EMI was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its acquisition by Universal Music in 2012, it was the fourth largest business group and record label conglomerate in the music industry, and was one of the "Big Five" record companies. Its labels included EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records, and Capitol Records, which are now referenced under Universal Music due to their acquisition with the exception of Parlophone, as it is now owned by Warner Music.
A record label, or record company, or simply records, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing, promotion, and enforcement of copyright for sound recordings and music videos, while also conducting talent scouting and development of new artists, and maintaining contracts with recording artists and their managers. The term "record label" derives from the circular label in the center of a vinyl record which prominently displays the manufacturer's name, along with other information.
Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a 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'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.
Warner Music Group Corp. is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "big three" recording companies and the third-largest in the global music industry, after Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME). Formerly part of Time Warner, WMG was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 2005 until 2011, when it announced its privatization and sale to Access Industries. It later had its second IPO on Nasdaq in 2020, once again becoming a public company. With a multibillion-dollar annual turnover, WMG employs more than 3,500 people and has operations in more than 50 countries throughout the world.
Pye Records was a British record label. Its best known artists were Lonnie Donegan (1956–1969), Petula Clark (1957–1971), the Searchers (1963–1967), the Kinks (1964–1971), Sandie Shaw (1964–1971), Status Quo (1968–1971) and Brotherhood of Man (1975–1979). The label changed its name to PRT Records in 1980, before being briefly reactivated as Pye Records in 2006.
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment through multiple platforms.
Odeon Records is a record label founded in 1903 by Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz of the International Talking Machine Company in Berlin, Germany. The label's name and logo come from the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) is an Indian media conglomerate. Headquartered in Mumbai, it has interests in television, print, internet, film, and businesses related to mobile content, and operates 45 channels worldwide.
Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Entertainment and managed by the American umbrella division of multinational conglomerate Sony. It is the recording division of the Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.
The music industry consists of the individuals and organizations that earn money by writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling recorded music and sheet music, presenting concerts, as well as the organizations that aid, train, represent and supply music creators. Among the many individuals and organizations that operate in the industry are: the songwriters and composers who write songs and musical compositions; the singers, musicians, conductors, and bandleaders who perform the music; the record labels, music publishers, recording studios, music producers, audio engineers, retail and digital music stores, and performance rights organizations who create and sell recorded music and sheet music; and the booking agents, promoters, music venues, road crew, and audio engineers who help organize and sell concerts.
Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., often abbreviated as SMEJ or simply SME, and also known as Sony Music Japan for short, is a Japanese music arm for Sony. Founded in 1968 as CBS/Sony, SMEJ is directly owned by Sony Group Corporation and is operating independently from the United States-based Sony Music Entertainment due to its strength in the Japanese music industry. Its subsidiaries include the Japanese animation production enterprise, Aniplex, which was established in September 1995 as a joint-venture between Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, but which in 2001 became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. It was prominent in the early to mid '90s producing and licensing music for animated series such as Roujin Z from acclaimed Japanese comic artist Katsuhiro Otomo and Capcom's Street Fighter animated series.
Michael Mark Lynton is a businessman and current chairman of Snap Inc. He previously served as chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2017, Lynton stepped down as CEO of Sony Entertainment to become Chairman of Snap, makers of the Snapchat mobile app. On February 12, 2019, he was named as chairman of Warner Music Group.
Doug Morris is an American record executive. He served as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Universal Music Group from 1995 to 2011, as well as Sony Music Entertainment from 2011 to 2017. He founded the record label 12Tone in 2018, where he's since served as CEO.
Minos EMI is a record company based in Athens, Greece. The company serves as the Greek record label and offices of the multinational Universal Music Group.
JioSaavn is an Indian music streaming service and a digital distributor of Hindi, Marathi, English, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Chhattisgarhi and other regional languages of India. Since it was founded in 2007 as Saavn, the company has acquired rights to over 80 million music tracks in 16 languages. JioSaavn is a freemium service; basic features are free with advertisements or limitations, while additional features, such as improved streaming quality and music downloads for offline listening, are offered via paid subscriptions.
The Indian Music Industry (IMI) is a trust that represents the recording industry distributors in India. It was founded on February 28, 1936, as Indian Phonographic Industry (IPI). It is the 2nd oldest music industry organization in the world that was involved in protecting copyrights of music producers and supporting growth of music entertainment industry. In 1994, it was renamed as Indian Music Industry (IMI) and represented India at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). It is also registered with the West Bengal Societies Registration Act. All major music labels in India are part of this association. Record companies like Loudetone Music, Saregama (HMV), Universal Music Group (India), Tips Industries, Sony Music India, Virgin Records, Magnasound Records, Aditya Music, Times Music, Zee Music Company and T-Series several other prominent international, national and regional labels are part of the IMI. The IMI represents over 75% of all legal music sales in India.
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.
An independent record label is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels and artists are often represented by trade associations in their country or region, which in turn are represented by the international trade body, the Worldwide Independent Network (WIN).
Phonographic Performance Limited India, commonly known as PPL India, is an Indian collective rights management organization (CMO), founded in 1941. The company controls the Public Performance rights of 317 music labels, with more than 1.5 million foreign and 0.8 million Indian songs in their repertoire. Additionally, PPL also holds the Radio Broadcast licensing rights of 268 record labels. The tracks represented by the organization encompass numerous languages including English, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali.
