Columbia Records is an American flagship recording label, under the ownership of Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Companyâsuccessor to the Volta Graphophone Company.[1] Columbia is the oldest brand name in recorded sound,[2][3] being the first record company to produce recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS Records label (for Columbia Broadcasting System, its parent from 1938 to 1988) before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world.

It is one of Sony Music's three flagship record labels with the others being Epic Records and RCA Records.

Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix, Colgems, Bell and later Arista; rather, it was connected to CBS, which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System, a broadcasting media company which purchased Columbia Records in the late 1930s, and which had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista was sold to BMG, it would later become a sister label to Columbia Records through Sony Music; both are connected to Columbia Pictures through Sony Corporation of America, worldwide parent of both the music and motion picture arms of Sony.

As of 2012, Columbia Records has the highest label share in Adult Contemporary radio in the US, it was also ranked the number-one AC label that year.

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