Passenger Records was a

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

-based boutique

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

that released music by

adult album alternative Adult album alternative (also triple-A, AAA, or adult alternative) is a radio format. See pages 9 and 10Mills, Joshua. "A New Radio Music Format: Rock for Prosperous Adults" New York Times, Feb 28 1994, p. 2. ProQuest. Web. Accessed September 4, ...

(or Triple-A) artists. A subsidiary of

Caroline Records Caroline Records is a record label that was founded in 1973. Founded in the United Kingdom to showcase British progressive rock groups, the label ceased releasing titles in 1976 and then re-emerged in the United States in 1986. The label rel ...

, it was owned by

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

. Its albums were distributed by

Caroline Distribution Virgin Music, known as Virgin Music Label & Artist Services until 2022 and originally as Caroline Distribution, was a music distributor of independent artists and record labels, most prominently Death Grips, Weezer, and Radiohead. Virgin Music ...

in the US and Virgin or a variety of smaller labels throughout Europe, Australia, Japan and other markets. Passenger most notably represented

Ben Folds Five Ben Folds Five was an American alternative rock trio formed in 1993 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group comprised Ben Folds (lead vocals, piano), Robert Sledge (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Darren Jessee (drums, backing vocals). Th ...

for Caroline, releasing the band's 1995 self-titled debut album.Caroline Records Original ''Ben Folds Five'' Album Website
Other artists represented by the label include the defunct

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

band The Low Road. In a 1997 interview, after his band had signed with Sony's

Epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

550 __NOTOC__ Year 550 ( DL) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 550 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe ...

label and released their second album ''

Whatever and Ever Amen ''Whatever and Ever Amen'' is the second album by Ben Folds Five, released on March 18, 1997. Three singles were released from the album, including the lead single, " Battle of Who Could Care Less", which received significant airplay on alternat ...

'',

Ben Folds Benjamin Scott Folds (born September 12, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After playing in several small independent bands throughout the late 80s and into the early 90s, Folds came to prominence as the f ...

spoke about both Passenger and The Low Road: The Passenger Records label was dissolved in the mid-to-late 1990s. Artists either continued their contracts on with Caroline Records or signed with other labels.

References

American record labels EMI 1994 establishments in New York (state) 1990s disestablishments in New York (state) Record labels established in 1994 Companies disestablished in the 1990s {{US-record-label-stub