As a former musician, I could write several posts on this. Yes and no. In certain cases, they "owned" the entire output of the artist, especially groups, but in most cases, they signed the artist to a 2- or 3 record deal. It was the same kind of fund 100 hope 10 hit kind of strategy. The labels would hope that 3rd record would be the moneymaker, and if that wasn't obvious after the 2nd record or even the 1st, the act got dropped.