Whatever the culture, whatever the society, wherever there are people, there is music. Throughout most of history, music could only be heard by those immediately around the musician. Music was a live, transient art form.

Then, just before the turn of the nineteenth century, everything changed.

In 1887, Emile Berliner, a largely self-educated, German-born American, who had previously developed the microphone for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, invented his ‘Gramophone’ method of recording and reproducing sound using discs, a process that would revolutionise the way music was heard and experienced.

EMI’s history starts at one of the companies that Berliner formed: The Gramophone Company in London. Established in 1897, the company took the lead in bringing together the new sound recording machines and musicians.

Previously, in the brief history of recorded music, the medium had largely been shunned by established stars. Many saw it as something of a gimmick. The Gramophone Company knew that contemporary artists were the key to introducing people to recorded music, and so it was the first record company to forge relationships with stars of the day. Within a few years its roster of artists included the sopranos Adelina Patti, Nellie Melba and Emma Calve and, most significantly, Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who is widely considered to have been one of the greatest tenors of the twentieth century.

Caruso’s first recording session was on the afternoon of 11 April 1902. In just two hours he recorded 10 songs. Over the course of his career, The Gramophone Company released some 240 Caruso records, and his substantial sales and resultant fame around the world – not to mention his significant royalty earnings – persuaded many other artists to embrace the new technology.

The Gramophone Company was internationally-minded right from the start. 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 opened for business. Established by the American Columbia Phonograph Company General, Columbia traded in cylinder records and the ‘graphophones’ that played them.

For the first few years of the music industry these cylinders outsold Berliner’s flat gramophone records before the tide began to turn in favour of discs towards the end of the century’s first decade. 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 and 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.

By the 1920s, 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, Sir Henry Wood, Bruno Walter, Igor Stravinsky and Gustav Holst, 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.

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, which had a roster of classical artists including one of the leading tenors of the time, Richard Tauber, and which today is still one of EMI’s most important labels.

The technology of recording and producing records was also improving. 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 when the Great Depression hit the recording industry, as most others, like a tidal wave. Before the decade was out, sales of records had plummeted by over 80%. In response to this new business climate, in 1931 The Gramophone Company and The Columbia Graphophone Company, as it was then called, agreed to a merger. The new company was called Electric and Musical Industries, or EMI as it quickly became known.

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, although given the depressed nature of the market, stereo recordings would not be widely commercially available for another 25 years.

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. EMI’s research labs were very involved in the development of tape and the company started designing and selling its own models.

Another key development came in 1948 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 78. Both were instantly popular and dramatically expanded the market for music.

At this time, EMI was the licensee for the major record companies RCA Victor and Columbia Records (the US-based descendant of the original parent company of Columbia Graphophone) outside of North and South America. Among the artists on RCA was a young singer from Mississippi called Elvis Presley. His first records outside the Americas, starting with Heartbreak Hotel in 1956, were released by EMI on its HMV Pop label. Over the next two years EMI released a dozen or so of the first Elvis hits including Blue Suede Shoes, Love Me Tender, Hound Dog and his first UK number one, All Shook Up. However the license agreement between EMI and RCA ended in 1957 when RCA established its own office in London.

Columbia had similarly decided to self-market its releases itself internationally and ended its agreement with EMI in 1952. Together Columbia and RCA supplied most of EMI’s US music, so in response EMI went looking for American artists of its own. In 1955 it bought one of the largest US record companies, Capitol Records. Capitol, based on the West Coast of America, had an impressive 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, all of whom enjoyed considerable success and were leaders of a British pop explosion. And there was the most successful of them all, Cliff Richard. After his first record, Move It, was released by EMI in 1958, Cliff Richard would go on to become one of the most successful and enduring artists in British pop music.

If the 1950s saw British pop music grow, in the 1960s it exploded. And EMI was right at the forefront, not least due to a new band that had just signed to the company's Parlophone label.

