EMI

EMI was one of the world's four largest major labels. In 2011 it was taken over in large parts of the Universal Music Group and since then largely destroyed.

Under the umbrella of EMI Group Limited are both the record company EMI Music with several sub-labels and the music publisher EMI Music Publishing.

Development

The company was founded in March 1931 as the Electric and Musical Industries Ltd. as a merger of the UK Columbia Records and Gramophone Company / HMV. The roots of EMI rich so back to the year 1898 when the London Gramophone Company, with the participation of the records pioneer Emil Berliner was founded. In the same year, EMI opened the famous Abbey Road Studios.

During the Second World War and in the years after the EMI Laboratories in Hayes developed radar equipment and guided missiles. 1958 was built there under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield of EMIDEC 1100, the first transistor computer in England. The first computed tomography was also under the direction of Hounsfield there from 1967 to 1976 developed. Could be financed this costly development mainly from the enormous profits of the company by selling recordings of the Beatles.

In February 1979, EMI bought the United Artists subsidiary company United Artists Records. In 1980, EMI merged Ltd.. with the British company Thorn Electrical Industries Ltd to Thorn EMI. Its activities that brought Thorn Electrical Industries with the Group, included, among other things, radar and defense technology, which is also the record label garnered some criticism. 1989 Thorn EMI Ltd acquired the song catalog SBK Entertainment World ( over 300,000 individual works of pop music, including related rights ) for 295 million U.S. dollars. This the world's biggest scoring Catalog SBK acquired in 1986 by CBS for 125 million U.S. dollars. In 1991, Thorn EMI took over the label Chrysalis Records, and in 1992 for one billion U.S. dollars until then acting independently record companies Virgin Records of the Virgin Group. The active in over 40 countries conglomerate was divided again into two independently operating companies Thorn and EMI Group in August 1996.

Once there was the EMI Group since at least 2001, in a structural and later economic crisis in the company, the banking giant Citigroup corporate takeover by the investment fund Terra Firma Capital Partners funded in September 2007 (owned by London's major investor Guy Hands ), which turned out to be a bad investment. Due to the slump in CD sales, EMI recorded a pre-tax loss of 263.6 million pounds in 2007. As a result, the Group takeover should be saved, especially in the marketing area about 28 million pounds. The global number of currently 5,500 employees of EMI Group will be further reduced. After Terra Firma could no longer afford the loan interest for funding the purchase price, Citigroup took over EMI shares of Terra Firma in February 2011. By loan write-downs, Citigroup (£ 3.4 billion loans originally ), Terra Firma lost 2.2 billion pounds its equity share of £ 1.7 billion. The acquisition of EMI by Terra Firma turned out so as one of the greatest failures of the leveraged buy-outs of financial history. Finally, the Universal Music Group acquired the share package, which was approved by the European Commission in September 2012. The German parts of the EMI label Capitol Records, Blue Note Records and Virgin Records were centralized in May 2013 to Berlin Consequently, the headquarters of the Electrola GmbH was transferred in May 2013 to Munich. The pop and pop- Electrola label was moved to Universal Music Germany GmbH in Munich, where it is the folk music label Koch Universal Music continues as a sublabel since 1 May 2013. Only the label remains Rhingtön - solely because of Kölsch repertoire as the holding company EMI Recorded Music GmbH - in Cologne. After the spectacular fusion of music market is still only three major labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

Dismantling and sale

In November 2011 it was announced that EMI smashed and the parts of the company " EMI Music " and " EMI Music Publishing" are sold individually. The music business had taken on the Universal Music Group for 1.9 billion euros, a subsidiary of the French company Vivendi. An international consortium led by the entertainment and electronics giant Sony bought the rights for $ 2.2 billion and took over thus " EMI Music Publishing."

On September 21, 2012, the sale of EMI UMG in Europe and the United States was approved by the European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Thus, the market power of the merged entity would not be too big, had the EMI record label Parlophone, Mute Records and other assets will be sold. Parlophone has contracts with artists such as Coldplay and Pink Floyd.

