V2 Records (or V2 Music) is a record label that is owned by Universal Music Group as of October 2007. The label was founded in 1996 by Richard Branson, five years after he sold Virgin Records to EMI.

Ultimately, the label was owned 95% by Morgan Stanley and 5% by Branson because Morgan Stanley was the chief financier of the company. Over the years V2 acquired Gee Street Records, Junior Boy's Own, Blue Dog Records, and Big Cat Records. The label also distributed many labels, such as Wichita, Luaka Bop, City Slang, and Modular.

V2 now operates in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States.^{[citation needed]} It was distributed in the US by BMG; however it left for WEA shortly after the formation of Sony BMG. Its headquarters were located at 14 East 4th Street in Manhattan, the former US home of Island Records, which was in the same building as the former Greenwich Village branch of Tower Records.

In April 2005, Cooperative Music was set up by the V2 Music Group as a transnational marketing and distribution operation which licenses independent labels, as opposed to individual artist companies which is the standard industry practice, for release in Europe, Australia and Japan. This in-house licensing division has an exclusive international marketing team with representation in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia and Japan.

Maximilian Hecker (born July 26, 1977 in Heidenheim an der Brenz) is a German musician from Berlin, known for ethereal pop music, similar to Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Tom Baxter and Nick Drake. He himself describes his songs as »melancholy pop hymns«.

Hecker grew up in Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. He learned to play the piano, the drums and the guitar and did his A levels at Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium in Bünde in 1997. Having finished his alternative civilian service at Klinikum Schwabing in Munich, he started training in nursing practice at the hospital Charité in Berlin in 1999.

Apart from his activities as a trainee nurse, Hecker continued pursuing his musical hobby busking in the area of Hackescher Markt in Berlin-Mitte. Thus he came in contact with Berlin's music- and cultural scene. In 2000, the demo of his song »Cold Wind Blowing« was used for the score of German director Esther Gronenborn's movie alaska.de. Soon after that, the Berlin based record company Kitty-yo, having released the movie's soundtrack, offered Hecker a record deal.

Nell Bryden (born March 8, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, to parents themselves a singer (Jane Bryden) and artist (Lewis Bryden). A classically trained musician (she studied the cello for ten years), Bryden dreamed of becoming an opera singer before hearing Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin for the first time. After some time spent in Australia honing her craft, Bryden attended Wellesley College where she graduated in English Literature with honours. It was during this time that she began performing her songs live.

Bryden was living in Greenwich Village in New York during 9/11, an event that had a "profound" effect on her. The following year she recorded an album in Nashville,[1] and toured the US to support the album. Disillusioned with the music business, she travelled to New Orleans to write a new album, inspired by the jazz, roots and blues influences of the Crescent city. Bryden began recording with producer John Hill, but after the project ran out of money they returned to New York with a half-finished album. Two weeks later Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, displacing many of the musicians on the record and destroying much of the town.

Ron van den Beuken (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrɔn vɐn dɛm ˈbøː.kə(n)]) (born April 10, 1970 in Horst, Netherlands) is a Dutch DJ and record producer.

Van den Beuken attended the Conservatorium Maastricht and Maastricht University, where he studied in law. It was also there he became interested in dance music by coincidence.

After graduating, Van den Beuken began his music career in 2000. He released his first debut album, "Feel It,", which reached the top of the Dutch music chart and stayed there for several weeks. His follow-up track, "Keep it Up," was a top-ten hit in Scandinavia.

After this initial success, Van den Beuken ventured into different projects, including his first trance production, "Shane" and "Cest Muzique." He then produced "The Mystery," which has since been released in countries all over the world, and reached the top 75 in the UK. "Devotion (All I ever wanted)" also reached the top 75 in the UK.

In 2003, Van den Beuken introduced the track Clokx, covering the track Clocks from Coldplay, which reached the top of several dance-charts around the world, and entered the Dutch top 100 Sales Chart. His record "Timeless," which followed soon after, was his breakthrough track—it stayed in the Dutch top-100 for 15 weeks.