Good Music Group

Lore & Background

Good Music Group emerged from the post-Bangarang era, when Skrillex's profile exploded and the machinery of the major-label world started circling. Rather than slotting himself into an existing corporate structure, he and his close collaborators put together a lean, artist-first operation in Los Angeles. The ethos was deliberately anti-bureaucratic: small team, fast decisions, creative freedom as the default. Producers could come in, make something wild, and get it out the door without six months of committee meetings.

The collective identity mattered as much as the catalog. Artists on the roster were expected to push boundaries—blending dubstep growls with pop melody, folding orchestral textures into four-on-the-floor beats, or simply making something that sounded like nothing else on the radio. Porter Robinson became the most visible ambassador of that philosophy, crafting tracks that married Skrillex's aggressive low-end with genuinely emotional, almost cinematic leads. The label's output reads less like a genre playlist and more like a shared vocabulary.

For fans, Good Music Group is less a corporate entity and more a creative neighborhood. It's where the Skrillex of 2011 met the Skrillex of 2018 and beyond, where the raw, distorted energy of his early work softened into something more textured and personal, and where the next generation of bass-music producers got a door to walk through without needing a major-label handshake.

In Their Own Story

The studio was a converted warehouse off a quiet LA street, the kind of block where the buildings still had paint peeling in long ribbons. Sonny sat cross-legged on a battered couch, headphones around his neck, watching a young Porter Robinson argue with a mixing engineer about whether a snare should sit *in* the vocal or *behind* it. The engineer said behind. Porter said in. Sonny said, "Make it both. Make it in and behind at the same time. That's the only answer that's true."

They ran the session until 4 a.m. The track that came out of it had a low end that still made car windows rattle three years later, and a melody that made a grown man in the control room wipe his eyes and pretend it was the AC. Good Music didn't need a boardroom for that. It needed a couch, a pair of headphones, and the stubborn belief that the right sound was always one more pass away.

Reader's Guide

Good Music Group is the independent label and collective that Skrillex (Sonny John Moore) founded in the early 2010s, based in Los Angeles. He did not join it as an artist; he built it as a vehicle for his own creative output and a platform for other producers he respected.

Under the Good Music banner, Skrillex released key works from his post-Bangarang period through his later, more melodic and textured output, including material from the Recess era. The label also became the home for Porter Robinson, whose early albums and singles were shaped and distributed through the collective, as well as other electronic artists whose work aligned with its high-energy, melodic-bass aesthetic.

The label's role in Skrillex's career was threefold. First, it gave him distribution and business infrastructure without surrendering creative control to a major-label A&R department. Second, it functioned as a discovery and development engine, allowing him to spot and mentor younger producers before they hit the mainstream. Third, it created a consistent sonic identity around his name—listeners who picked up a Good Music release knew they were getting a particular blend of aggression, melody, and production polish.

The relationship shaped his sound by removing the pressure to chase a single genre. Freed from major-label playlists, Skrillex could drift from dubstep into pop, into orchestral textures, into slower, more vulnerable territory, and the label simply followed. Good Music Group is, in fan terms, the difference between an artist who is managed and an artist who builds his own world.

Did You Know?

• Good Music Group was structured less like a traditional record label and more like a creative collective, with a deliberately small team and an emphasis on artist autonomy over corporate A&R decisions.
• Porter Robinson's early career was closely tied to the Good Music orbit, and his melodic, emotionally driven production style became one of the label's most recognizable signatures alongside Skrillex's own aggressive bas
• The label's Los Angeles base placed it in the same city as much of the broader electronic and hip-hop production community, giving Skrillex and his roster easy access to a wide network of engineers, producers, and collab
• Good Music Group allowed Skrillex to release music that spanned a much wider emotional and genre range than his early dubstep breakout, effectively giving him permission to slow down, get melodic, and experiment without