3 other names a reader researching the genre will come across, RAM Records, Metalheadz and V Recordings, appear here as names and nothing more: no founding date, roster or catalogue fact for any of them reaches the sources this reference relies on, so it names them rather than pretending to document them. Hospital Records is the label the sources do reach, and it carries the weight of this page. The genre they all trade in is electronic dance music that emerged in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, built on fast breakbeats at 165 to 185 beats per minute with heavy bass and sub-bass lines; that is what drum and bass, also written drum & bass or drum n bass, means, and the Drum and bass page defines it in full. The bass drum, the percussion instrument, is an unrelated subject and is not covered here.

What a drum and bass label does

A drum and bass label does 4 jobs: it signs artists, releases their records, compiles the catalogue, and stands behind a sound. All 4 are visible in the sourced record of a single signing. Hospital Records signed Danny Byrd in 1999, as one of its first artists; released his first Hospital singles, Do It Again and Changes; compiled the early singles into Medical History on 5 March 2007; and carried the sound on through 4 studio albums to Atomic Funk on 7 September 2018. This is why the label matters to the way the genre is described at all: the standard description of Byrd ties the person to the genre through the company, an English producer primarily releasing drum and bass through Hospital Records.

Hospital Records, read closely

Hospital Records is a British independent record label based in East London, started in 1996 by Tony Colman and Chris Goss, primarily releasing drum and bass. It runs its operations from Shoreditch, in East London, where it also runs a publishing company. Its artists have included Netsky, Camo & Krooked, Logistics, Nu:Tone, Metrik, Fred V & Grafix, High Contrast and S.P.Y, 8 names the sources give in full, and Danny Byrd was among the first artists to sign to it, in 1999.

The chart-facing record around Byrd is where the label's 4 jobs become measurable. Rave Digger reached UK Albums Chart peak No. 68 after its release on 10 October 2010 digitally and 11 October 2010 physically, and Golden Ticket reached No. 181 on the UK chart after 24 June 2013. Ill Behaviour (feat. I-Kay) took UK Singles peak No. 36 and UK Dance peak No. 7 after a BBC Radio 1 A-list promotion on 8 September 2010 supported by MistaJam, Annie Mac and Sara Cox. Red Mist VIP took UK Dance peak No. 1 in the week ending 25 July 2009 and then travelled outward on Sick Music, into the film Dead Man Running and into the games Midnight Club LA and DJ Hero.

Put end to end, those dates show 1 company holding a producer's whole recorded arc across more than 2 decades. The label has its own Hospital Records page on this site, and it is also named among the main labels of liquid funk, the subgenre described below.

RAM Records, Metalheadz and V Recordings

RAM Records, Metalheadz and V Recordings are named here because a reader researching drum and bass labels will meet the names, and for no other reason. This site holds no sourced founding date, roster or catalogue fact for any of the 3, so it makes no claim about what they release, who records for them, how long they have run or how they compare with each other or with Hospital Records. Naming them without documenting them is the honest option; ranking them out of nothing would not be.

The scene beyond 1 roster does reach the sourced record, but through people rather than through paperwork. Roni Size is featured on Danny Byrd's Grit (2013), and General Levy is the featured credit on Blaze the Fire (Rah!) (2012). Both connect a Hospital catalogue to musicians working outside it, which is as far as the sources here go.

The liquid drum and bass labels

The liquid drum and bass labels grew out of a named campaign. In 1999, Fabio, alongside Sarah Sandy, began championing liquid funk, the subgenre with more instrumental layers, harmonies and melodies, with a same-named compilation on their Creative Source label. The style grew massively around 2003 to 2004, and by 2005 it stood among the genre's biggest-selling subgenres, with Hospital Records among its main labels and Calibre, Netsky, LTJ Bukem, High Contrast, London Elektricity and Nu:Tone among its proponents. That is the label map doing real work: several of the named proponents are also Hospital roster names, Netsky, High Contrast and Nu:Tone among them.

How Danny Byrd's path ran through the labels

Danny Byrd's path shows what the label map looks like from inside 1 career, from a 1999 signing to a 2021 move.

• 1999: signs to Hospital Records as one of the label's first artists; the first Hospital singles are Do It Again and Changes.
• 2000: BBC Radio 1's Fabio champions his remix of London Elektricity's Wishing Well.
• 2007: Medical History, the compilation of the early singles, arrives on 5 March 2007.
• 2008 to 2018: the studio albums run on Hospital, Supersized (26 May 2008), Rave Digger (10 October 2010, UK Albums peak No. 68), Golden Ticket (24 June 2013, No. 181) and Atomic Funk (7 September 2018), with the mixtape Byrd Is the Word on 29 November 2013.
• October 2021: signs with Ministry of Sound, and in 2021 releases a rework of Groove Armada's Superstylin.

Read as a sequence, that is an independent drum and bass label building a catalogue over 2 decades and a larger company arriving once the catalogue exists. Whether the route is typical of the genre is not something the sources here establish, so the page states the sequence and stops. The artist behind it is profiled on the site's Danny Byrd homepage, the label that built it has the Hospital Records page, and the sound they both trade in is defined on the Drum and bass page.