EMI
EMI Group Limited was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its acquisition by Universal Music in 2012, it was the fourth largest business group and record label conglomerate in the music industry, and was one of the "Big Four" record companies. Its labels included EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records, and Capitol Records, which are referenced under Universal Music due to their acquisition with the exception of Parlophone, since owned by Warner Music.
EMI was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was also once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but faced financial problems and US$4 billion in debt, leading to its acquisition by Citigroup in February 2011. Citigroup's ownership was temporary, as EMI announced in November 2011 that it would sell its music arm to Vivendi's Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion and its publishing business to a Sony/ATV consortium for around $2.2 billion. Other members of the Sony consortium include the estate of Michael Jackson, the Blackstone Group, and the Abu Dhabi–owned Mubadala Development Company. EMI's locations in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada were all disassembled to repay debt, but the primary head office located outside those countries is still functional.
EMI Music Publishing is owned by Sony Music Publishing, the music publishing division of Sony Music which bought another 70% stake in EMI Music Publishing 2018.
History
Electric and Musical Industries Ltd was formed in March 1931 by the merger of the Columbia Graphophone Company and the Gramophone Company, with its "His Master's Voice" record label, firms that have a history extending back to the origins of recorded sound. The new vertically integrated company produced sound recordings as well as recording and playback equipment.The company's gramophone manufacturing led to 40 years of success with larger-scale electronics and electrical engineering.
In October 1979, EMI merged with Thorn Electrical Industries to create Thorn EMI.
On 16 August 1996, Thorn EMI shareholders voted in favour of demerging Thorn from EMI again: the company became EMI Group plc, and the electronics and rentals divisions were divested as Thorn plc.
The company broke up in 2012.
Electronics research and development
Television
In 1934, an EMI research team led by Sir Isaac Shoenberg developed the electronic Marconi-EMI system for television broadcasting, which quickly replaced Baird's electro-mechanical system following its introduction in 1936. After the Second World War, EMI resumed its involvement in making broadcasting equipment, notably providing the BBC's second television transmitter at Sutton Coldfield. It also manufactured broadcast television cameras for British television production companies as well as for the BBC. The commercial television ITV companies also used them alongside cameras made by Pye and Marconi. Their best-remembered piece of broadcast television equipment was the EMI 2001 colour television camera, which became the mainstay of much of the British television industry from the end of the 1960s until the early 1990s. Exports of this piece of equipment were low, however, and EMI left this area of product manufacture.Blumlein and radar
EMI engineer Alan Blumlein received a patent for the invention of stereophonic sound in 1931. He was killed in 1942 whilst conducting flight trials on an experimental H2S radar set.During and after World War II, the EMI Laboratories in Hayes, Hillingdon developed radar equipment, microwave devices such as the reflex klystron oscillator, electro-optic devices such as infra-red image converters, and eventually guided missiles employing analogue computers.
Photomultipliers
For many years, the company was internationally respected as a photomultiplier manufacturer. This part of the business was transferred to Thorn as part of Thorn-EMI, then later became the independent concern Electron Tubes Ltd.Computers and CT scanner
The EMI Electronic Business Machine, a valve and magnetic drum memory computer, was built in the 1950s to process the British Motor Corporation payroll.In 1958, the EMIDEC 1100, the UK's first commercially available all-transistor computer, was developed at EMI's Central Research Laboratories in Hayes under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield, an electrical engineer at EMI.
In the early 1970s, with financial support by the UK Department of Health and Social Security as well as EMI research investment, Hounsfield developed the first CT scanner, a device which revolutionised medical imaging. In 1973, EMI was awarded a prestigious Queen's Award for Technological Innovation for what was then called the EMI scanner; in 1979, Hounsfield won the Nobel Prize for his accomplishment.
After brief success in the medical imaging field, EMI's manufacturing activities were sold off to other companies, notably Thorn. Subsequently, development and manufacturing activities were sold off to other companies and work moved to other towns such as Crawley and Wells.
Emihus
Emihus Electronics, based in Glenrothes, Scotland, was owned 51% by Hughes Aircraft, of California, US, and 49% by EMI. It manufactured integrated circuits, electrolytic capacitors and, for a short period in the mid-1970s, hand-held calculators under the Gemini name.Music
Early in its life, the Gramophone Company established its subsidiary operations and branch offices in a number of many other countries inside and outside of the British Commonwealth, including Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as in Canada, Russia, India, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Gramophone's Australian and New Zealand subsidiaries dominated the popular music industries in those countries across the Asia-Pacific region from the 1920s until the 1960s, when other locally owned labels began to challenge the near monopoly of EMI. Over 150,000 78-rpm recordings from around the world are held in EMI's temperature-controlled archive in Hayes, some of which have been released on CD since 2008 by Honest Jon's Records.In 1931, the year the company was formed, it opened the legendary recording studios at London's Abbey Road. During the 1930s and 1940s, its roster of artists included Arturo Toscanini, Sir Edward Elgar, and Otto Klemperer, among many others. During this time EMI appointed its first A&R managers. These included George Martin, who later brought the Beatles into the EMI fold.
