New Kids on the Block

Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a recorded music company, which was a 50–50 joint venture between the Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann AG. The venture’s successor, the again-active Sony Music Entertainment, is 100% owned by the Sony Corporation of America. Sony BMG Music... Entertainment began as the result of a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment and Bertelsmann Music Group completed on March 4, 2004. It is one of the Big Four music companies, and includes ownership and distribution of recording labels such as Arista Records, Columbia Records, Epic Records, J Records, Jive Records, RCA Victor Records, RCA Records, Legacy Recordings, Sonic Wave America, and others. The merger affected all Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group companies worldwide except for Japan, where it was felt that it would reduce competition in that country’s music industry significantly. Financial analysts covering the merger anticipated that up to 2,000 jobs would be cut as a result, saving Sony BMG approximately $350 million annually.
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Universal Music Group is a multinational music company. It is the largest of the "big four" record companies by its leading market share and its multitude of global operations. Universal Music Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of French media conglomerate Vivendi. Universal Music Group owns a... music publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group, which became the world's largest following the 2007 acquisition of BMG Music Publishing. The UMG corporate headquarters are located in Santa Monica, California, United States. "Universal Music" was once the music company attached to film studio Universal Pictures. Its origins go back to the formation of the American branch of Decca Records in 1934. The Decca Corporation of England spun American Decca off in 1939. MCA Inc. bought American Decca in 1962. The present organization was formed when its parent company Seagram purchased PolyGram and merged it with Universal Music Group in 1998. However, the name first appeared in 1996 when MCA Music Entertainment Group was renamed Universal Music Group.
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Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group. Interscope was founded in 1990 by Jimmy Iovine and Interscope Communications' Ted Field with financial support from Atlantic Records . Initially... it was distributed by the Atlantic Records subsidiary East West Records America. A&R Executive John McClain and producer Beau Hill were also part of the original founding team. The original focus of the label was on hip-hop and urban music, but by the mid 90's its range began to expand, to extent where its roster would be as wide ranging to include the industrial rock artist Nine Inch Nails , shock rocker Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, Helmet, No Doubt and later the Latin artist Kings Of Flow in a unique partnership with Los Angeles based indie Latin label. Following UMG's acquisition of PolyGram in 1998, Geffen Records and A&M Records were merged into Interscope.
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Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B and RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was... originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. The term has subsequently had a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, the term rhythm and blues was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" became used to refer to music styles that developed from and incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, rhythm and blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk. In the 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B". Jerry Wexler of Billboard magazine coined the term "rhythm and blues" in 1948 as a musical marketing term in the United States. It replaced the term "race music", which originally came from within the black community, but was deemed offensive in the postwar world.
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