Warner Music Group

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Warner Music Group Corporation
Image:wmg.gif
Type Public (NYSE: WMG)
Founded 1929
Headquarters New York, New York, USA
Key people Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Chairman & CEO
Industry Music & Entertainment
Revenue $3.502 Billion (USD; 2006)
Net income $169.0 Million (USD; 2006)
Employees 4,000 (2006)
Website Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group (WMG) is one of the four major record labels.

Warner Music Group also has a publishing arm, Warner Chappell Music, which dates back to 1929, when Jack Warner, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc., founded Music Publishers Holding Company (“MPHC”) to acquire music copyrights as a means of providing inexpensive music for films. Amongst the historic compositions in which the publishing rights are controlled by WMG are the works of Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Its printed music operation, Warner Bros. Publications, was sold to Alfred Publishing on June 1, 2005.

WMG's roots in what became Time Warner date back to the founding of Warner Bros. Records as a division of the Warner Bros. movie studio in 1958. After Warner Bros. became Warner Bros.-Seven Arts in 1967, it purchased Atlantic Records, now WMG's oldest label. When its successor Kinney National Company bought Elektra Records in 1970 and then became Warner Communications in 1972, it assembled the three labels into a group then known as WEA (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic); that name was also used as a label outside the U.S. (WMG's current logo is the former Warner Communications logo). In 1987, it was announced that Warner Communications were to merge with Time Inc. to form Time Warner.

Time Warner sold the company in late 2003 to a group of investors led by Edgar Bronfman, Jr. for $2.6 billion. Time Warner was reportedly attempting to reduce its debt load. This spinoff was completed on February 27, 2004. In the 2004 transition to independent ownership, WMG hired record industry heavyweight Lyor Cohen from Universal Music Group to attempt to reduce cost and increase performance.

On May 5, 2006, WMG apparently rejected a buyout offer from EMI[1]. Then WMG offered to buy EMI and it also rejected the offer. The two companies are still in talks about a potential merger. The headquarters are located at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY, 10019 USA, in the former Time Warner headquarters. It is interesting to note that Time Warner may still have some ownership of Warner music because WMG does not license its trademarks from its former parent company.[verification needed]

Contents

[edit] List of Warner labels

Warner Music Group's labels include the following. It should be noted that some labels are actually divisions of other labels than in the order listed; this order reflects the order of each labels' administration.

[edit] Atlantic Records Group

[edit] Independent Label Group

[edit] Rhino Entertainment Company

  • Atco Records
  • Rhino Records
  • Rhino Home Video
  • Warner Custom Products
  • Warner Music Group Soundtracks
  • WMG Film, Television & Commercial Licensing

[edit] Ryko Corporation

[edit] Warner Bros. Records Inc.

[edit] WEA International Inc.

WEA International Inc. has divisions worldwide such as Australia, Japan and all over Europe. These branches are usually called Warner Music followed by the name of the country. Some labels have more than one record company for example the UK has Warner Bros. UK and Atlantic UK.

[edit] Other record labels distributed by Warner Music Group

[edit] Trivia

  • Warner Music Group is the only one of the Big Four label groups that does not trace its roots back to the pre-1900 labels Columbia Records and Berliner Gramophone. Those U.S. labels' British licensees merged to become EMI in 1931. Then, in 2004, the successors to the original labels merged to form Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Universal Music Group's oldest label, Deutsche Grammophon, was founded in 1898 as the German licensee of Berliner Gramophone. In contrast, all of WMG's major labels were founded after World War II.
  • Warner Music Group is also the only one of the Big Four label groups that does not have a substantial link to European ownership. EMI is headquartered in London, Sony BMG is half owned by Bertelsmann (headquarted in Germany) and Universal Music Group is 100% owned by Vivendi SA (headquartered in Paris)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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