Amiga (record label)

Last updated
Amiga
Amiga Logo 1969 001.SVG
Parent companySony
Founded1947 (1947)
FounderErnst Busch
Distributor(s)Sony
Genre Pop, rock, jazz, folk
Country of originGermany

Amiga is a popular music record label in Germany. Once an organ of the East German state-owned music publisher VEB Deutsche Schallplatten, Amiga became a label of the Bertelsmann Music Group in 1994.

Contents

In 1947, actor and singer Ernst Busch got permission from the Soviet Military Administration in Germany to create a music publishing house, which was named Lied der Zeit GmbH ("Song of the Times"). This publishing company included the label Amiga. In the 1950s, Lied der Zeit became VEB Deutsche Schallplatten ("German Records"), a state-owned company with a monopoly on record production. VEB Deutsche Schallplatten had a number of labels, each with a different purview; Amiga releases included folk, jazz, pop, rock, Schlager music, chanson, and children's music.

After the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic, most of the former East German public state enterprises were dismantled or sold to private investors. The Amiga label and catalog were acquired by Bertelsmann Music Group in 1994, which in turn was dissolved into Sony Music Entertainment in 2008. [1]

Amiga's catalog consists of 2,200 albums and about 5,000 singles, with a total of 30,000 titles.

See also

Related Research Articles

Bertelsmann German multinational media, services and education company

Bertelsmann is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates and also active in the service sector and education.

Arista Records, Inc. is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was previously handled by Bertelsmann Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis. Along with Epic Records, RCA Records, and Columbia Records, Arista is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels.

Jive Records American record label

Jive Records was an American independent record label formed in 1981 and was owned by Sony Music Entertainment since 2003. Formerly headquartered in New York City, Jive was best known for its string of successes with hip hop artists in the 1980s and 1990s, and also in teen pop and boy bands during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since 2011, the label has been in hibernation with its previous operations having been absorbed by RCA Records.

Bertelsmann Music Group Record label company

Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music company was formed as RCA/Ariola International in 1985 as a joint venture to combine the music label activities of RCA Corporation's RCA Records division and Bertelsmann's Ariola Records and its associated labels which include Arista Records. It consisted of the BMG Music Publishing company, the world's third largest music publisher and the world's largest independent music publisher, and the 50% share of the joint venture with Sony Music, which established the German American Sony BMG from 2004 to 2008.

Ernst Busch (actor)

Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Busch was a German singer and actor.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment was an American record company owned as a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann Music Group. The venture's successor, the revived Sony Music, is wholly owned by Sony, following their buyout of the remaining 50% held by Bertelsmann. BMG was instead rebuilt as BMG Rights Management on the basis of 200 remaining artists.

From the 1950s until the 1980s the VEB Deutsche Schallplatten was the monopolistic music publisher in the German Democratic Republic.

Sony Music American music company

Sony Music Entertainment is an American global music company. Owned by the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Corporation of America.

Volkseigener Betrieb

The Publicly Owned Enterprise was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany. They were all publicly owned and were formed after mass nationalisation between 1945 and the early 1960s, and the handing back in 1954 of some 33 enterprises previously taken by the Soviet Union as reparations.

Universal Music Publishing Group American music publishing company

Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) is a North American music publishing company and is part of the Universal Music Group, a subsidiary of Vivendi and Tencent. It was formerly known as MCA Music Publishing until it merged with PolyGram.

Famous Music Corporation was the worldwide music publishing division of Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom since 1994. Its copyright holdings span several decades and includes music from such Academy Award-winning motion pictures as The Godfather and Forrest Gump. It was founded in 1928 by Paramount’s predecessor, the Famous-Lasky Corporation, to publish music from its "talking pictures." Some of the classic songs in the Famous Music catalog that originated in motion pictures include "Moon River", "Thanks for the Memory", "Silver Bells", "Mona Lisa", "Where Do I Begin?", "Speak Softly, Love", "Up Where We Belong", "Footloose", "Take My Breath Away" and "My Heart Will Go On".

Gruner + Jahr

Gruner + Jahr is a publishing house headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company was founded in 1965 by Richard Gruner, John Jahr, and Gerd Bucerius. From 1969 to 1973, Bertelsmann acquired a majority share in the company and gradually increased it over time. Since 2014, the company has been a fully owned subsidiary of the Gütersloh-based media and services group. Under the leadership and innovation strategy of Julia Jäkel, Gruner + Jahr has evolved into a publishing house producing cross-channel media products for the digital society.

BMG Rights Management international music company

BMG Rights Management GmbH is an international music company based in Berlin, Germany. It combines the activities of a music publisher and a record label.

<i>Chausseestraße 131</i> 1968 studio album by Wolf Biermann

Chausseestraße 131 is the second LP recorded by East German Liedermacher and poet Wolf Biermann, after Wolf Biermann (Ost) zu Gast bei Wolfgang Neuss (West), an album recorded together with Wolfgang Neuss. It was his first album released after the Socialist Unity Party officially blacklisted him from performing or releasing music through the East German music monopoly VEB Deutsche Schallplatten. Due to being blacklisted, Biermann was unable to use a professional recording studio to record the album, forcing him to record in his apartment at Chausseestraße 131 using a Grundig tape recorder and a Sennheiser omnidirectional microphone smuggled in from West Germany. Because of this, the sound of traffic outside his apartment can be heard in the background.

Barbara Thalheim

Barbara Thalheim is a Berlin-based German popular singer and songwriter. She celebrated the fortieth anniversary of her first stage appearance in 2013.

Hartwig Masuch German music executive (born 1954)

Hartwig Masuch is a German music executive. Since 2008, he has been Chief Executive Officer of BMG Rights Management, a Bertelsmann group division. Under his leadership, BMG became a leading international music company. According to Billboard, he is among the most influential representatives of the industry in the world. Masuch was himself a musician and producer and is considered a pioneer of the Neue Deutsche Welle.

Gerhard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger was a German conductor.

Hanns-Herbert Schulz, better known as Hanns Petersen, was a German opera singer (baritone), music college teacher and pop singer. He is known for his career in popular music (Schlager), his many operatic performances at the Semperoper and the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar and his work as a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber and Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar.

The UC compander system is a noise reduction system for vinyl records, aiming at highest playback compatibility even without corresponding UC expander.

References

  1. Das DDR Handbuch (in German and English). Cologne: Taschen. 2017. p. 261. ISBN   9783836565202.

Books