Label Guide: Columbia

Columbia Records was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company, and Columbia is the oldest brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders.

By the early 1940s, Columbia had been experimenting with higher fidelity recordings, as well as longer masters, which paved the way for the successful release of the LPs in 1948. In 1951 Columbia USA severed its decades-long distribution arrangement with EMI and signed a distribution deal with Philips Records to market Columbia recordings outside North America. This arrangement ended in 1961 when Columbia formed its own international organization, CBS Records, in 1962, which released Columbia recordings outside the USA and Canada on the CBS label (until 1964 marketed by Philips in Britain). The recordings could not be released under the "Columbia Records" name because that was a separate record label operated by EMI outside North America.

In 1988, the CBS Records Group, including the Columbia Records unit, was acquired by Sony, which re-christened the parent division Sony Music Entertainment in 1991.

In the United Kingdom, the Columbia Graphophone Company was a separate label owned by EMI since 1922. EMI continued to operate the Columbia record label in the UK until the early 1970s, and everywhere else except for the US, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Japan, until it sold its remaining interest in the Columbia trademark to Sony Music Entertainment in 1990. In 1973, Columbia was replaced by the newly created EMI Records as part of an EMI label consolidation.

Follow this link for our guide to Price Codes and Identifiers in the consolidated CBS/Columbia 30000 Series.