Phoebe Bridgers Launches Aptly Named Label, Saddest Factory

Phoebe Bridgers has announced her own record label, Saddest Factory. The label is an imprint of her label Dead Oceans, a subsidiary of Secretly Group.

Saddest Factory is a tongue-in-cheek take on “satisfactory,” a word frequently used in the industry. After years of pitching artists to Dead Oceans — including Bright Eyes, who signed to the label earlier this year — Bridgers asked to launch her own. “It’s always been a dream of mine to have a label because I’m also such a music fan,” Bridgers told Billboard. “I brought it up, like, ‘Can I have a label?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, totally.’”

Prior to getting signed to Dead Oceans in 2017, Bridgers met with several labels, noting that she “didn’t mesh” with anyone. One label encouraged her to tweet more seriously, while another offered a $10,000 advance for a 360-deal. “Even 18-year-old me was like, ‘Oh my God, fuck that,’” she said.

Saddest Factory will allow Bridgers to promote undiscovered artists across all genres — the kind of label she wished she had starting out. “If I like it and I listen to it for pleasure, then other people will like it and listen to it for pleasure,” she said. “I don’t think I have any ethos other than, ‘Am I jealous?’”

Last month, Bridgers performed her new album Punisher for the first time in full at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater. She also played three of the album’s tracks in front of a mock-up Oval Office for NPR’s Tiny Desk series, and sang “I Know the End” on Late Night With Seth Meyers to an empty theater.