When Brian Epstein met with Parlophone head George Martin in 1962 to play him a tape of a new band, he didn't mention that every other record company had heard the band and rejected them. Fortunately for the band, their fans, EMI, and indeed anyone who has ever had anything to do with music, Martin was intrigued and agreed to sign the band. Four months later, The Beatles released their first single, Love Me Do. It only reached number 17 in the UK charts but it didn't take British record buyers long to realise what they were missing. The follow-up, Please, Please Me, went to number two and the world of popular music has never been the same since.

Please, Please Me was released in January 1963. Before the year was out The Beatles released From Me To You, She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. All three went to number one - the first of their 17 UK number ones. The following year it was America's turn to experience 'Beatlemania'. Within three months of their chart debut in the US, The Beatles held the top five places on the singles chart, with another 11 songs further down the chart, and had the two best selling albums in the country. In less than eight years, The Beatles recorded and released albums such as Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rubber Soul, Abbey Road and The Beatles (which became known as The White Album).

Epstein didn't just bring The Beatles to EMI but a whole host of talented Liverpudlian musicians including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas who all became leading lights in what was known as 'Merseybeat'. With the success of The Beatles and other EMI artists, the company became the label of first choice for any ambitious British artist and the EMI roster soon contained the cream of UK talent. 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.

It wasn't just British talent that found a home at EMI. Across the Atlantic, Capitol Records signed The Beach Boys in 1962. The Californian quintet became one of the most successful American bands of all time thanks to hits including Surfin' USA, I Get Around, California Girls and, their biggest, Good Vibrations, plus a string of acclaimed albums including their groundbreaking 1966 release Pet Sounds - the name refers to the songs on the album, The Beach Boys' 'pet sounds'.

Meanwhile on the other side of the USA, EMI concluded a license deal with a new record label in Detroit - Tamla Motown. The agreement meant that EMI would market and distribute Motown releases outside the US. The company's roster during the 1960s and 1970s was simply incredible - Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Jackson Five, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson,… the list goes on. By the 1970s, EMI could rely on two out of every three Motown releases being a hit, an unheard of success ratio in the music business.

EMI had always been a very international company with offices all over the world, but it had mostly been the company’s classical records that had sold overseas. The huge explosion in pop music led by The Beatles and the other British (mostly EMI-signed) bands who followed in their wake changed all that and gave the company an unprecedented global outlook.

EMI’s management team was international as well, under the leadership of Bhaskar Menon. The former head of the Gramophone Company of India (in which EMI was a major shareholder), Menon took over the running of EMI’s international business in 1970 and Capitol Records in 1971 before joining the company’s main board in 1974.

In the late 1960s, a new kind of music began to emerge – ‘progressive’ rock. EMI established a dedicated label to cater specifically for this more left field, underground style of music: Harvest. By the early 1970s the Harvest roster was made up of the cream of progressive rock including Deep Purple, Roy Harper, the Edgar Broughton Band, the Electric Light Orchestra, and the most influential and popular of all, Pink Floyd.

Formed in 1965, Pink Floyd signed to EMI two years later and had two UK hit singles and a hit album in 1968: Piper At The Gates of Dawn. The same year there was a change of line-up as original member Syd Barrett left. New recruit David Gilmour joined the other three members of the band – Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright – and the quartet went on to be one of the most successful bands ever.

Pink Floyd’s 1973 album, the seminal Dark Side of the Moon was lauded by fans and critics at the time and still is today. The album remained on the UK charts for six years and spent more time on the Billboard album charts than any other before or since – 741 weeks. It has since taken up residence in the Billboard catalogue chart, where it remains to this day. Dark Side of the Moon is over 30 years old, but it remains an incredibly influential album to musicians and fans all over the world, selling hundreds of thousands of copies every year, adding to a total so far of around 35 million. As well as Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s catalogue includes the massively successful The Wall, Wish You Were Here, Animals and A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

The year before Dark Side of the Moon, EMI signed their first deal with Queen. With the release of their debut album, Sheer Heart Attack, in 1974, it was instantly clear that Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were not like other bands. 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.

Queen’s 1975 single, Bohemian Rhapsody, was and remains one of the most extraordinary and exceptional number one records. It also jump-started the music video era. In the following decade, Queen’s performance at Live Aid in 1985 was considered by many to be the outstanding highlight of the 16-hour concert.

