The record labels do not speak on behalf of any musicians, the only people they serve is themselves
Indie labels and the occasional hit independent label like Def Row/TDE are small in comparison and usually only include the owning musicians established music, not their beginnings. Bands often have to fight to buy back rights for that kinda stuff.
Interscope, Reprise, etc are all owned by the big three. Interscope wasn't even founded by artists.
Also labels (like Def Row and Reprise) often sell out to the big three, so even if you sign to one of them when they're independent, that won't mean it'll last forever and you as an artist won't get veto over that.
The Archive provides a valuable service, but if they're gonna die on this hill I'm going to fight them alongside my allies of convenience the record labels.
There are hundreds of thousands of record labels. Your uncle could be running a record label in his garage.
UMG alone has 38% of the entire record label market share. Its annual revenue is more than the entire revenue of all independent record labels combined.
AFAIK the lion's share of the market is held by the top ten labels, none of whom have the musician's best interest at heart. So yes, it's reasonable to say that labels generally don't represent musicians.