EMI Records (formerly EMI Records Ltd.) is a multinational
record label
A record label, or record company, 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 pr ...
owned by
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch–American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...
. 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 successor to its
Columbia
Columbia may refer to:
* Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America
Places North America Natural features
* Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...
and
Parlophone record labels. The label was later launched worldwide. It has a branch in India called "EMI Records India", run by director
Mohit Suri. In 2014,
Universal Music Japan revived the label in Japan as the successor to
EMI Records Japan. In June 2020, Universal revived the label as the successor to
Virgin EMI, with
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a world ...
now operating as an imprint of EMI Records.
History
An EMI Records Ltd. legal entity was created in 1956 as the record manufacturing and distribution arm of EMI in the UK. It oversaw EMI's various labels, including
The Gramophone Co. Ltd.,
Columbia Graphophone Company, and
Parlophone Co. Ltd.
The global success that EMI enjoyed in the 1960s exposed the fact that the company had the rights to only some of its trademarks in some parts of the world, most notably
His Master's Voice and Columbia, with
RCA Victor and the American
Columbia Records owning the rights to these trademarks in North America.
Complicating matters was Columbia's formation of its own operations in the UK by purchasing
Oriole Records and changing its name to that of its then-parent company
CBS (the legal trademark designation bearing the full name of the parent company, "Trade Mark of Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc."), and as
CBS Records International becoming highly successful, a serious rival to EMI, in the UK.
In July 1965, the standalone EMI Record labels were extracted from E.M.I. Records Ltd. and folded into The Gramophone Company Ltd. On 1 July 1973, The Gramophone Co. Ltd. was renamed EMI Records Ltd. At the same time, E.M.I. Records Ltd. was wound down and its activities were absorbed into EMI Records Ltd.
Earlier, on 1 January 1973, all of The Gramophone Company Ltd. pop labels (Columbia, Parlophone, Harvest, Sovereign and Regal) had been rebranded as EMI. EMI Records then signed new music artists that became worldwide successes:
Kraftwerk,
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
,
Queen
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
,
Olivia Newton-John
Dame Olivia Newton-John (26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022) was a British-Australian singer, actress and activist. She was a four-time Grammy Awards, Grammy Award winner whose music career included 15 top-ten singles, including 5 number-one s ...
,
Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. While fluid in the early years of the band, the lineup for most of the band's history has consisted of Harr ...
,
Kate Bush,
Sheena Easton, and
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics an ...
(though some of these acts were on different labels in the US, not EMI's
Capitol Records). In 1978, EMI launched
EMI America Records as its second label in the United States after Capitol, and in 1988, EMI America later merged with sister label
Manhattan Records, founded in 1984,
becoming EMI Manhattan Records and eventually EMI USA when Capitol absorbed it in 1989. In 1997, EMI Records' American division was folded into
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a world ...
and Capitol.
In October 1979, EMI Ltd. merged with
Thorn Electrical Industries to become Thorn EMI, whose shareholders voted on 16 August 1996 in favour of demerging Thorn from EMI again. The recorded music division became EMI Group plc, and the electronics and rentals divisions were divested as Thorn plc.
In 2010, EMI Records opened a
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
division, EMI Records Nashville, which includes on its roster
Troy Olsen
Troy Olsen (born July 12, 1973) is an American country music singer-songwriter signed to EMI Nashville, He co-wrote Blake Shelton's 2009 hit single " I'll Just Hold On" and Tim McGraw's "Ghost Town Train," a cut from the album '' Southern Voi ...
,
Alan Jackson
Alan Eugene Jackson (born October 17, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter. He is known for blending traditional honky-tonk and mainstream country pop sounds (for a style widely regarded as "neotraditional country"), as well as penning many ...
,
Kelleigh Bannen, and
Eric Church. EMI Records Nashville is a sister label to the
Capitol Nashville
Capitol Records Nashville is a major United States-based record label located in Nashville, Tennessee operating as part of the Universal Music Group Nashville. From 1991 to 1995, Capitol Nashville was known as Liberty Records, before returning ...
unit of
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch–American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...
.