In 1977 EMI signed another great rock band, in fact the world’s greatest: the Rolling Stones. Stones albums released through EMI included Some Girls, Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You. The band left EMI in the 1980s but in 1991 they signed up with Virgin Records which was subsequently acquired by EMI.

On the business side, the 1970s saw EMI acquire the cream of UK music publishing. 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, the most famous and influential label name ever in jazz music. From its unrivalled roster to its photography and design, Blue Note is a musical icon. Established in 1939, the Blue Note catalogue includes jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Art Blakey and Clifford Brown, all of whom made their most important recordings on the label.

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 that loudly announced its arrival had evolved out of the ’70s rock of bands like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Heavy metal.

One of the first heavy metal bands to make an impression on the charts was the EMI-signed London five-piece Iron Maiden. Their self-titled debut was released in 1980 and from then on the band were extremely prolific and toured regularly all over the world. Over twenty years later, the band are still recording for EMI, still tour relentlessly, and are leading a new generation of rockers all over the world.

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, constantly name-checked by the sounds’ pioneers, is Kraftwerk, a quartet from Dusseldorf in Germany who began experimenting with computers and electronic music in the 1970s.

After signing to EMI in the 1978 they released a series of seminal albums with futuristic songs that sounded completely unlike anything else that was being released by anyone, anywhere. Their 1981 single, Computer Love/The Model, was the first ever German record to top the UK charts.

Other successful artists for EMI at the start of the 1980s included Kate Bush, who had joined EMI in 1977 after being spotted by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Sheena Easton, Thomas Dolby and Duran Duran who were the leading lights of a new British musical invasion that swept into the US.

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 that would transform the company. 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, making EMI Music Publishing the undisputed world leader.

In the same year, EMI acquired a 50% stake in Chrysalis Records. Formed in 1969, Chrysalis Records was the company behind artists ranging from Jethro Tull to Blondie and Spandau Ballet to Sinead O’Connor.

Then in 1990 EMI Music Publishing was expanded again with the acquisition of the Filmtrax catalogue which further extended EMI’s leadership in music publishing, and the following year EMI bought the remaining 50% of Chrysalis Records, taking full ownership of the label.

1992 was a year of huge change for EMI as it was in this year that the company bought the Virgin Music Group, at the time the largest independent music company in the world with a roster of artists that included Janet Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Peter Gabriel, Smashing Pumpkins, Massive Attack and, returning to the EMI fold, the Rolling Stones.

This series of deals in the 1990s completely transformed and re-energised EMI, and the company headed into the decade with new momentum.

There were a number of key signings as many of today’s best known artists started their careers. Blur released their first album Leisure in 1991, while two year’s later Radiohead’s debut, Pablo Honey, came out on Parlophone. Virgin Records meanwhile was on a roll with albums from its many established artists as well as new bands such as The Verve and the Chemical Brothers.

From Cliff Richard onwards, EMI has been the home to the UK’s top music stars. In the 1990s this tradition continued with EMI signing and the decade’s most successful British pop band, the Spice Girls, and the country’s biggest male artist, Robbie Williams.

The Spice Girls formed in 1994, signed to Virgin Records in 1995, released their first single Wannabe in 1996, and by the end of that year were a cultural phenomenon all over the globe. Wannabe reached number one in 31 countries and was the first of nine chart toppers for the Spice Girls in the UK. Since their debut came out in 1996, the band have sold 35 million albums and 25 million singles around the world and completely changed the landscape of pop music, and of girl groups in particular.

Robbie Williams joined EMI in 1996 and his first album, Life Thru A Lens, came out the following year. It wasn’t until its 28th week of release that it reached number one in the UK, but from then on it took up almost permanent residence in the top 10, ultimately staying there for 40 weeks. Since then he has sold well over 50 million albums globally and played to sell out crowds all around the world. For his 2006/2007 tour alone he sold over three million tickets.

