it in 1988, put it on hiatus in 1991 to concentrate on his own work, and moved the catalogue across to All Saints Records. It has been dormant since.

The relaunch begins with two reissues, both from Eno himself: Another Day on Earth, from 2005, and Drawn From Life, his 2001 collaboration with J. Peter Schwalm. Neither has been available outside Japan for close to twenty years. New releases are planned.

What the label was the first time

The roster from Opal's short original run is a reasonable summary of a particular corner of late-eighties music, and it explains why the name still means something.

Between 1988 and 1991 the label released records by Brian Eno and Roger Eno, Harold Budd, Laraaji, Djivan Gasparyan, Hugo Largo, Zvuki Mu, Daniel Lanois, Jon Hassell and John Cale.

That is ambient, minimalism, Armenian duduk, Russian post-punk and Welsh avant-garde in the same catalogue, which was the point. Opal existed because there was no obvious home for any of it.

Three years of releases, then thirty-five years of the name meaning something anyway

Columbia hires for urban marketing

Columbia Records has appointed Corey Calder, who works as C-Notes, as senior vice president of marketing and head of urban music marketing.

Calder has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and has worked with BabyChiefDoit, Lay Bankz and Odetari while shaping campaigns for YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Kevin Gates. He arrives from Artist Partner Group, where he was head of marketing and creative, and was previously president of marketing and A and R research at Think It's a Game Records. Earlier roles took in Warner Records, Apple, Beats Music, Wasserman and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Erika Alfredson, Columbia's executive vice president and head of marketing, said Calder has shown a particular ability to build campaigns that connect artists with culture, across both emerging talent and established names.

beatBread names a new chief executive

beatBread, the funding platform for independent artists, labels and songwriters, has appointed Andreea Gleeson as chief executive. She was previously chief executive of TuneCore.

Since launching in 2020, beatBread has provided more than 100 million dollars in advances across in excess of 2,000 deals with creators in 42 countries. Gleeson joined TuneCore in 2015, and before that held senior roles at Hudson's Bay Company and Lord and Taylor.

She succeeds Tracy Maddux, who took the business on as interim leader following the death of its founding chief executive, Peter Sinclair, in August 2025. Maddux will continue to support the company through the handover, and both he and Gleeson have joined the board.

Gleeson's framing of what the company does is worth noting, because it describes the actual gap in independent music finance. Peter and the team, she said, solved a real problem for independent artists, which is how to access growth capital without giving up ownership or control. Better capital on artist-friendly terms, she added, is one of the most important opportunities ahead.

Catalogue and booking

Primary Wave Music has partnered with Daniel Jones, the singer, songwriter and producer from Savage Garden, on his songwriting catalogue across the group's two studio albums. That includes I Want You, To the Moon and Back and Truly Madly Deeply.

Mark Shimmel of Primary Wave said he had followed the Australian music scene for many years and called it a privilege to bring Jones and his catalogue in.

Elsewhere, Culture Wars, the alt-rock band from Austin, Texas, have signed with the Team for worldwide booking representation, under a group led by Marty Diamond, Andrew Buck, Adele Slater and Ryan Penty.

The band begin the third leg of their 2026 world tour on September 15 in Toronto, opening a North American headline run behind their debut album Don't Speak, out now through AWAL.