Columbia

Columbia Records is the oldest brand name in recorded sound. Founded in January 1889 in Washington DC as the Columbia Graphophone Company by Edward D. Easton, it first sold phonograph cylinders and later disc records.

It set up a UK operation, also the Columbia Graphophone Company, in the early 1900s. This was reorganised in 1918 as an independent company, the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd. now owned by its UK management rather than the parent.

The original US company was taken over by the UK company in 1925.

In 1931 The Gramophone Company and Columbia Grapophone Company merged into the Electric & Musical Industries Ltd. EMI was forced to sell its American Columbia operations to ARC, which was acquired by CBS in 1938.

EMI retained the rights to market all US Columbia product outside the North America until the early 1950s when CBS partnered with Philips to open operations around the world.

Until 1987 EMI owned the British and European rights to the COLUMBIA trademark and CBS owned the US rights. In this year Sony bought the entire CBS world wide operation and also acquired the Columbia trademark from EMI, except for Japan, where the trademark is owned by a completely different company.

WARNING: Codes with the following prefixes should not be entered as catalogue number: XSS, ZSS, AL, BL. These codes are matrix numbers unique for each side of a vinyl release and should be entered in the Barcode and Other Identifiers section. The actual catalogue number is usually printed above the matrix number.

Label code: LC 0162 or LC 00162

DON'T SUBMIT EMI'S COLUMBIA RELEASES HERE. THEY SHOULD BE SUBMITTED TO THE EMI Columbia PAGE. OLDER RELEASES MAY NOT HAVE THE EMI LOGO ON THEM, BUT SHOULD STILL BE ADDED TO THAT LABEL. ALL COLUMBIA RELEASES BETWEEN 1931 TO 1988, NOT RELEASED IN THE US, CANADA, SPAIN (AFTER 1935) OR JAPAN SHOULD GO ON THE EMI COLUMBIA LABEL.

THE LAST EMI COLUMBIA RELEASES WERE IN 1989 SO THERE IS SOME CROSSOVER - PLEASE CHECK THESE CAREFULLY.

JAPAN'S COLUMBIA RELEASES SHOULD BE SUBMITTED TO THE Nippon Columbia OR Columbia Music Entertainment PAGES.