In 2011, Ed Sheeran released his fifth EP, No. 5 Collaborations Project. The eight-track project featured grime artists on each song, bringing them into the intensely detailed world of the young artist’s songwriting. Sheeran was only 19 years old at the time and on the precipice of a big break. No. 5 Collaborations Project was his final independent release before inking a deal with Warner Music Group. Under that deal, Sheeran climbed his way to the highest echelon of pop stardom: multiple sold-out stadium tours, 60 entries on the Hot 100 (including two Number One singles), 17 Grammy Award nominations (and four wins), and billions of streams across eight studio albums.
But after 15 years with Atlantic Records and its subsidiary Asylum Records, Sheeran has decided to leave his label home. He’s the latest artist in a wave of pop stars who signed as teenagers — and now seem to have outgrown their major label parents. While the explicit details of each deal may differ, the contracts these artists signed at a young age haven’t always evolved with their careers.
“My life is hugely different now to what it was when I was a teenager, and I’ve been feeling in my gut for a long time that a lot of things in my professional life need to change,” Sheeran, 35, wrote in a statement announcing his departure. “I am, underneath it all, a singer-songwriter who plays pub gigs. And I’ve sorta morphed into this pop star who plays stadiums over 15 years, it’s a super amazing thing to have happened but also a lot to get your head around.” While he clarified “this isn’t a ‘disgruntled artist leaves record label’ type situation,” Sheeran acknowledged that what worked for him as a teenager hungry to make it as an artist isn’t exactly where he stands now.
In March, Lorde shared similar feelings when announcing her departure from Universal Music Group. She wasn’t even a teenager yet when she signed with the company. “I have been in that contract for a very, very long time, in some form of that contract since I was 12 years old, when I signed my first development deal with Universal,” Lorde shared in a voice note to fans. “The truth is that a 12 year old girl presold her creative output before she knew what it would be like, and before she knew what she was signing away.”
Lorde captured her coming-of-age experience on her debut studio album, Pure Heroine, released in September 2013, when she was 16 years old, and followed up with Melodrama, released in June 2017, when she was 20. Her most recent releases, 2021’s Solar Power and 2025’s Virgin, have shown an artist in a state of transformation. While Lorde has never been a typical pop star, these last two albums, in particular, haven’t fully fit the commercial mold. She seems to prefer that over the mainstream fame that her breakout single, “Royals,” brought her.
“I’m just trying to do weird shit,” she said in the voice note. Now 29, Lorde explained she decided it was essential to “take a second to have nothing being bought or sold that comes from me. When I see an opportunity for a clean slate, I try to take it. And it does feel different. It sounds like it wouldn’t, but it really does. I feel a feeling of openness and possibility and I’m inspired.” Like Sheeran, she clarified that there is no bad blood between herself and Universal Music Group, under which she was signed to Republic Records.
“I promise you, as it stands today, any record executive — if they had a child who was about to enter into a major recording deal, they would probably advise the child against it,” Chris Anokute, an independent manager and former major label A&R, previously told Rolling Stone. “So if you wouldn’t even let your own child sign those deals, why do you continue to put those deals in front of other people’s children?”
That artists aren’t rushing into new long-term major label deals speaks to the depreciating value of inexperience. In the beginning, labels had more leverage in terms of access and resources. Usually, by the time young artists noticed any flaws in the fine print — like who controls the rights to their music and for how long, or who has a say in their creative decisions — they’d already locked in. But as their careers developed, the real power shifted to the hands of the fans whose vested interest and spending capital sustains careers. Unlike contracted artists, fanbases have no loyalties to labels. Starting over is easier when you aren’t doing it alone. Major acts who felt this power shift in real-time at the turn of the digital age know this better than anyone.
Last year, Hayley Williams stepped into a new era of her career with her third solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. “Writing this record gave the 15-year-old version of myself, who felt like she had lost a lot of her power by signing to a major label, a voice,” the singer-songwriter told the Face. In 2024, Paramore reached the end of their 20-year contract with Atlantic Records, handing back the sense of control and authority she signed away as a teenager coming out of Franklin, Tennessee. Atlantic courted and signed Williams, now 37, as a solo artist, though she insisted on Paramore remaining a united front, even when the foundation got shaky.