EMI continued to grow during the 1990s, bringing successful companies and entrepreneurs into the EMI family. Top German independent Intercord became an EMI-owned label in 1994, and two years later 50% of the Jobete music publishing catalogue was acquired by EMI Music Publishing. This catalogue was established by Motown founder Berry Gordy and includes over 15,000 classic Motown songs including I Heard It Through The Grapevine, My Girl, I Just Called To Say I Love You and I’ll Be There. EMI purchased Gordy’s remaining stake in Jobete in 2003 and 2004 but he continues to be involved with the legendary catalogue. 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.

Meanwhile in 1996 Priority Records joined the EMI fold. The Los Angeles-based label is one of the top names in American urban music, releasing records from influential artists such as Snoop Dogg, Chingy, Ice Cube and NWA.

To help support future generations of musicians, in 1997 EMI established the EMI Music Sound Foundation, an independent music education charity that has distributed over £2 million to schools, students and teachers throughout Britain and is now the single largest sponsor of specialist performing arts colleges in the UK.

EMI is also very aware of the impact its business has on the wider world. The company has programmes all over the world to support the arts, culture, education and the communities in which EMI operates. In 1991 EMI started a programme to measure the impact of the company’s business on the environment at a time when many companies were at loggerheads with environmentalists on many issues. Now, close to 100% of EMI’s electricity requirements in the UK and over 20% worldwide are met through renewable energy sources.

Given that the roots of EMI stretch right back to the very start of recorded sound and that the company invented stereo recording, it's hardly surprising that EMI has stayed at the forefront of technological change in the industry. When digital music began to take off in the 1990s, EMI was well placed to capitalise on the trend.

EMI's first websites went live in 1993 and 1994 and in 1998 EMI streamed the first complete album over the internet, Mezzanine by Massive Attack. The following year EMI was the first company to release a digital album download, David Bowie's …Hours. EMI also launched the first internet video single, Lenny Kravitz's Dig In, in 2001, and, in 2002 it was the first major music company to make new music available digitally to consumers at the same time as it is serviced to radio stations. In 2007 EMI became the first major music company to make its music available without digital rights management (DRM) software and at a much higher sound quality than before.

In May 2007, EMI and private equity firm Terra Firma announced details of a recommended offer for the shares of EMI. After receiving all the necessary acceptances and approvals, Terra Firma assumed control of the company in August 2007 and the following month EMI Group's shares were de-listed from the London Stock Exchange.

In addition to EMI's strong presence in physical music outlets, today EMI's music is available to purchase digitally through hundreds of retailers around the world and EMI has partnered with companies developing new ways of finding and enjoying music such as subscriptions, online jukeboxes, video jukeboxes, custom compilations, kiosks, digital car stereos, mobile phone ring tones, master ring tunes and other wireless products, and countless other new products and ideas.

Other developments since 2000 for EMI include the acquisition of seminal independent label Mute, home to artists such as Moby, Depeche Mode, Goldfrapp and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds in 2002, and in 2006 EMI agreed to acquire the 45% stake in Japanese label Toshiba-EMI held by Toshiba Corporation, bringing its ownership of the company to 100%. Meanwhile to increase the flexibility of its cost structure, EMI has outsourced its CD manufacturing operations.

As always, EMI continues to be a thoroughly international business. The company's management is multinational, overseeing a business that operates right around the world. In recent years, as well as releasing music from Anglo American artists such as Norah Jones, Coldplay, Lily Allen, Katy Perry and Robbie Williams, EMI has issued top selling platinum albums by artists from all over the world, such as Utada Hikaru from Japan, Herbert Grönemeyer and Wir Sind Helden from Germany, Daft Punk, Air, Renaud, Raphael and Cali from France, Bebe from Spain, RBD and Thalia from Mexico, Marisa Monte from Brazil, Radja from Indonesia, Vasco Rossi and Tiziano Ferro from Italy, to name but a few.

EMI Music Publishing's roster includes the cream of globally successful songwriters including Usher, Jay-Z, Sting, Diddy, Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Alan Jackson, Kanye West, Natasha Bedingfield, Gorillaz, Utada Hikaru and Scissor Sisters.

EMI is a company that is focused exclusively on music. Our world famous labels release some of the most popular and acclaimed music in the world and EMI's catalogue is unmatched. Whatever the future of music and however people want to enjoy it, EMI and its artists will be there.

Last updated April 2009