EMI

EMI (Electronic and Musical Industries Ltd) was founded in 1897 at The Gramophone Company by Emile Berliner after he invented his ‘Gramophone’ method of recording and reproducing sound using discs.

Initially, the medium was largely shunned by established stars, as many saw it as something of a gimmick. Over the course of Berliner's career, The Gramophone Company released some 240 Caruso records. Their substantial sales persuaded many other artists to embrace the new technology.

Within a year of being formed, subsidiaries were established across much of Europe and just a few years later the company was operating across Europe, Russia and the Middle East as well as in Australia, India, China and parts of Africa. By 1906, less than 10 years after starting up, over 60 per cent of the company’s revenues came from outside the UK.

The Gramophone Company wasn’t the only music company formed in London in 1897. In the same year The Columbia Phonograph Company, EMI’s other thread, opened for business. Established by the American Columbia Phonograph Company General, Columbia traded in cylinder records and the ‘graphophones’ that played them. Columbia too expanded rapidly oversees, doing business across Europe and in Egypt by 1903.

By 1914 The Gramophone Company was selling nearly four million records a year, but the outbreak of the First World War that year caused serious disruption to its Columbia’s business as their factories were largely turned over to the manufacture of munitions. 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.

In 1926, The Gramophone Company released its first million seller: O For The Wings of a Dove from Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer, sung by 14-year-old Ernest Lough on the HMV label. During the decade, Columbia expanded through a number of acquisitions of record companies in Europe, including Odeon in Germany, Pathe in France and, in 1926, the Parlophone label in London.

During the mid-1920s the Gramophone Company began releasing double-sided discs and in 1926 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 1930s. At the end of the 1930s, sales of records had fallen by over 80%. In response to this new business climate, in 1931 The Gramophone Company and The Columbia Graphophone Company agreed to a merger. The new company was called Electric and Musical Industries, or EMI

Both The Gramophone Company and Columbia had their own research and development departments, and not long after the formation of EMI, Alan Blumlein, a remarkable EMI scientist who had joined the company from Columbia, developed the world’s first system for recording and playing stereo sound. 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.

In 1955 EMI bought one of the largest US record companies, Capitol Records. Capitol, based on the West Coast of America, had a roster of artists including Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, Les Paul and Gene Vincent. As well as developing its roster of American artists, EMI increased its investment in UK talent such that within a decade EMI releases accounted for about 40 per cent of the UK pop music chart. Artists signed to EMI in the 1950s included Adam Faith Shirley Bassey, Frankie Vaughan, Max Bygraves and Alma Cogan, and Cliff Richard. In the 1960s, EMI released records by The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemaker and Cilla Black. In one year, 1963, EMI releases accounted for 15 out of the 19 number one singles. The following year eight EMI artists held the number one position in the British singles chart for a total of 41 weeks.

This success was also mirrored in the US, where in addition to Capitol Records signing The Beach Boys, EMI concluded a license deal with Tamla Motown. The company’s roster during the 1960s and 1970s included Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Jackson Five, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson.

In the late 1960s, a new kind of music began to emerge – ‘progressive’ rock. EMI established ‘Harvest’, a dedicated label to cater specifically for this more left field style of music. By the early 1970s their roster included Deep Purple and The Pink Floyd. The year before Pink Floyd’s seminal Dark Side of the Moon, EMI signed their first deal with Queen. With their intricately written songs and Mercury’s outrageous flamboyance, Queen sold millions of records and firmly established a reputation as one of the best live acts in the world.

The 1970s saw EMI build its UK music publishing presence. The company already had a small publishing operation called Ardmore and Beechwood which began expanding with the acquisition of the Keith Prowse and Central Songs catalogues in 1969 and the Affiliated Music Publishers group in 1973. Renamed EMI Music Publishing in 1974, the division expanded further in 1976 with the purchase of the Screen Gems and Colgems libraries from Hollywood studio Columbia Pictures, giving EMI a major presence in film music.

In 1979, US record label Liberty/United Artists was acquired by EMI. The company included the storied Blue Note Records.

By the start of the 1980s, the record industry was suffering from a severe sales decline. Together with the end of the disco phenomenon, this left the field wide open for new genres to emerge.

One of the first heavy metal bands to make an impression on the charts was the EMI-signed London five-piece Iron Maiden. Other genres of music emerging at this time were electronic and sample-based, such as house and techno and hip-hop. Arguably the most influential band for all these is Kraftwerk, who began experimenting with computers and electronic music in the 1970s. Other successful artists for EMI at the start of the 1980s included Kate Bush and Duran Duran.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a period of huge change for EMI. Having released its first recordings on the new CD format in 1983, the silver shiny discs accounted for the majority of albums sold by EMI by the 1990s.

Around this time EMI also embarked on a series of business deals. In 1989 SBK Entertainment World, a music publishing company whose catalogue included Singin’ In The Rain, Wizard of Oz and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, was acquired. In the same year, EMI acquired a 50% stake in Chrysalis Records. In 1990 EMI Music Publishing was expanded again with the acquisition of the Filmtrax catalogue, and the following year EMI bought the remaining 50% of Chrysalis Records, taking full ownership of the label.

In 1992 the company bought the Virgin Music Group. EMI continued to grow and bring successful companies and entrepreneurs into the Group. In 1996, 50% of the Jobete music publishing catalogue, which was established by Motown founder Berry Gordy and includes over 15,000 classic Motown songs, was acquired. EMI purchased the remaining stake in 2003 and 2004. EMI Music Publishing expanded further in 1999 with the acquisition of 40,000 song copyrights from the Windswept Pacific catalogue and a majority stake in UK publisher Hit & Run.