Polling the majors

For me, no doubt. I mean, you cannot argue with Beatles, Bowie, Genesis, Depeche Mode, Human League, Beach Boys, Pet Shop Boys, Blur, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, The Hollies, The Supernaturals, Coldplay, Yazoo, Erasure, Mike Oldfield, OMD, Rolling Stones and lots and lots of others. It has got to be EMI!

umm .. a fine fine list Geir, but the supernaturals !?!?!

Warner

voted Universal, simply because Geffen is all sorts of great

Stax, Sire, Rhino, and Rykodisc win it for warner, despite my general distaste for them.

Universal

^^

Funny, I'm usually curious about labels for non-major label stuff, but for one reason or another I pay virtually no attention to what major label an artist is on apart from acknowledging that it's a major label. Sure, I know that Beatles = EMI, jazz is obviously Blue Note and Verve (but I had no idea they were owned/distributed by EMI and Universal, respectively), but I couldn't for shit tell you who's on Universal vs. Sony vs. Warner, etc.

I assume that's sort of the point behind the thread?

Other than a sly way to rep for The Supernaturals of course

Yeah, I went for Warner too, but all the majors are such an odd conglomeration of stuff that it's hard to vote.

Warner. Universal in 2nd place, mainly for the Motown catalogue.

well for the $tateside alone i am going to plump for EMI...

Beatles, Bowie, Genesis, Depeche Mode, Human League, Beach Boys, Pet Shop Boys, Blur, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, The Hollies, The Supernaturals, Coldplay, Yazoo, Erasure, Mike Oldfield, OMD, Rolling Stones and lots and lots of others. It has got to be EMI!

wait, what label was bowie on in the UK? in the US he was on RCA throughout the '70s, and i thought that was worldwide. someone else may have the catalog now, but it's kind of weird to give EMI credit for him. and depeche mode were mute in the UK but sire/warner in the US, so how do you calculate that one? not to mention the rolling stones...

Nice thread idea, Geir - just wish you'd named 20-30 distinct, prominent labels that existed before the '90s, rather than those bloated faceless conglomerates.

Warners it is.

wait, what label was bowie on in the UK? in the US he was on RCA throughout the '70s, and i thought that was worldwide. someone else may have the catalog now, but it's kind of weird to give EMI credit for him. and depeche mode were mute in the UK but sire/warner in the US, so how do you calculate that one? not to mention the rolling stones...

The point is who has them today. The most ironic thing of all here is that "Never Mind The Bollocks...." is now part of EMI's back catalog.

I vote Universal. Motown + Def Jam + being a bitch to a bottled water company = a winner.

no love for sony/bmg? for the bulk of miles davis work alone...which is to say, a major chunk of the most significant music of the 20th century...it gets my vote. oh look, and they also have dylan, elvis, and most of duke ellington's most influential works.

EMI owns Mute (On May 10, 2002, EMI acquired Mute Records)

no love for sony/bmg?

I think it's fairly safe to say every single one of those four owns catalogs with lots and lots of bands and artists well worth loving.

As for me, I the British bias means I will just have to go with EMI/Virgin anyway. When my two favourite majors merged, there was no more doubt. I mean, I always liked Virgin's musical philosophy (artists with artistic control and some musical substance, without necessarily being very experimental or "weird", and with no opposition to fame and commercial success) back when Richard Branson was still in charge. And EMI has all those huge names, lead by The Beatles. Plus Mute, which was always my favourite indie label, became part of the same label lately too.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

When I was a kid and first getting into music, I always wanted stuff to be on a Warner label. I liked the way the cassette (and later CD) cases had the plastic watermark or whatchamacallit, and I was sold into the idea of Warner as a superior media monolith by Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck saying at the beginning of my Batman VHS that in order to watch a Warner Bros. movie you had to have a Warner Bros. Ballcap (not that I got one). It also might be worth noting that Warner's early CD reissues tended to have better packaging than those of other majors, especially Sony: the spine often reflected the album art proper, and the booklet contained the artwork (or at least the lyrics) from the original LP insert.

Now of course WMG is no longer part of the Time Warner AOL empire, which oddly enough made me just a little sad when it happened. I've already complained here about how the Nonesuch Explorer reissues stopped around that time.

Anyway, in the US Warner had Talking Heads, PiL's best two, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Björk, Stooges, Roxy Music (though no longer), Stereolab, Yes, Genesis, Can on Mute, Laurie Anderson, Aphex Twin, Cibo Matto, The Cure, Love, Curtis Mayfield, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Pretenders, Prince, R.E.M., XTC & Peter Gabriel among others before Geffen moved to Universal, and Neil Young.

But yeah, it is sorta immaterial these days and probably already was when I started buying in '89.

who wound up with the Reprise catalog?

Universal was an easy choice for me.

Reprise are part of Warner.

Speaking of Warner, back in the original days of the CD they always had the best sounding CDs. Back then, most companies' CDs were lousily mastered while Warner seemingly did a much more proper job, and they did sound better. These days, the have been somewhat surpassed by the fact that Warner has remastered considerably less of their catalog than the others. Although their cooperation with Rhino means whever something is remastered and reissued, the sound and package is unusually great.

Speaking of Warner, back in the original days of the CD they always had the best sounding CDs

really??? have you ever heard the original kinks cd's on warner (which are still, to my knowledge, the only proper '60s kinks cds ever issued in the U.S.)? they were quite possibly the worst-sounding musical products ever released.

really??? have you ever heard the original kinks cd's on warner (which are still, to my knowledge, the only proper '60s kinks cds ever issued in the U.S.)? they were quite possibly the worst-sounding musical products ever released.

I remember VGPS as being not-very-well-mastered (though a vast improvement over the 3rd-generation cassette I had), but Arthur and Something Else seemed decently mastered for the time.

And Warners never made the too-much-noise-reduction mistakes that Columbia routinely made; the Clash's debut and Mott the Hoople's Mott are two that stand out in my mind as sounding absurdly muffled.

sooooo does anyone have an insight into who's gonna win this thing?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

thread is hell of depressing

Looks like the Americans won.

(And poor Sony/BMG - they may be the largest label now, and yet, only one vote....)