Buzzcocks

I.R.S. Records is a record label, launched in the United States in 1979 by Miles Copeland III along with Jay Boberg and Carl Grasso. Miles was also the manager of Wishbone Ash, The Police, and later, Sting, as well as other bands. I.R.S. was the sister label of Copeland's Illegal Records . I.R.S.... releases were distributed by A&M Records until 1985, by MCA Records until 1990, and finally by EMI until the label folded in 1996. In 2011, EMI revived the label; currently, the label has Chiddy Bang and Foxy Shazam on its roster. In 1985, Copeland brokered a deal to switch the label's distributor to MCA Records. Under the agreement, A&M continued to release the label's pre-1985 catalog, much of which still can be found under the A&M banner. In 1990, the band Green Day included a letter from then-I.R.S. college radio rep Lori Blumenthal in one of their last cassette releases for Lookout Records. The letter expressed IRS' interest in signing the band to the label. A reply letter from Lookout, also included in the cassette artwork, deemed I.R.S. a "cheesy" and "washed up" record label, and they expressed their loyalty to Lookout! Records.
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ROIR , or Reach Out International Records, is a New York City-based record label founded in 1979 by Neil Cooper. ROIR was founded the same year that the Sony Walkman launched, and initially, the label exclusively distributed its releases in cassette format. Much of the label's catalog is now... available in CD and LP formats. ROIR released its first cassette, by James Chance and the Contortions, in 1981. In 1982, ROIR released the compilation album New York Thrash, documenting the hardcore punk scene in the New York metropolitan area. It has since become a definitive album in the genre. Most of ROIR's early catalog consists of punk rock and no wave releases by artists such as Suicide, Glenn Branca, and Lydia Lunch. The label later branched out into other genres including hardcore punk, reggae, ska, psychedelia and dub. ROIR released early recordings by Bad Brains , Beastie Boys, Einstürzende Neubauten , Flipper , MC5, New York Dolls, Television, The Legendary Pink Dots, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, and The Skatalites .
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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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