30 Seconds to Mars

Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Simple... Minds, Lenny Kravitz, The Smashing Pumpkins, Mike Oldfield, and more on their list of artists. It was later sold to Thorn EMI in 1992. Its American operations were merged with Capitol Records in 2007 to create the Capitol Music Group. Branson and Powell had initially run a small record shop called Virgin Records and Tapes on Notting Hill Gate, London, specialising particularly in "krautrock" imports, and offering bean bags and free vegetarian food for the benefit of customers listening to the music on offer. After making the shop into a success, they turned their business into a fully fledged record label. The name Virgin, according to Branson , arose from Tessa Watts, a colleague of his, when they were brainstorming business ideas. She suggested Virgin - as they were all new to business - like "virgins".
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The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a British multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and was one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a... major publishing arm, EMI Music Publishing – also based in London with offices globally. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but since February 2011 it has been wholly owned by Citigroup . EMI is a member of the RIAA & IFPI. In November 2011 Citigroup announced a tentative deal to sell off pieces of the company with the music arm going to Vivendi's Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion and the publishing business going to a Sony/ATV consortium for around $2.2 billion. Other members of the Sony consortium include Blackstone and Abu Dhabi-owned investment fund Mubadala. Both before and after the sale announcement, Universal Music Group pledged to sell off EMI assets to the value of half a billion Euros.
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