PolyGram: История глобального музыкального гиганта

1962–1999 Dutch global record label
the former record company and Universal Music Group's current film unit

PolyGram N. V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a holding for their record companies, and was renamed "PolyGram" in 1972. The name was chosen to reflect the Siemens interest Polydor Records and the Philips interest Phonogram Records. The company traced its origins through Deutsche Grammophon back to the inventor of the flat disc gramophone, Emil Berliner. Later on, PolyGram expanded into the largest global entertainment company, creating film and television divisions. In May 1998, it was sold to the alcoholic distiller Seagram which owned film, television and music company Universal Studios. PolyGram was thereby folded into Universal Music Group, and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment was folded into Universal Pictures, which had been both Seagram successors of MCA Inc. When the newly formed entertainment division of Seagram faced financial difficulties, it was sold to Vivendi, and MCA became known as Universal Studios, as Seagram ceased to exist. Vivendi remains the majority owner of the Universal Music Group (while the film and television division was sold to NBCUniversal) until 2021. In February 2017, UMG revived the company under the name of PolyGram Entertainment, which currently serves as their film and television division.

In 1929, Decca Records (London) licensed record shop owner H. W. Van Zoelen as a distributor in the Netherlands. By 1931, his company Hollandsche Decca Distributie (HDD) had become exclusive Decca distributor for all of the Netherlands and its colonies. Over the course of the 1930s, HDD put together its own facilities for A&R, recording, and manufacturing. HDD was commercially successful during World War II because of the absence of American and British competition. Van Zoelen wanted to sell to Philips so that HDD would have sufficient financial backing when their major competitors returned after the war. This led Philips to purchase HDD in 1942. for this reason. Philips' labs were developing magnetic tape and LPs, and they could support eventual new formats, although other record companies were notably unenthusiastic about experimenting with new formats. After the war, Philips built a large factory in Doetinchem to produce 78 rpm records. Recording took place in Hilversum, whereas development took place in Eindhoven.

In the 1940s, the record business was spread out within Philips: research in the Eindhoven labs, development elsewhere in Eindhoven, recording in Hilversum, manufacturing in Doetinchem, distribution from Amsterdam, and exports from Eindhoven. During the late 1940s, Philips combined its various music businesses into Philips Phonografische Industrie (PPI), a wholly owned subsidiary. PPI's early growth was based on alliances. A merger was first proposed with Decca of London in late 1945, but was rejected by Edward Lewis, Decca's owner. (PolyGram finally acquired Decca in 1980.) In the early 1950s, Philips set itself the goal of making PPI the largest record company in Europe. PPI's second attempt at a merger was with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft (DGG). DGG, owned by Siemens AG, and well known for its classical repertoire, had been the German licensee for Decca from 1935. DGG also owned Polydor Records. Shortly after PPI was founded it had made a formal alliance with DGG to manufacture each other's records, coordinate releases, and refrain from poaching each other's artists or bidding against each other for new talent. PPI and DGG finally merged in 1962. The alliance with DGG still left PPI without repertoire in Britain or the United States. But in 1951, after Columbia had failed to renew its international distribution agreement with EMI, PPI agreed to distribute Columbia recordings outside the United States. Columbia became PPI's distributor within the US. This agreement ran until 1961 when Columbia set up its own European network. PPI signed a worldwide distribution deal with Mercury Records in 1961. PPI's parent company Philips, through its U. S. affiliate Consolidated Electronics Industries Corp (a. k. a. Conelco), acquired Mercury in 1962. PPI built or bought factories in smaller countries. In 1962, PPI had a large factory in Baarn and factories in France, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Italy, Egypt, Nigeria, and Brazil. PPI played an important role in the introduction of the long playing vinyl record to Europe. Columbia introduced their LP record in 1948, and Philips presented its first LP at a record retailers' convention in 1949. Philips' commitment to LP technology was an important factor in its 1951–1961 deal with Columbia.

