Zonophone (early on also rendered as Zon-O-Phone) was a record label founded in 1899 in

Camden, New Jersey Camden is a city in and the county seat of Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Camden is part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area and is located directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the 2020 ...

, by Frank Seaman. The Zonophone name was not that of the company but was applied to records and machines sold by Seaman's Universal Talking Machine Company from 1899 to 1903. The name was subsequently acquired by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and finally the Gramophone Company/

EMI Records EMI Records (formerly EMI Records Ltd.) is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British flagship label by the music company of the same name in 1972, and launched in January 1973 as the succ ...

. It has been used for a number of record publishing labels by these companies.

1899–1910s

Emile Berliner, the inventor of the lateral-groove disc record and the

Gramophone A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

, formed a partnership with machinist Eldridge Reeves Johnson, who had improved Berliner's Gramophone to the point of marketability, and with former typewriter promoter Frank Seaman. Berliner was to hold the patents; Johnson had manufacturing rights; and Seaman had selling rights.

1920s–1970s

In West Africa (primarily today's Ghana and Nigeria) Zonophone was used as a label to record and produce Sakara, Juju and

Apala Apala (or akpala) is a music genre originally developed by the Yoruba people of Nigeria, during the country's history as a colony of the British Empire. It is a percussion-based style that originated in the late 1930s. The rhythms of apala grew ...

music on 78 rpm discs from 1928 to the early 1950s.John Collins. ''Musicmakers of West Africa''. Lynne Rienner Publishers (1985)

References

External links

* US Zonophone masters in th
Discography of American Historical Recordings

Regal Zonophone label profile

Ray Templeton * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080816000848/http://www.normanfield.com/labels1b.htm Scans of British 78 rpm record labels includes a large number of Zonophone & Regal-Zonophone labels. {{Authority control Record labels established in 1899 Record labels disestablished in 1903 Record labels established in 2007 Re-established companies British record labels EMI American record labels Parlophone subsidiaries 1899 establishments in New Jersey 1903 disestablishments in New Jersey

1899–1910s

1920s–1970s

See also

References

External links