A label map from Studio One to VP

Digital-B was Bobby "Digital" Dixon's label and production house, a major late-1980s and 1990s bridge between digital dancehall, roots-conscious singers and the updated versions of classic rhythms that kept older Jamaican musical memory active in a new studio language.

Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's studio and label at 13 Brentford Road, Kingston — the closest thing Jamaican music has to a foundation. From 1963 onward it moved through ska, rocksteady and early reggae, and the rhythms cut in its rooms became the raw material for everything after: the Studio One catalogue is versioned, toasted over and sampled to this day, and a working knowledge of it is effectively a working knowledge of the music. Its house bands (the Skatalites, later Sound Dimension) and its roll of first recordings — The Wailers, Alton Ellis, Burning Spear, Dennis Brown, Marcia Griffiths, Horace Andy and many more — make it the single most connected node in this archive. Officially the Jamaican Recording and Publishing Studio, it was built out of a former nightclub at 13 Brentford Road in Cross Roads, which Dodd acquired in 1962 and converted with his father's help — the first Black-owned recording studio in Jamaica. The address served as studio, label headquarters and shopfront at once, which is what earned it the "Motown of Jamaica" comparison. Days before Dodd's death in May 2004 the Jamaican government renamed Brentford Road as Studio One Boulevard.

Channel One was a Kingston studio and label built in 1972 by the Hoo Kim brothers - Joseph "Jo Jo" (producer), Ernest (engineer) and Paul (who ran the studio's sound system) - reaching its peak influence around 1975-76 with a heavier, "rockers" drum sound that reshaped roots reggae production. Paul Hoo Kim's killing in 1977 disrupted the studio, but Channel One remained a working space into the 1980s, hosting productions by Sly and Robbie and Henry "Junjo" Lawes.

The London label that began as a record shop in Shepherd's Bush in the mid-1970s and became one of the two or three most important reggae catalogues outside Jamaica. It carried roots through the late 1970s, was central to the dancehall boom of the 1980s, and its Ragga Ragga Ragga compilations were how much of the world heard each year's rhythms. VP acquired it in 2008.

The Chin family label and distributor, grown out of Randy's Record Mart on North Parade in Kingston and rebuilt in Queens, New York after the family emigrated in the late 1970s. VP became the largest independent reggae and dancehall operation in the world, and for decades the primary route by which Jamaican records reached an international audience — its Strictly the Best compilations functioning as a running record of what the dance was playing. Discogs dates the family's move from Jamaica to 1977 and puts the first shop at 170-03 Jamaica Avenue, then 170-21, which sits two years earlier than the 1979 founding most sources give; a move and a company are not the same event, and the archive records both rather than choosing. Billboard named VP its reggae label of the year in 1999. The Greensleeves purchase took the group past 25,000 titles, and it runs fourteen imprints of its own, among them Riddim Driven, Dub Rockers, VP Classics and Randy's Records, the last carrying the Kingston shop's name back into the catalogue.

Philip "Fatis" Burrell's label, and the engine room of the 1990s roots revival — the house that carried Luciano, Sizzla, Capleton and Beres Hammond through their most fertile period. Fatis' productions gave the conscious turn of the decade its sound: heavy, live-feeling and unmistakably his. Fatis Burrell's Xterminator sound system is reported, by his own account, to have been the first major Jamaican sound to incorporate a CD player, although it continued to play mostly off vinyl. On record, Burrell paired his dancehall-rooted cultural artists, chiefly Sizzla, Ras Shiloh, Mikey General and Luciano, with veteran session musicians including Sly and Robbie, Dean Fraser, Robbie Lynn and Steve "Cat" Coore, giving the productions more musical depth than typical dancehall of the period, and produced Spanish-language reggae aimed at South American markets, reflecting Burrell's stated view that reggae needed to succeed internationally without losing its roots character.

Joe Gibbs Music was producer Joe Gibbs's label, run with engineer Errol "ET" Thompson as "the Mighty Two." After Channel One's mid-1970s peak, Gibbs and Thompson's studio became one of the defining sounds of late-1970s roots reggae and dub production.

Arthur "Duke" Reid's studio above his liquor store at 33 Bond Street, Kingston, and the label of the same name. If Studio One owned ska, Treasure Isle owned rocksteady: from 1966 Reid's productions with Alton Ellis, the Techniques, the Paragons, Phyllis Dillon and John Holt defined the slower, sweeter, bass-forward form, and those rhythms became a second foundation catalogue — the basis of countless later versions, not least through U-Roy toasting over them in 1970. Melodians singer Brent Dowe recalled Duke Reid running an unusually hands-on studio: a speaker wired through to his liquor-store office let him monitor every take while doing other business, and he would reportedly run upstairs shouting corrections the moment something sounded wrong. Dowe also credited Reid as first to deliberately lengthen recordings once rocksteady's slower tempo allowed it, from roughly 2:20 ska cuts to three- or four-minute rocksteady tracks. A between-takes tape fragment on the compilation "Ska after Ska after Ska", titled "Duke Speaks", preserves Reid's own voice mid-session demanding "plenty more bass and drum".

Taxi Records is the label created by rhythm section Sly and Robbie, launched with Gregory Isaacs's "Soon Forward," which reached number one on Jamaican charts. Taxi's 1981 Black Uhuru album "Red" became a landmark international reggae release, and by 1980 the label's international distribution ran through Island Records' Mango/Taxi subsidiary - one of the longest-running homegrown Jamaican labels.

Madhouse Productions was Dave Kelly's production house, known for shaping some of 1990s dancehall's most influential riddims and for giving artists a sharply produced, sparse and percussive sound that travelled well from Jamaican dances to international clubs.

In.Digg.Nation Collective is a label and collective associated with artist Protoje, part of the 2010s "Reggae Revival" movement of younger Jamaican artists releasing roots-influenced music through independent, internationally-distributed channels rather than the older major-label/riddim-producer system.

Donovan Germain's Kingston label and studio, and one of the defining operations of the early 1990s — where Buju Banton, Marcia Griffiths, Wayne Wonder, Garnett Silk and Beres Hammond cut some of their strongest work, with Dave Kelly engineering. Penthouse ran a house sound that could hold both hardcore dancehall and singers' material without either sounding out of place.