COLUMBIA
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment,
a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese
conglomerate Sony. ... Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound
business, and the second major company to produce records.
Columbia Records originated in the late 1880s as the Columbia Graphophone Company of
Bridgeport, Connecticut. The original company was built upon the experiments of scientist
Charles Sumner Tainter and Chichester A. Bell. Bell, a cousin of telephone inventor Alexander
Graham Bell, was an engineer. In 1886 the two received a patent for a wax-coated cardboard
cylinder on which sounds could be recorded. Their machine, the Graphophone, made its official
debut in Washington, D.C., three years later.
The relationship between Sony Corporation and Columbia Records dates back to 1968, when
CBS, which then owned the Columbia label, joined with Sony in order to expedite its expansion
into the Asian market. Twenty years later, Sony acquired the CBS Records Group. Sony Music
Entertainment Inc., including the Sony division of which Columbia Records is a part, is a truly
international recording company boasting more than 9,000 employees.
As one of four label groups within Sony Music Entertainment Inc., Columbia Records does not
independently report its financial results; they are included in the Sony Corporation's posted net
earnings. For fiscal 1998, ended March 31, 1998, SMEI reported net earnings of $1.67 billion on
revenue of $50.73 billion, compared with net income of $1.13 billion on revenue of $45.7 billion
in fiscal 1997. In fiscal 1996, Sony's reported net earnings of $512 million on revenue of $43.3
billion, compared with a net loss of $3.3 billion on revenue of $44.8 billion in fiscal 1995.
Ownership: Columbia Records is a division of Sony Music Entertainment Inc. which is a
division of Sony corp.
Employees: 9,000 in Sony Music Entertainment, Inc., which includes Columbia Records
In 1998, in a market saturated with new, high-priced musical products, the company adopted
a new strategy: the "developing-artists retail program." With this approach, prices for albums by
lesser-known, newer bands would be reduced until a certain quota were sold. Once the albums
passed the targeted sales threshold, the price per recording would be raised to that of better
known artists. This strategy encourages consumers to try unknown artists without having to
spend the same amount of money they traditionally would have spent on an established artist.