In 1962, PPI and DGG formed the Grammophon Philips Group (GPG) as a joint venture holding company, with Philips taking a 50% share in DGG and Siemens a 50% share in PPI. In 1971, the UK record labels of Philips, Fontana, Mercury, and Vertigo were amalgamated into a new company called Phonogram, Ltd. In 1972, Grammophon Philips Group reorganized all its operations and was renamed The PolyGram Group (in some countries, like Argentina, its name was Phonogram), of which Philips and Siemens each owned 50%. In 1977, both organizations merged operationally, integrating the recording, manufacturing, distribution and marketing into a single organization. The various record labels within PolyGram continued to operate separately. PolyGram gave its labels, as A&R organizations, great autonomy. After the merger, PolyGram began to move into the US and UK markets, and did so by a process of both formation and acquisition: Polydor Records established its American operations, Polydor Incorporated in 1969, Mercury Record Productions (US) was acquired in 1972 from sister company North American Philips Corp., and became Phonogram, Inc. MGM Records and Verve (US) were acquired in 1972. Subsequent PolyGram acquisitions included those of RSO (UK) in 1975, a 50% stake in Casablanca (US) in 1977 (with the remaining 50% in 1980), Pickwick in 1978, and Decca (UK) in 1980 (the latter acquisition basically brought PolyGram full circle, see the HDD section above). PolyGram acquired United Distribution Corporation (UDC) in 1973, and changed its name to Phonodisc, Inc., and signed international distribution deals with MCA and 20th Century Records in 1976. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Philips had been at work on a new consumer magnetic tape format for music. The Philips Compact Cassette was introduced in 1963. It was small and could play longer than an LP. In 1965 the cassette accounted for 3% of revenues, growing in 1968 to 8% and in 1970 to 10.6%. In the late 1960s, and through the 1970s, GPG/PolyGram diversified into film and television production and home video. RSO's successes included Saturday Night Fever and Grease. PolyGram's highly successful marketing during the disco craze included the Casablanca FilmWorks production Thank God It's Friday (1978) and its associated soundtrack. During the boom in disco, PolyGram's US market share had grown from 5% to 20%. This can also be attributed to multi million selling albums and 45s by the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, the Village People, Andy Gibb, Kool & the Gang, and rock band Kiss. For a short while in the late 1970s, it was the world's largest record company. In 1969, PolyGram established a direct mail order business in the UK, Britannia Music Club, which ran till 2007.

In 1996, Cor Boonstra became CEO of Philips; by the time he took over, Philips was seen as a bloated company, laden with too many layers of management and unrelated companies that they could not leverage effectively. As a result, Boonstra began to sell or dispose of various non core assets. While Philips began to withdraw from other media activities, Boonstra denied that PolyGram was for sale. However, by early 1998, he had changed his attitude, instead deciding to pursue a manufacturing only business plan. (In hindsight, analysts have pointed out how Philips ultimately benefitted from the manufacture and sale of blank CDs, which played a significant part in the music piracy that began to affect the industry in the early 2000s.) After weeks of speculation, on May 22, 1998, Philips announced that they would sell PolyGram to Seagram for $10 billion. Some of the reasons cited for the deal were a lack of pop hits from the music side of the company, and an equal lack of box office successes from the film side. Alain Levy resigned as CEO of PolyGram on June 23 to prepare for the merger, and the deal was closed on December 10, 1998, with PolyGram's operations folding into Universal Pictures and Universal Music Group. Seagram was only interested in PolyGram's music division, and in October 1998 they announced that they would begin divesting PolyGram's entertainment assets, while the remainder would be folded into Universal. Prior to this announcement, the company announced the sale of their 75% stake in children's distributor Abbey Home Entertainment back to its original founders. On October 23, Metro Goldwyn Mayer agreed to purchase PolyGram Filmed Entertainment's pre April 1996 library for $250 million, which included over 1,300 films from various assets PolyGram had acquired within that point. On January 19, 1999, the ITC Entertainment library was sold to Carlton Communications for £91 million. On April 8, 1999, USA Networks announced they would purchase the domestic distribution arm of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and the US operations of PolyGram Video, among other assets. After the sale, the divisions were renamed USA Films and USA Home Entertainment respectively. The assets of Slash Records and London Records were sold to Warner Music Group. What remained of PolyGram was merged into Universal Music Group and Universal Pictures. On February 10, 1999, Universal announced that they would exit out of their CIC Video and United International Pictures ventures with Paramount Pictures and rebrand the international divisions of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and PolyGram Video under the Universal name. Whilst the home video division rebranding was successful (with CIC rebranding under the Paramount umbrella toward the end of 1999), the theatrical division rebranding would prove to be a failure, as films from the rebranded Universal Pictures International flopped at the box office, the company therefore announced in October 1999 that their operations would be downgraded to the home video market only and renewed their UIP deal with Paramount for five years, the remains of PolyGram's theatrical assets would then be folded into United International Pictures. Mickey Blue Eyes would become the last film distributed under the ex PolyGram unit. The PolyGram name now survives via reissue of music under the Polydor Records label as well as a publishing arm of Universal Music Publishing Group. The Japanese branches of the PolyGram labels that were absorbed to form Universal Music Japan and were rebranded: Polydor remained until 2002, when it merged with the Universal label to form Universal J, Kitty Records and Mercury remained until 2000, when they merged and became the short lived Kitty MME, which later in 2002, moved some artists to Universal J, and in 2004, Kitty MME became Universal Sigma.

