It has featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Depeche Mode, Erasure, Einstürzende Neubauten, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, Grinderman, Inspiral Carpets, Moby, New Order, Laibach, Nitzer Ebb, Yann Tiersen, Wire, Yeasayer, Fever Ray, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Yazoo, and M83.

[5] The album had the catalogue prefix "STUMM", a play on the record label's name, meaning "mute" in German.

[5] Around this time the artist Fad Gadget had begun recording new demos, including the track "Back To Nature".

In defiance of the major record labels' predictions of failure, Depeche Mode became successful worldwide,[5] even after the departure of principal songwriter Vince Clarke.

[5] Fad Gadget released his third album for the label, titled Under the Flag, influenced by the current Falklands War and the feeling of being British in the most unseemly of times.

[5] Mute Record's big commercial success of 1982 was the band Yazoo, the duo of Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet.

[7] That year, Mute licensed the single "Fred Vom Jupiter" from the German record label Atatak.

The single was a cover of the song "In the Ghetto", by Mac Davis, previously made famous by Elvis Presley.

He recorded the album Night Full of Tension the following year, including the single "Darling Don’t Leave Me", featuring Annie Lennox.

[8] Mute released an album of archive material from the German band Einstürzende Neubauten, titled Strategies Against Architecture '80–'83, compiled by Jim Thirlwell.

[8] The synth duo I Start Counting released their debut single, "Letters to a Friend", in June 1984, produced by Daniel Miller.

1984 ended with the long delayed release of Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing by Frank Tovey and Boyd Rice.

[11] In 1985, a new incarnation of Simon Bonney's Crime & the City Solution formed, including ex-Birthday Party members Mick Harvey and Rowland S.

[8] Mute released the single "Hypnotized" in May 1985, by newly signed artist Mark Stewart, produced by Adrian Sherwood.

[14] Fad Gadget began recording as Frank Tovey in 1985 and released the single "Luxury" in August that year, co-produced with Daniel Miller.

[8] Vince Clarke and Andy Bell began recording as Erasure in 1985, and released their debut album the next year.

[8] A remastered edition was issued in October 1998 with additional tracks, including an original version of the song "Photographic", released on Some Bizzare Records.

[18] Crime & the City Solution released new material in 1986 including the album Room of Lights and the twelve inch single Kentucky Click/Adventure.

[23] The duo began recording their debut album, Felt Mountain, in a hired cottage in Wiltshire, South West England.

[25] To mark the anniversary, Mute released the Rough Trade Shops 25 Years four CD box set.

The deal was finalized even though one in four acts signed by EMI faced being dropped by the label after job cuts in March 2002.

Some CDs were rereleases of albums previously published on Ralph Records in the 70s and 80s and some new work from the San Francisco's group such as Animal Lover and The Voice of Midnight.

Mute released the single "Dirty Sticky Floors" in May 2003, from Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan's debut solo album, Paper Monsters.

The eleven tracks on the album included songs that were recorded originally by Iggy Pop, John Lennon, and Brian Eno.

[30] The American band Liars also released a new album in March 2010, Sisterworld, which included the single "Scissor", as a digital download.

Daniel Miller was given full control of the new label, which left EMI with a minority equity interest in the company.

[32] To help fund the new label, EMI licensed part of the Mute back catalogue, also giving support in areas such as royalty administration and business affairs.

Current Mute artists such as Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, and Goldfrapp remained signed to and marketed by EMI Music.

Many other bands, including Erasure and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds moved over to Miller's new independent label.

[39] The wholly independent label[40] continued to sign new artists such as Lee Ranaldo[41] plus the catalogues[42] of Throbbing Gristle and A Certain Ratio plus released new albums from Erasure, Goldfrapp and Ben Frost amongst others.