Phonogram Incorporated was started in 1970 as a successor to Philips Phonographic Industries, a unit of the Grammophon-Philips Group (GPG), a joint venture of

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

N.V. of the Netherlands and Siemens A.G. of Germany. Phonogram was the name of a parent company that owned and or distributed many different

record labels 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 produc ...

. Phonogram was never a record label as such, but a

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

for labels which included

, Fontana,

Vertigo Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...

and Mercury and many other licensed labels.

History

In 1972 Grammophon-Philips Group was reorganized as The PolyGram Group. Following PolyGram's acquisition of Mercury in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, the corporate name was changed from Mercury Record Productions, Inc., to Phonogram, Inc. In the U.S. Phonogram artists were generally released on

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it i ...

, but the label is independent from its U.K. counterpart. By 1982, Mercury and all other PolyGram owned labels including, RSO, Polydor, Total Experience and Casablanca carried the following wording "Manufactured And Marketed by PolyGram Records" with the PolyGram Records logo. In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, Phonogram was the holding company for

Philips Records Philips Records is a record label founded by the Dutch electronics company Philips. It was founded as Philips Phonographische Industrie in 1950. In 1946, Philips acquired the company which pressed records for British Decca's Dutch outlet in ...

, which was established in 1953 and also launched the Fontana label in 1958. As well as producing their own recordings many of which became U.K. hits, Philips/Fontana licensed the rights from Columbia Records (U.S.) to release and distribute their product from 1953 until the end of 1964. After that time, Columbia U.S. set up their own marketing and production unit in the UK in Theobalds Road, London, having acquired Oriole Records and its record-pressing plant that had prospered in manufacturing discs for U.K. budget labels including

Embassy A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

, sold through Woolworths. U.S. Columbia was unable to use the "Columbia" trademark outside the United States and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

as it had already been copyrighted overseas by

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

. Therefore, U.S. Columbia product was released in most territories on the

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

record label. In 1977 Frank Zappa negotiated a distribution agreement with Phonogram for his

Zappa Records Zappa Records is an American record label based in Los Angeles which was founded by Frank Zappa in 1977. It was mostly inactive during the 1980s and 1990s, but was revived in 2006 by the Zappa Family Trust. History In May 1976, Zappa ended his r ...

label. Due to legal pressure from Zappa's previous distributor

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

, Zappa and Phonogram were forced to shelve a planned 4-LP box set called ''

Läther ''Läther'' (, or "''Leather''") is the sixty-fifth official album by Frank Zappa. It was released posthumously as a three-CD set on Rykodisc in 1996. The album's title is derived from bits of comic dialog that link the songs. Zappa also explained ...

'' (pronounced "Leather".) Phonogram did distribute 3 Zappa albums in the US and Canada, but the agreement ended in 1980. According to Zappa, this was because a Phonogram executive objected to the lyrics of a Zappa single titled ''

I Don't Wanna Get Drafted "I Don't Wanna Get Drafted" was a 1980 single by American musician Frank Zappa. The song peaked at #103 US ''Billboard'' Bubbling Under Hot 100 and #68 on the ''Cash Box'' charts, but more successfully reached #3 in Sweden. The original single ver ...

''. Phonogram president Robert Sherwood disputed Zappa's version of the story, insisting that they did not want to release a single without the support of a full-length album. Releases in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

were issued by

and Philips and carried the "Marketed by Phonogram" wording with the Phonogram logo. Phonogram also licensed recordings from small U.S. record labels for European release. Among these were

Avco Avco Corporation is a subsidiary of Textron which operates Textron Systems Corporation and Lycoming. History The Aviation Corporation was formed on March 2, 1929, to prevent a takeover of CAM-24 airmail service operator Embry-Riddle Compa ...

, Sire, Janus, Westbound, All Platinum, and

Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

De-establishment

In 1997, all PolyGram units still using the Phonogram name were renamed Mercury Records. By that time, Mercury had become PolyGram's flagship label. PolyGram continued until 1998, when the company was purchased by

Seagram The Seagram Company Ltd. (which traded as Seagram's) was a Canadian multinational conglomerate formerly headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Originally a distiller of Canadian whisky based in Waterloo, Ontario, it was once (in the 1990s) the ...

and merged with

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 ...

. Philips Records UK and Phonogram UK still have their own websites at WIX.

References

{{Authority control American record labels British record labels Record labels established in 1970 Joint ventures Philips Pop record labels

History

De-establishment

See also

References