page_title: Richard Branson
section_title: 1972–1980: Founding of Virgin Records
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Branson / Virgin / 1972–1980: Founding of Virgin Records
caption_attribution_description: English: The Manor Studios
context_page_description: Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist. He founded the Virgin Group in the 1970s, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
  Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. His first business venture, at the age of 16, was a magazine called Student. In 1970, he set up a mail-order record business. He opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records—later known as Virgin Megastores—in 1972. Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he started Virgin Atlantic airline and expanded the Virgin Records music label. In 2004, he founded spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic, based at Mojave Air and Space Port, noted for the SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane designed for space tourism.
  In March 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for "services to entrepreneurship". For his work in retail, music and transport, his taste for adventure, and for his humanitarian work, he has become a prominent global figure. In 2007, he was placed in the Time 100 Most Influential People in The World list.
  In June 2020, Forbes listed Branson's estimated net worth at US$4.1 billion.
context_section_description: Earning enough money from his record store, Branson in 1972 launched the record label Virgin Records with Nik Powell. The name "Virgin" was suggested by one of Branson's early employees because they were all new at business. Branson bought a country estate north of Oxford in which he installed a residential recording studio, The Manor Studio. He leased studio time to fledgling artists, including multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield, whose debut album Tubular Bells (1973) was the first release for Virgin Records and became a chart-topping best-seller.
  Virgin signed such controversial bands as the Sex Pistols, which other companies were reluctant to sign. Virgin Records would go on to sign other artists including the Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, XTC, Japan, UB40, Steve Winwood and Paula Abdul, and to become the world's largest independent record label. It also won praise for exposing the public to such obscure avant-garde music as Faust and Can. Virgin Records also introduced Culture Club to the music world.
  Branson's net worth was estimated at £5 million by 1979, and a year later, Virgin Records went international.
caption: The Manor Studio, Richard Branson's recording studio in the manor house at the village of Shipton-on-Cherwell in Oxfordshire
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