EMI Music Publishing

Until the acquisition of BMG Music Publishing by the French media group Vivendi owned Universal Music Publishing Group EMI Music Publishing was with a catalog of over one million titles as the largest music publisher in the world with an annual turnover of 419.6 million pounds sterling, and an operating profit of GBP 105.4 million (based on the year 2005).

The end of 2007 started EMI Music Publishing Germany the paid online music service filmersclub.de that allows videographers to film scoring. The catalog of film- club contains approximately 100,000 pieces of music from all genres and eras, making it the largest music archive for amateur videographers on the internet. The repertoire is fully tagged and allows searching by keywords and categories. All music can be listened to and downloaded. The high-resolution MP3 files feature no copy protection, and can be read in any popular video editing program.

In February 2008, a cooperation with the BDFA was closed.

Composer of film music provided include Paul Hardcastle, Harry Gregson- Williams, Curtis Schwartz, Frederic Talgorn, Trevor Jones, Ron Goodwin and Hermann Skibbe.

EMI Music

For almost 50 years EMI was the largest record label in the world and will continue to be counted to the current four major major labels. According to the own self-understanding, however EMI Music is the largest independent music company in the world. EMI Music had an annual turnover of 1660.3 million pounds and an operating profit of over £ 145.1 million in financial year 2005 /2006. EMI Music represents 2008 more than 14,000 artists.

For several years, EMI Music was keen to take over its competitor Warner Music Group to return to an approaching zurücken thus on the world market leader Universal Music and secondly to be able to position before Sony BMG again. In early May 2006, the Warner Music Group had rejected a takeover bid by EMI and even responds with its own bid. In the course of subsequent judicial prohibition of the merger of Sony Music and BMG both EMI Music and Warner Music Group took the meantime distance from the merger plans. In February 2007, however, there was a renewed takeover bid for EMI by Warner.

On 2 April 2007 EMI gave a joint press conference with Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., announced that the entire catalog of music in a higher quality (256 kBit / s instead of 128 kbit / s) and without copy protection (DRM ) available will be. The iTunes Store will be the first distribution platform that will sell DRM - free songs. Users who have already purchased EMI songs will have the opportunity to get the higher quality and DRM -free version for a surcharge. EMI is the first major label that has decided to take this step. Lack of demand prompted Apple to lower the price from 17 October 2007 to the iTunes standard price.

According to Guy Hands EMI profits made with only 15% of the 14,000 EMI artists. By destroying unsold CDs emerged annual cost of 25 million pounds. According to the Los Angeles Times are not profitable almost nine out of ten EMI artists. In 2008, EMI Music had a loss of 1.2 billion U.S. dollars recorded, while sales fell from 2.8 to 2.3 billion U.S. dollars.

As part of the crisis in the music industry in 2008 EMI intensified his cooperation with the rival Warner Music. Both groups took over in the Asian region sales activities for the other. While EMI organized distribution for Warner in India and the Middle East, Warner EMI's sales products in Southeast Asia.

Labels associated with EMI Music

  • Alphabeat Music Group
  • APPLE Records
  • Astralwerks
  • Blue Note Records
  • Capitol Records
  • China Record Co. (China)
  • Chrysalis Music
  • Colonia ( Germany )
  • Columbia Nipponophone (Japan)
  • Columbia Records ( UK )
  • Deluxe Records
  • Electrola ( Germany )
  • Elevator Entertainment
  • EMI Christian Music Group
  • EMI Classics
  • EMI Scala
  • Friends of Nobody
  • Fundamental Records
  • Gooom
  • GramCo (India)
  • His Master's Voice (see also: Nipper )
  • Kent (Turkey)
  • Kling Klang
  • Labels Music
  • Mary Jane
  • Monitor ( Czech Republic)
  • Milk Music Group
  • Mute Records ( 2013 was sold to BMG)
  • Nobody's bizzness
  • Odeon
  • Palm Pictures
  • Parlophone ( in 2013 sold to the Warner Music Group )
  • Path Orient (China)
  • Pathé Records
  • Pomaton (Poland )
  • Racing Junior
  • Regal Zonophone Records -
  • Rhingtön
  • Roxette Recordings
  • Source
  • Spin Records ( founded in 1995 )
  • Telle Records
  • Virgin Music
  • We Love You
  • Wolfpack Entertainment
  • Zapple Records
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