Australia's most prolific artist,
Slim Dusty
Slim Dusty, AO MBE (born David Gordon Kirkpatrick; 13 June 1927 – 19 September 2003) was an Australian country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer. He was an Australian cultural icon and one of the country's most awarded stars, ...
, signed with the Columbia Graphophone Co. for
Regal Zonophone Records in 1946 and remained with EMI until his death in 2003, selling over 7 million records for the label in Australia by 2007.
Virgin EMI Records retained use of the EMI branding after Universal Music Group's acquisition of EMI in September 2012, but it is otherwise unrelated to the old label which was defunct and renamed Parlophone Records in 2013 and is now part of
Warner Music Group. EMI Christian Music Group was renamed
Capitol Christian Music Group.
EMI Classics was sold to Warner Music Group in February 2013. After EU regulatory approval, EMI Classics was absorbed into
Warner Classics in July 2013. The reissues of pre-1997 releases from EMI America and EMI Records USA are handled by UMG's
Capitol Music Group, Virgin Records' American distributor and a stand-alone British distributor. The distributors of the vast majority of EMI Records' UK catalogue are
Rhino Entertainment in the US and WEA International for the world outside the US.
In April 2013,
EMI Music Japan
, formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. When ...
became defunct following Universal's acquisition of EMI. The company's successor was
EMI Records Japan, a sublabel of
Universal Music Japan. In February 2014, Universal Japan did a label reorganization, with more than half of the former
EMI Records Japan artists being transferred to Nayutawave Records. Later that year, the two sublabels were combined and rebranded as EMI Records. Since 2018, Takeshi Okada has been the managing director of Universal Japan's EMI Records label. In 2020, the label launched an official YouTube channel, six years after the label was formed.
On 16 June 2020, Universal rebranded Virgin EMI Records as EMI Records and named Rebecca Allen (former president of UMG's Decca label) as the label's president.
[
In September 2020, Universal launched Motown UK, under EMI Records.]
EMI United Kingdom
EMI United Kingdom is a brand of EMI Records that, despite the name, appeared worldwide between roughly 1993 and 1998, used mainly for artists such as Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. While fluid in the early years of the band, the lineup for most of the band's history has consisted of Harr ...
, Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics an ...
, as a sister imprint to Parlophone, EMI Premiere, hEMIsphere, Eminence, EMI Gold and the home video division Picture Music International
PMI (Picture Music International) was a division of EMI that specialised in music video releases for EMI artists. Releases included videos from the Beatles, Kate Bush, Cliff Richard, Pet Shop Boys, Queen, Pink Floyd and Duran Duran, as well as Iro ...
. During the 90s, it reissued albums that originally bore the Harvest Records, Columbia Graphophone Company, RAK Records, Regal Zonophone
Regal may refer to:
Companies
* Regal Beloit, usually referred to as Regal, an American manufacturer of electric motors
* Regal Cinema (disambiguation), several cinemas of that name
* Regal Cinemas, a major American theater chain
* Regal Cinem ...
, HMV, Music for Pleasure and Starline Starline may refer to:
Transport
* Starline.kz, a defunct Kazakhstan airline
* "STARLINE", the callsign for the United Arab Emirates airline ''Red Star'', see List of airline codes
* "STARLINE", the callsign of the defunct Swedish airline '' Swedli ...
labels. As of 2013, EMI UK's catalogue is owned by Warner Music Group after the acquisition of the Parlophone Label Group's assets. By contrast, UMG owns the catalogue of reissues from Deep Purple's albums between 1972 to 1975 on the band's vanity label Purple
Purple is any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purples are produced by mixing red and blue light. In the RYB color model historically used by painters ...
, in addition to their last albums for EMI in Europe, '' Abandon'' and '' Bananas''.
See also
* Abbey Road Studios
*List of record labels
File:Alvinoreyguitarboogie.jpg
File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
File:Bingola1011b.jpg
Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, b ...
* List of EMI Records artists
References
External Links
*
*
*
*
{{Authority control
British record labels
1972 establishments in the United Kingdom
2013 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
2020 establishments in the United Kingdom
Record labels established in 1972
Record labels disestablished in 2013
Record labels established in 2020
2014 establishments in Japan
Pop record labels
Electronic dance music record labels
Rock record labels
EMI
Jazz record labels
Labels distributed by Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Japan