EMI Records is one of the most culturally significant labels in popular music. With an illustrious history and a diverse and ground-breaking roster of acts, the label has been at the forefront of every seminal musical movement. Motown Records UK has a clear vision. To operate within the same spirit space as the incredible legacy label from Detroit. Because at that point the EMI brand became a label signing artists, rather than just a corporate entity buying labels.
Actually, the following year EMI Group also rebranded the music publishing catalogues it had acquired under the EMI name, so that the EMI brand was now also a publisher signing songwriters. But forget that. That complicates things. Actually, it probably is relevant. Sort of. But anyway… from the s onwards EMI Records was a groovy record label signing groovy artists.
But at some point in the s they definitely dropped the Chrysalis bit of the name once and for all making it EMI Records for certain. Except on Robbie Williams records, for some reason. But anyway, that neatly brings us to which is probably where I should have started this story.
And by the time the storm was over and all the shit had been mopped up, Universal Music somehow owned all the EMI labels. Well, not all of them. The pesky competition regulators in Brussels had forced Universal to sell on the Parlophone business and Chrysalis catalogue minus all the records released by The Beatles and the aforementioned Williams to Warner Music.
But by the end of , Universal had the rest. Columbia too expanded rapidly oversees, doing business across Europe and in Egypt by By the end of the war The Gramophone Company had lost its sizeable German business and was unable to regain control of it it is still operating today as the classical label Deutsche Grammophon.
The company had also lost all of its operations in Russia due to the war and the Russian Revolution. By the s, the music industry was back on track and was soon booming as consumers bought more and more music. Columbia had recording contracts with some of the top conductors of the day including Sir Thomas Beecham, whilst over at The Gramophone Company, their leading artist of the time was the British composer and conductor Sir Edward Elgar. The company also produced recordings from the great orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic.
The technology of recording and producing records was also improving. During the mids the Gramophone Company began releasing double-sided discs and in electrical recording was introduced with consequent dramatic improvements in quality.
Everything was on a steady upward curve for the Gramophone Company and Columbia until the s when the Great Depression hit. As well as stereo technology, under the genius of Blumlein the EMI labs also gave birth to electrical television allowing the UK to be the first country in the world to launch a public television service and radar, which would be of great benefit to the Allied effort during World War II. After the end of the war, further technological developments were introduced into the industry.
For the first time magnetic tape recorders became available for studios, allowing artists to perform several takes of any given song instead of having to make the recording all in one go as before. Tape also made live performances outside the studio much easier to record. Another key development came in when the first vinyl 33rpm LP was released in the US. Together with the new 45rpm singles, these formats were cheaper, lighter and more durable than the old 78rpm shellac records.
An LP could also hold 25 minutes of music on each side, much more than a Both were instantly popular and dramatically expanded the market for music. Columbia had similarly decided to self-market its releases itself internationally and ended its agreement with EMI in
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