Phonogram Inc.
 | |
| Successor | Mercury/PolyGram Records, Inc./PolyGram Group Distribution |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1970 |
| Founder | Philips Records and Deutsche Grammophon |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Parent | Philips (1962–1998) |
Phonogram Incorporated or Phonogram, U.K. was started in 1970 as a unit of the Grammophon-Philips Group (GPG), a joint venture of Philips N.V. of the Netherlands and Siemens A.G. of Germany.
Phonogram was the name of a parent company that owned and or distributed many different record labels. Phonogram was never a record label as such, but a holding company for labels which included Phillips, Fontana, Vertigo and Mercury.
History
In 1972 Phonogram was merged with Polydor Records to create PolyGram. Following PolyGram's acquisition of Mercury in the United States, they changed the corporate name of Mercury Record Productions, Inc. to Phonogram, Inc. In the U.S. Phonogram artists were generally released on Mercury Records, but always carried the following wording "Manufactured And Marketed by PolyGram Records" with the PolyGram Records logo.
In the United Kingdom, Phonogram was the holding company for Philips, which had started in 1953 and launched Fontana in 1958. As well as producing many of their own recordings and U.K. hits, Philips/Fontana licensed the rights from Columbia Records (U.S.) to release and distribute their product from 1953 until the end of 1964. After that time, Columbia U.S. set up their own marketing and production unit in Theobalds Road, London, having acquired Oriole Records and its record-pressing plant that had prospered in manufacturing discs for U.K. budget labels including Embassy, sold through Woolworths. U.S. Columbia was unable to use the "Columbia" trademark outside the United States and Canada as it had already been copyrighted overseas by EMI. Therefore U.S. Columbia product was released in most territories on the CBS record label.
Releases in parts of Europe were issued by Vertigo and Philips and carried the "Marketed by Phonogram" wording with the Phonogram logo. Phonogram also licensed recordings from small U.S. record labels for European release. Among these were Avco, Sire, Janus, Westbound, All Platinum, and Chess.
De-establishment
In 1997 all PolyGram units still using the Phonogram name were renamed Mercury Records.[1] By that time, Mercury had become PolyGram's flagship label. PolyGram continued until 1998, when the company was purchased by Seagram and merged with Universal Music Group, now owned by Vivendi.