Record Label Research

The EMI record label stands for Electrical and musical industries, it is a british company, and is the fourth largest business group in the recording industry. EMI is the only privately- owned major music company, Owned by Terra Firma. The three labels that are larger than EMI are, Sony music entertainment, Warner music group, and Universal music group. They all have smaller companies and labels serving different regions and markets.

In order to make EMI records remain popular and successful, most effectively it is separated into three units which are New Music, Catalogue, and Music Services. These all serve different purposes to keep the business running efficiently. New Music finds and develops new music which will be popular and successful, Catalogue makes the value of EMI's historic and extensive music assets larger.

EMI music publishing is business based on the songs that they have. It is the worlds most creative music plublisher, it includes successful artists/bands who are songwriters for example, James Blunt, The Arctic Monkeys, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Hinder and many more.

There are many different artists that belong to EMI records, tehy are all from different genres, examples of these are Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Eva Simons, We The Kings, Peter Doherty, J.Holiday, Coldplay, Iron Maiden, Katy Perry, UB40 and many more. The ranging genres of bands and artists meet many different target audiences creating popularity and success. The different genres range from Pop, Rock, Reggae, and R'n'B and much more.


The History of EMI
EMI records was formed in 1931 from the gramophone company, and since then it has been very successful, growing in the music industry, becoming more popular. EMI scientists invented stereo recording and were involved in the making of the magnetic tape. They were also involved in the invention of electrical television. In 1957 EMI records entered the American market by gaining 96% of the stock of capitol records. As EMI was getting more popular, the company was growing, EMI established a new label in 1969, called Harvest Records, which was a label for the rock genre which was becoming popular at that time. Pink Floyd was one of the signed bands. EMI changed its name to EMI Ltd in 1971 and, in 1973, The Gramophone Company became EMI Records Ltd. in 1993 and 1994 EMI's first music website was created. EMI records also managed to sign Robbie Williams a six album deal paying over £80million which was the biggest recording contract in British History and the second biggest in music history. EMI being the fourth largest record label, wanted to grow by buying Warner Music group, it would have changed the 'big four' to three, this failed as Warner Music Group decided to attempt to buy EMI, they both rejected.

I chose to research this label, a major record label rather than an independant label, because it is one of the four major record labels, so it is well known, it has a history of success and has accomplished things that other record labels havent, for example having the record for biggest recording contract in british history, and the second in music hisotry, which is a very big accomplishment. Also because an artist signed to EMI is Katy Perry which is an artist we did our research on and she is from the same genre as the artist we decided to create the music video for, it has given us the inspiration.