Columbia Records
Then the public began to buy phonographs.

In general these playback applications required a ready supply of pre-recorded material and in 1890 the D.C. operation began to sell pre-recorded cylinders under the Columbia label (thus the oldest record label in the world came into existence).

The survival of this one company was due to its astute pursuit of alternate markets and because it began to sell recordings on the Columbia label (named after the District Of Columbia).

By 1891 it had 200 titles in its catalogue and was the largest record company in the world. But a major obstacle in commercializing pre-recorded material was the difficulty in duplicating a title.

To produce a batch of 200 recordings of a march it had to be played 20 times in front of a battery of ten recording horns. For the phonograph to prosper as public entertainment, the production process and duplication had to be simplified and cost effective.

In 1900 it opened a London office and by then was selling both Edison cylinders and Berliner disks. Due to financial problems during WW I (1922) the U.S. operation was forced to sell its British subsidiary to the local manager Louis Sterling.

A year later U.S. Columbia also failed and the British operation bought it from receivers to get access to the recently developed electric cutting system that was only available to U.S. companies.

The company was reorganized in 1925 and went international, operating under different names in different countries. In the U.S. it was known as the General Phonograph Company Inc.

The company in the U.S. invested in broadcasting by taking over United Independent Broadcasters and renamed the U.S. operation the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Co. During the depression in the 1930s, the company again had financial woes, and in particular, the performance of the U.S. record operation was poor (sales were 6% of 1927 levels).

The broadcast network had potential but was equally unprofitable, so bad sales and the likelihood that it was in violation of antitrust laws due to this 50% interest in the Victor Talking Machine Company in the U.S. caused the company to divest its U.S. interest in Columbia.

Columbia U.K. was merged with HMV (the U.K. operation of the Victor Talking Machine Company) in 1931 and the company was renamed the Electrical and Music Industry (EMI). The U.S. radio network continued as the Columbia Broadcasting System and became profitable during the next decade.

The North American Phonograph

The U.S. Columbia Records was sold to Grigsby- Grunow, a manufacturer of refrigerators and radios. This company went bankrupt in 1934, and Columbia was sold to the Brunswick label.

The American Record Company had been formed in 1929 through the merger of three small labels, Oriole and Perfect, Romeo, and Banner. A

RC acquired the Brunswick label (started in 1916) in 1931 and changed the name of the entire company to Brunswick Record Corporation of which it was at the time of the Columbia acquisition.

CBS bought Brunswick in 1938. CBS deactivated the Brunswick label and reactivated the Columbia label, later selling Brunswick to Decca in 1942.

Outside the U.S. the Columbia label would remain EMI’s flagship pop label until the early 50s when CBS pulled out of its overseas arrangement with EMI. We’ll return to the EMI, HMV and Victor Talking Machine Company connections subsequently.

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