The band released seven albums with the label between 2005 and 2023 in a 360-deal that gave the label a cut of profits from multiple streams of revenue. Williams’ first two solo projects, 2020’s Petals for Armor and 2021’s Flowers for Vases / Descansos, were also released through Atlantic. Ego Death arrived via her independent venture, pointedly named Post Atlantic. “It freed her, so I don’t have to be arrested in that stage of development anymore,” Williams said. While she can’t get back the time passed, she’s cashing in on her earned wisdom. Finding the right label home, or deciding to pursue an independent route, can change everything for an artist. Still, the grass isn’t always greener.
In June 2023, Halsey signed with Columbia Records following a split from Capitol Records. She began her career under the UMG umbrella as a teenager with Badlands in 2015 with Astralwerks, distributed by Capitol, before moving over to Capitol with Manic in 2020. “There were some restrictions I was under, for a lot longer than it seemed, but they are no longer in the way,” Halsey wrote to fans on Tumblr a month before the signing was announced. “I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.” In May 2022, Halsey said Capitol Records wouldn’t allow them to release new music that had been ready for more than a month unless they manufactured “a viral moment on TikTok.” The label later shared a statement saying they “have nothing but a desire to help each one of our artists succeed” and encourage “open dialogue” among their artists.
With a clean slate at Columbia, Halsey released The Great Impersonator, an album that walks a tightrope between fear and resilience. The 31-year-old said that they thought the record might be the last they would ever make after being diagnosed with lupus and a rare T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder. “This feels like my debut all over again, in some ways,” Halsey wrote in their blog post. “Your love and support have carried me through a time where I thought maybe I only had a few albums left in me, but I know now that there are so many more than I could have ever dreamed.” The Great Impersonator arrived in October 2024 and was recently expanded with a deluxe edition. In between the two versions, Halsey revealed that making the move to Columbia Records wasn’t an automatic fix to the problems they faced at their last label.
Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in September 2025, Halsey said she was “not allowed” to make an album at the time because The Great Impersonator “didn’t perform the way they wanted it to.” It wasn’t that the record was a dud. The Great Impersonator debuted at Number Two on the Billboard 200 with 93,000 equivalent album units. “That’s a pretty big first week, especially for an artist who hasn’t had a hit in a long time,” Halsey said. “But it’s a failure in the context of the kind of success I’ve had previously. And that’s the hardest part of having been a pop star once, because I’m not one anymore, and I’m being compared to people that I don’t consider lateral to me.” Representatives for Halsey did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment regarding their current standing with Columbia Records.
Even years of experience doesn’t always give artists the foresight to see when a deal might go south. In 2021, after reaching the end of his initial contract with UMG, Drake entered into a new expansive deal with the company. The rapper began releasing music under Republic Records in 2011 with Take Care. Earlier this month, he added three albums to his count with the triple release of Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour. That brings his career total to 10 solo studio albums, two collaborative records, and four mixtapes released through the label. Five years ago, re-signing might have seemed like the best move. Drake couldn’t have foreseen that he’d later name the company as a defendant in a since-dismissed defamation lawsuit.
“It’s really important to me to see eye to eye with a label regarding the future of our industry,” Taylor Swift said in 2018, when she joined the Republic Records roster following her split with Big Machine Records. Her new deal secured ownership of the master recordings of her future releases. She didn’t have the same insight to lock in those rights when she signed her first contract at the age of 14. (Swift later reacquired the rights to her first six albums following a very public battle with Big Machine and Scooter Braun). With all that she’s gained in the time since, Swift could plausibly launch her own label in the future.
While the terms of her contract have remained private, Swift has already completed six albums in her Republic deal, the same amount she released with Big Machine. At this point in her career, there is essentially no single resource she doesn’t have at her immediate disposal. While promoting her latest record, The Life of a Showgirl, Swift revealed the label had no idea she was even working on a new album until it was finished. Swift arrived at Republic with an insurmountable amount of leverage. She already had a loyal fanbase and plenty of social capital. This gave her an upper hand in negotiations that most artists aren’t afforded. All of these artists still have active fanbases, support systems that will show up when they tour and buy records when they release them. Still, their moves suggest that their long-term career goals might not align with the major labels backing them without considerable mainstream power.
As more artists trace the reason for their departures back to growing pains between themselves and their labels, others will be watching and making note. It’s just like teenagers hiding tattoos and piercings from their parents, or signing off on excessive student loans. What might seem like a great deal in one moment could lose its appeal within just a few years.
