Jim Croce

ABC Records was an American record label, founded in New York City in 1955 as ABC-Paramount Records. It originated as the main popular music label operated the Am-Par Record Corporation, the music subsidiary of the American Broadcasting Company . ABC-Paramount Records' first president was Samuel H.... Clark. Am-Par also established the Impulse! jazz label in 1961 and subsequently acquired a number of other labels before the entire division was sold to MCA Records in 1979. ABC-Paramount -- the direct antecedent of the present-day American Broadcasting Company -- evolved from federal antitrust actions taken against the movie studios and broadcasting companies in the 1940s and early 1950s. As a result of a 1943 Federal Communications Commission action against anti-competitive practices, the Radio Corporation of America was forced to sell off its broadcast subsidiary the Blue Network, the sister network of NBC, and Blue was purchased by the American Broadcasting System, Inc.
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Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz. Over its first 20 years of operation Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most important American independent recording labels, specializing in jazz, R&B and soul... recordings by African-American artists, a position greatly enhanced by its distribution deal with Stax Records. In 1967 Atlantic became a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, now the Warner Music Group, and expanded into rock and pop music, signing Cream, Led Zeppelin, Yes and Foreigner. In 2004 Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group. Craig Kallman is currently Chairman of Atlantic Records. Label co-founder Ahmet Ertegün served as Founding Chairman until his death on December 14, 2006 at age 83. The label also has a number of deals with previously independent labels such as Must Destroy and VP Records in Jamaica, home to reggae artists such as Sean Paul.
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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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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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Pop music is a genre of popular music which originated in its modern form in the 1950s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms popular music and pop... music are often used interchangeably, even though the former is a description of music which is popular , whilst the latter is a specific genre containing qualities of mass appeal. As a genre, pop music is very eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles including urban, dance, rock, Latin and country; nonetheless, there are core elements which define pop. Such include generally short-to-medium length songs, written in a basic format , as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and catchy hooks. So-called "pure pop" music, such as power pop, features all these elements, utilising electric guitars, drums and bass for instrumentation; in the case of such music, the main goal is usually that of being pleasurable to listen to, rather than having much artistic depth.
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