TriStar Music was a label that Sony Music Entertainment founded in 1993 that was used to bring US customers selected acts from SME's other labels from around the world that wouldn’t otherwise be distributed there. Rather than put out its titles through Sony Music Distribution, it used its recently acquired Relativity Entertainment Distribution pipeline instead, although TriStar releases had all the usual SME markings and were manufactured by Sony DADC. A new W catalog-number prefix and a UPC prefix that SME had not used before were characteristic of these titles as well. In 1996, the label was shut down, and Red Ink Records was founded in its place, but the W prefix was still used for Red Ink and SME titles that were put through Relativity Entertainment Distribution.