Institutional information - COLUMBIA RECORDS

*COLUMBIA RECORDS* (who manage 'The Vaccines') 

Columbia Records is US record label who is part of the Conglomerate company Song Music Entertainment (operating under the Columbia Music Group). The Record label was created in 1888 as an evolutionary development an American Graphophone Company. Columbia Records is leaking with history as the oldest brand name in pre-recorded sounds and the primary company to produce pre-recorded records instead of black cylinders ( records - earliest commercial medium for the recording & reproducing of sound) Columbia Records progressed to release records for a notable array of solo artists, instrumentalists, and bands.

Arista (an American record label subsidiary of Sony) is now a sister label to Columbia Records through Sony Music; both are connected to Columbia Pictures through Sony Corporation of America, who are the worldwide parents of both the music and motion picture arms of Sony.

Columbia Records has been passed around, co-shared and developed over the years, but (as it is today) was finally (for now) sold to Sony in the 1980’s. In 1988 in fact (100 years since it began!) the CBS Records Group (including Columbia Records) became part of Sony and was renamed as ‘Columbia Records’ in 1991 worldwide.  The label is now headed by chairman Rob Stringer along with co-presidents Rick Rubin and Steve Barnett. As of October 2012, there are currently 83 recording artists signed to Columbia Records. It is the largest of the three flagship labels owned by Sony Music (followed by RCA Records with 77 artists and Epic Records with 43 artists)

(sony corporations) 

A Brief History

The Columbia Phonograph Company was originally a local company (run by a man named Edward Easton) which distributed and sold Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Delaware (and derives its name from the District of Columbia, which was where its headquarters were located) Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. They began with black wax records, moving onto "black wax" records in 1903. They began selling disc records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901. By 1912 they were however now only concentrating on disc records (moving with the times) In late 1923, Columbia went into receivership (the ownership rights changed). The company was bought by their English subsidiary, the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1925 and the label, record numbering system, and recording process changed completely. They then began recording with the new electric recording process licensed from Western Electric. The new "Viva-tonal" records set a benchmark in tone and clarity unequaled on commercial discs during the "78-rpm" era (Gramophone’s). The first electrical recordings were made by Art Gillham, the popular "Whispering Pianist". 

In 1926, Columbia acquired Okeh Records and its growing stable of jazz and blues artists, including Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams. In 1931 the British company merged with the Gramophone Company to form Electric & Musical Industries Ltd. (EMI). EMI was forced to sell its American Columbia operations (because of anti-trust concerns). In 1938 ARC, including the Columbia label in the USA, was bought by the Columbia Broadcasting System . CBS revived the Columbia label renamed the company Columbia Recording Corporation retaining control of all of ARC's past masters, but in a complicated move, the pre-1931 Brunswick and Vocalion masters, as well as trademarks of Brunswick and Vocalion, reverted back to Warner Brothers (who had leased their whole recording operation to ARC in early 1932) and Warners sold the lot to Decca Records in 1941. Columbia became the most successful non-rock record company in the 1950s when they lured impresario Mitch Miller away from the Mercury label. 

Moving onto the 1960’s Perhaps their most commercially successful pop act of this period was Simon & Garfunkel, though of course during the 1960s, Bob Dylan achieved a prominent position in Columbia as well. During the early 1970s, Columbia began recording in a four-channel process called quadraphonic ( which uses four channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals that are independent of one another. Quadraphonic audio was the earliest consumer offering in surround sound. It was a commercial failure due to many technical problems and format incompatibilities. Quadraphonic audio formats were more expensive to produce than standard two-channel stereo.) Quadraphonic recordings were used by both classical artists, including Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez, and popular artists such as Electric Light Orchestra, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, Barbra Streisand, Carlos Santana, and Blue Öyster Cult. Columbia even went on to release a soundtrack album of the movie version of Funny Girl in quadraphonic.