When the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931, the new Anglo-American group was incorporated as Electric & Musical Industries Limited. At this point, the Radio Corporation of America had a majority shareholding in the new company due to RCA purchasing the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929. Victor owned 50% of the British affiliated Gramophone Company, giving RCA chairman David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board.
However, EMI was subsequently forced to sell Columbia USA due to anti-trust action taken by its American competitors. By this time the record industry had been hit hard by the Depression and in 1934 a much-diminished Columbia USA was purchased for just US$70,500 by ARC-BRC, which also acquired the OKeh label.
RCA sold its stake in EMI in 1935, but due to its 1929 takeover of Victor, RCA retained the North and South American rights to the "His Master's Voice" trademark.
In 1938, ARC-Brunswick was taken over by CBS, which then sold the American Brunswick label to American Decca Records, which along with its other properties, Vocalion Records and Aeolian Vocalion Records, used it as a subsidiary budget label afterward. CBS then operated Columbia as its flagship label in both the United States and Canada.
EMI retained the rights to the Columbia name in most other territories including the UK, Australia and New Zealand. It continued to operate the label with moderate success until 1973, when it was retired and replaced by the EMI Records imprint, making records with the Columbia Records label manufactured outside North America between 1972 and 1992 rare.
In 1990, following a series of major takeovers that saw CBS Records acquired by the Sony Corporation of Japan, EMI sold its remaining rights to the Columbia name to Sony and the label is now operated exclusively throughout the world by Sony Music Entertainment; the exception being Japan, where the trade mark is owned by Columbia Music Entertainment.
EMI released its first LPs in 1952 and its first stereophonic recordings in 1955. In 1957, to replace the loss of its long-established licensing arrangements with RCA Victor and Columbia Records, EMI entered the American market by acquiring 96% of the stock for Capitol Records USA.
From 1960 to 1995, their "EMI House" corporate headquarters was located at 20 Manchester Square London, England, the stairwell from which was featured on the cover of the Beatles' Please Please Me album. In addition, an unused shot from the Please Please Me photo session, featuring the boys in short hair and clean cut attire, was used for the cover of the Beatles' first double-disc greatest-hits compilation entitled 1962–1966. In 1969, Angus McBean took a matching group photograph featuring the boys in long hair and beards to contrast with the earlier clean cut image to show that the boys could have appeal across a wide range of audiences. This photo was originally intended for the Get Back album which later was entitled Let It Be. The photo was used instead for the cover of the Beatles' second greatest-hits double-disc compilation entitled 1967–1970 .
EMI's classical artists of the period were largely limited to the prestigious British and European orchestras, such as the Philharmonia Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra as well as the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. During the era of the long-playing record, very few American and Canadian orchestras had their principal recording contracts with EMI, one notable exception being that of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, especially during the tenure of William Steinberg.
From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, the company enjoyed huge success in the popular music field under the management of Sir Joseph Lockwood. The strong combination of EMI and its subsidiary labels along with a roster of stellar groups such as the Hollies, the Shadows, the Beach Boys and the Beatles
along with hit solo performers such as Frank Sinatra, Cliff Richard, and Nat 'King' Cole, made EMI the best-known and most successful recording company in the world at that time.
In 1967, while shifting their focus on pop and rock music roster to Columbia and Parlophone, EMI converted HMV solely to a classical music label exclusively. For the emerging progressive rock genre including Pink Floyd, who had debuted on Columbia, EMI established a new subsidiary label, Harvest Records, two years later.
File:Museum RockArt, Queen grootste hits.JPG|thumb|Gold and silver discs issued by EMI in 1982 for Queen's Greatest Hits
In 1971, Electric & Musical Industries changed its name to EMI Ltd. and on 1 January 1973 EMI phased out most of its heritage labels and replacing them with the EMI imprint. On 1 July 1973 the Gramophone Company subsidiary was renamed EMI Records Ltd as well, and in 1978, EMI launched EMI America Records as its second label in the United States after Capitol. In July of the same year, EMI Ltd. reorganized its record division, unifying and restructuring its worldwide music operations under the newly formed division, EMI Music. Initially, EMI Music consisted of two operational arms: "EMI Music Europe and International," headquartered in London and headed by EMI Records Ltd., which covered all interests outside of North America; and "EMI Music Worldwide," based in Hollywood and headed by its principal U.S. subsidiary, Capitol Industries-EMI Inc., which covered the music group's interests in North America. In February 1979, EMI Ltd acquired United Artists Records and with it their subsidiary labels Liberty Records and Imperial Records. Eight months later, Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI Ltd. to form Thorn EMI.
Sometime in the late 1980s, EMI America merged with sister label Manhattan Records, founded in 1984, becoming EMI Manhattan and eventually EMI USA when Capitol absorbed it in 1989.
Also in 1989, Thorn EMI bought a 50% interest in Chrysalis Records, completing the buyout two years later. Six months after completing the buyout of Chrysalis, Thorn EMI bought Virgin Records from Richard Branson in one of its highest-profile and most expensive acquisitions in record music history. In 1992, Thorn EMI entered the Christian music market by acquiring Sparrow Records.