EMI Music

EMI Music is one of the world’s leading music companies, home to some of the most successful and best known recording artists.

Through our own companies and network of licensees, we are able to serve our artists, consumers and partners all over the world.

EMI Music brings artists and fans together by driving action and creating value wherever music is experienced. To do this most effectively we have three business units: New Music, Catalogue and Music Services.

New Music finds and develops new, exciting and successful music. Its record labels include Angel, Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Latin, Capitol Nashville, EMI Classics, EMI CMG, EMI Records, EMI Records Nashville, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin. Artists on EMI labels include Lily Allen, Bat For Lashes, The Beatles, Beastie Boys, Luke Bryan, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Gorillaz, Iron Maiden, Norah Jones, Lady Antebellum, Massive Attack, Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry, Pink Floyd, Queen, Corinne Bailey Rae, Sir Simon Rattle, Snoop Dogg, 30 Seconds To Mars, KT Tunstall, Keith Urban and Robbie Williams, as well as international artists such as Amaral (Spain), Camille (France), Empire of the Sun (Australia), Tiziano Ferro (Italy), Flex (Mexico), LaFee (Germany) and Utada Hikaru (Japan).

Catalogue maximises the value of EMI’s historic and extensive music assets. Seminal albums in EMI Music’s catalogue include Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane (David Bowie), Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band (The Beatles), Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), A Rush Of Blood To The Head (Coldplay), Birth Of The Cool (Miles Davis), Come Away With Me (Norah Jones), Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall (Pink Floyd), A Night At The Opera (Queen), OK Computer (Radiohead) and Songs For Swingin’ Lovers (Frank Sinatra). EMI Music’s Catalogue division also owns and runs the world-renowned recording studios Abbey Road in London and Capitol Studios in Los Angeles.

Music Services provides EMI’s roster of artists – as well as independent labels and artists – a global menu of commercial services and seamless access to an expanding range of revenue streams and business models. It is focused on delivering revenues to EMI’s artists, as well as to the independent label and artist community, and is the industry’s only one-stop shop for accessing a global marketplace of traditional and non-traditional commercial partners. Music Services’ focus and solid execution provides unique value to EMI’s roster and associated artists in key functions like licensing, synch and distribution.

Innovation

EMI traces its history back to the very beginnings of recorded sound and music as one of our original companies was founded by the inventor of the gramophone, Emile Berliner.

Since then EMI has always been at the forefront of technology and change. EMI scientists invented stereo recording and were closely involved in the development of magnetic tape. They were also behind the birth of electrical television and radar.

Given our heritage of innovation, when digital music began to take off in the 1990s, EMI was well placed to respond to the new trends. EMI Music’s first websites went live in 1993 and 1994 and in 1998 EMI streamed the first complete album over the internet, ‘Mezzanine’ by Massive Attack. The following year EMI was the first company to release a digital album download, David Bowie’s ‘…Hours’. EMI also launched the first internet video single in 2001. In 2007 EMI became the first major music company to make its music available without digital rights management (DRM) software.

Today EMI Music has agreements with hundreds of digital partners to distribute our music across the globe, covering a huge variety of digital music business models and ideas.

Ownership

In 2007 EMI was acquired by leading private equity partnership Terra Firma, making EMI the only privately-owned major music company.

Useful links

For the story of EMI see our our history.

For information on working at EMI Music please go to our careers page.