Universal Music Group (UMG) had been dabbling in the documentary field, having a hand in producing the 2015 Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy, as well as HBO's Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. In January 2017, UMG hired David Blackman to head its newly formed film and TV unit, reporting to Universal Music Publishing Group chairman/CEO Jody Gerson and UMG Executive Vice President Michele Anthony. PolyGram Entertainment was relaunched on February 11, 2017, as a film and television unit of Universal Music Group. Before the announcement, the revived PolyGram co distributed with StudioCanal on September 15, 2016, the documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week. Polygram had on its slate as its first production The Story of Motown (a documentary about the record label's cultural and historical effects). Also on its slate was the co production and financing of Mystify (a biography of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence). Republic Records, in working with PolyGram, appointed its first executive vice president of film & television on July 17, 2017, to oversee film and TV projects and its Federal Films initiative. On June 5, 2018, the company announced the appointment of Daniel Inkeles to the post of Vice President, Scripted Film & Television, who moved over from a sister Vivendi company, StudioCanal, to UMG. Lionsgate and PolyGram agreed to a multiyear first look television deal on August 6, 2018, to develop projects for TV from UMG's portfolio of labels, artists and music, with UMG issuing the corresponding soundtracks. Universal Music Group agreed on April 17, 2019, to allow Wondery a license to use the UMG music catalog and develop story podcasts of UMG artists, which would possibly be adapted for TV or film projects. Wondery would work with all UMG labels and with its PolyGram Entertainment film and TV production unit.

Year Series Production partner Originalnetwork/channel Notes 2018 Ariana Grande: Dangerous Woman Diaries Good Story Entertainment and Federal Films YouTube Premium Documentary / Concert 2019 Wu Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men Showtime Documentary Films, Mass Appeal, Sony Music Entertainment and Endeavor Content Showtime Documentary 2020–2021 Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist Zijuatanejo Productions, The Tannenbaum Company, Feigco Entertainment, Lionsgate Television and Universal Television NBC Musical comedy drama 2021 The Beatles: Get Back Walt Disney Pictures, Apple Corps and WingNut Films Disney+ Documentary 2021 Mr. A & Mr. M: The Story of A&M Records Interscope Films, K/M Documentaries and Universal Music Publishing Group Epix Documentary 2023 Dear Mama Defiant Ones Media Group, Amaru Entertainment, DreamCrew Entertainment, MACRO, Interscope Films and FXP FX Documentary 2024 James Brown: Say It Loud Jagged Films, Inaudible Films, Two One Five Entertainment and Warner Music Entertainment A&E Documentary 2024 Stax: Soulsville U. S. A. Concord Originals, HBO Documentary Films, Warner Music Entertainment, Laylow Pictures and White Horse Pictures HBO Documentary