Co-Founder Richard Foos on How Rhino Records Turned Out-of-Print Music Into a $100M Business
Rhino Records & Shout! Factory Co-Founder Richard Foos on Building the Reissue Business
Richard Foos co-founded Rhino Records and Shout! Factory (now Shout! Studios), and he’s known as the godfather of reissue culture. The record industry was always chasing the next hit. Foos found his value in old music, film and TV catalogs that the labels had written off. Rhino grew from $91,000 in first-year sales to more than $100 million a year before Time Warner bought it.
Richard talks about starting with a $140-a-month record store near UCLA, the novelty single that turned the store into a label by accident, and how Rhino invented reissues and remastering. He also covers how Shout! Factory brought Freaks and Geeks and Mystery Science Theater 3000 back, and what he’s working on now.
Key takeaways
Value where others see obsolescence. The labels thought old music was worthless. Rhino built a $100M+ business on it.
Care about quality. Remastering from the original tapes made old records sound better than they ever had.
Persistence pays. Shout! Factory would spend a year or ten clearing rights if that’s what it took.
Experiment and adjust. Keep going with an idea that’s working slowly, and keep changing it in small ways.
Start on the side. Nights and weekends count. Online tools make it cheaper to start than ever.
Quotes
“Previous to us doing it, there was really no such thing as reissues.”
“We cared about the music or show so much we would never give up.”
“Just keep doing it and make little adjustments to the right and the left.”
“We had no idea that it would be successful.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:06 — 36.5MB) | Embed
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