Philips Records

Philips Records
Parent company	Universal Music Group
Founded	1950
Distributor(s)	Decca Music Group
Genre	(historic) Various (current) Classical music
Country of origin	UK
Official website	http://www.decca.com

Philips Records is a record label that was founded by Dutch electronics giant Philips. It was started as Philips Phonographische Industries (PPI) in 1950. During much of the 1950s, it served to distribute recordings made by the US Columbia Records and Columbia Masterworks Records labels in the United Kingdom. In the late 1950s Philips created a subsidiary label, Fontana Records. After Columbia formed its own international operations in 1961 adopting the name of its then parent CBS, Philips acquired Mercury Records. In 1962 Philips Records and Deutsche Grammophon were linked into the Phonogram Records joint venture.

In the eighties Philips Classics Records was formed to distribute its classics artists, although classical recordings have also been issued on the regular Philips label.

In 1983, Philips became the first record label to issue compact discs, using digital recordings that went as far back as 1978. (The first digital recordings, however, were actually remastered versions of vintage recordings by the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso, using the Soundstream process developed in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1975-76. RCA Victor released vinyl versions of these reprocessed, historic recordings. Philips was among the record labels to use the Soundstream process for modern digital recordings.)

Philips Records has been part of Universal Music since 1998. In 1999, Philips Classics was absorbed into the Decca Music Group. Philips Records' pop music catalogue is managed by Mercury Records.

Recently, many of the Philips classical recordings have been reissued on the Eloquence label.

Selected Philips Records artists - with origin

• Blue Cheer - San Francisco, California, United States
• Teresa Brewer - Toledo, Ohio, United States
• Changin' Times
• David Whitfield - Hull recorded his first album in years on Philips in 1975 called Hey There formally on Decca
• Val Doonican - Ireland (formerly on Decca till 1967, then on Pye)
• The Four Pennies - various, England
• The Four Seasons (also as The Wonder Who?) - Newark, New Jersey, United States
• Johnny Hallyday - Paris, France
• Bobby Hebb - Nashville, Tennessee, United States
• The Kaye Sisters - various, England
• Frankie Laine
• Los Paraguayos - Paraguay
• Luv' - Netherlands
• Susan Maughan - Consett, County Durham
• Paul Mauriat - Marseille, France
• Roger Miller - born Fort Worth, Texas; based Nashville, Tennessee, United States. (1968 to Mercury)
• Guy Mitchell
• Mouth & MacNeal - Netherlands
• Peters and Lee
• Johnnie Ray
• Jim and Jean - Greenwich Village, New York City, United States (1965)
• Richard and the Young Lions - Newark, New Jersey, United States
• Serendipity Singers - Boulder, Colorado, United States
• Nina Simone - Tryon, North Carolina, United States
• Dusty Springfield - West Hampstead, London
• The Springfields - London
• Frankie Vaughan - Liverpool, England. (Formerly on HMV till 1956, and on Columbia from 1967. The moved to Pye in 1973 till 1978 when he recorded for a variety of labels including Ronco, Big V Records.)
• The Walker Brothers - Los Angeles, California, United States; based in London from Feb. 1965
• John Walker - New York, United States
• Scott Walker - Hamilton, Ohio, United States
• Marty Wilde - Greenwich, South London
• Flame Dream
• Cluster - Berlin, Germany
• KNT´Rock Club - Governador Valadares, Brazil
• 10CC - Stockport, England

See also

• List of record labels
• Universal Music Classics Group

External links

• A discography of American Philips pop albums in the 1960s and early 1970s

• Yahoo! Group dedicated to Philips Records