RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Arista Records, and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, classical, rock, hip hop, afrobeat, electronic, R&B, blues, jazz, and country. Its name is derived from the initials of its defunct parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). RCA Records was fully acquired by Bertelsmann in 1987, making it a part of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and became a part of Sony BMG Music Entertainment after the 2004 merger of BMG and Sony; it was acquired by the latter in 2008, after the dissolution of Sony/BMG and the restructuring of Sony Music. RCA Records is the corporate successor of the Victor Talking Machine Company, founded in 1901, making it the second-oldest record label in American history, after sister label Columbia Records, founded in 1889.
Arista Records 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 a division of BMG Entertainment, the North American division of German conglomerate Bertelsmann. Founded in November 1974 by Clive Davis and deactivated in 2011, Arista was re-stablished in 2018. Along with Epic Records, RCA Records, and Columbia Records, it is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels.
Jive Records was a British-American independent record label founded by Clive Calder in 1981 as a subsidiary of the Zomba Group. In the US, the label had offices in New York City and Chicago. Jive was best known for its successes with hip hop, R&B, and dance acts in the 1980s and 1990s, along with teen pop and boy bands during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment was an American record company owned as a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann. 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.
Ariola is a German record label. In the late 1980s, it was a subsidiary label of the Bertelsmann Music Group, which in turn has become a part of the international media conglomerate Sony Music Entertainment.
Sony Music Entertainment (SME), simply 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 half of the Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.
Sony Music Masterworks is a record label, the result of a restructuring of Sony Music's classical music division. Before the acquisition of Bertelsmann's shares in the former Sony BMG, the label was known as Sony BMG Masterworks.
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.
BMG Music Canada was the Canadian division of BMG, located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Famous Music Corporation was the worldwide music publishing division of Paramount Pictures, a division of Paramount Global since 1994. Its copyright holdings span several decades and include music from such Academy Award-winning motion pictures as The Godfather and Forrest Gump.
Lisa Zbitnew is the CEO of Bandwidth Music and Marketing as well as President and Owner/Operator of the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto and the Bronson Centre Music Theatre in Ottawa. She was the CEO of War Child North America from 2008 to 2011. Zbitnew was the President and CEO of Sony BMG Music Canada from the original merger in September 2004 until January 2007. She served as President of BMG Music Canada beginning in 1996 where she reported to Tim Bowen, who oversaw Sony BMG's operations in the U.K, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. She was the first female executive to hold the position of a major record label President in Canada.
BNA Records, formerly known as BNA Entertainment, was a label group that shared ties with Arista Nashville and RCA Nashville from parent company Sony Music Nashville, which itself is a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, BNA featured country music acts on its roster. The company derived its name from the IATA and ICAO airport codes for Nashville International Airport.
RCA/Jive Label Group was a short-lived American record label group, owned by Sony Music Entertainment and representing the merger of the RCA Music Group and JIVE Label Group. The umbrella group was formed in 2007 under the name BMG Label Group, was rebranded as RCA/Jive Label Group in 2009. In July 2011 it was finally dissolved into two separate labels: the RCA Music Group and Epic Records which took Jive subsidiaries until October 2011 when it retired Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. The artists on those three labels were moved to RCA Records.
Sony Urban Music was a division of Sony BMG, active from 2004 to 2006, The division handled R&B, soul, and hip hop releases by artists nominally signed to Sony's Columbia and Epic labels. During its existence, Sony Urban managed releases by artists such as Nas, Bow Wow, John Legend, Omarion, Bossman, DMX, Beyoncé, Amerie, Keshia Chanté and contemporary Christian music duo Anointed.
"Find Out Who Your Friends Are" is a song written by Casey Beathard and Ed Hill, and recorded by American country music artist Tracy Lawrence. It was the lead-off single for his album For the Love, which was released in early 2007 on Rocky Comfort Records, a label which Lawrence owns. The song was originally released to radio stations on August 21, 2006, ahead of its album release on January 30, 2007. The single did not enter the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart until January 2007.
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.
RCA Inspiration is a gospel music group operating under Sony Music.
Sony Music Entertainment US Latin LLC is an American record label owned by Sony Music. The label focuses on artists of Latin music.
Windham Hill Records was an independent record label that specialized in instrumental acoustic music. It was founded by guitarist William Ackerman and Anne Robinson in 1976 and was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
