Columbia Records is the oldest brand name in recorded sound. Founded in 1888, it first sold phonograph cylinders and later disc records. In 1931 the Gramophone Company and Columbia Gramophone 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.

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.

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

WARNING: Don't submit releases under the catalog number XXS. Columbia Records's XSS matrix is nothing but a matrix unique for each release A-side and B-Side, please use the catalog number usually found straight above where XSS is written.

Please don't use the AL/BL prefixes for catalog numbers, as they are matrix numbers just used to signify the sides of the release.

Label code: LC 0162 or LC 00162