Columbia Records in the context of "Power of the Dollar"

Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.

After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. Holiday signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Her collaboration with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. However, by the late 1940s, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, Holiday performed a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall.She was a successful concert performer throughout the 1950s, with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall. Because of personal struggles and an altered voice, Holiday's final recordings were met with mixed reaction, but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958. Holiday died of cirrhosis and heart failure on July 17, 1959, at age 44.

Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs and including dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, and length of the work. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. The subject matter may portray "lovers' spats, mistaken identities, sudden reversals of fortune, and glittering parties". It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries.

"Operetta" is the Italian diminutive of "opera" and was used originally to describe a shorter, perhaps less ambitious work than an opera. Operetta provides an alternative to operatic performances in an accessible form targeting a different audience. Operetta became a recognizable form in the mid-19th century in France, and its popularity led to the development of many national styles of operetta. Distinctive styles emerged across countries including Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, Spain, the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Through the transfer of operetta among different countries, cultural cosmopolitanism emerged in the previous century. Operetta as a genre lost favor in the 1930s and gave way to modern musical theatre. Important operetta composers include Johann Strauss, Jacques Offenbach, Franz Lehár, and Francisco Alonso.

Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, and television producer. Born in Queens, a borough of New York City, Jackson began pursuing a musical career in 1996. In 1999–2000, he recorded his debut album Power of the Dollar for Columbia Records. During a shooting in May 2000, he was struck by nine bullets, causing its release to be cancelled and Jackson to be dropped from the label. His 2002 mixtape, Guess Who's Back?, was discovered by Detroit rapper Eminem, who signed Jackson to his label Shady Records, an imprint of Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records that same year.

His debut studio album, Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003), was released to critical acclaim and commercial success. Peaking atop the Billboard 200, it spawned the Billboard Hot 100-number one singles "In da Club" and "21 Questions" (featuring Nate Dogg), and received nonuple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). That same year, he launched the record label G-Unit Records, namesake of a hip hop group he formed two years prior; the label's initial signees were its members, fellow East Coast rappers Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo. His second album, The Massacre (2005), was met with similar success, yielding his third number-one single, "Candy Shop" (featuring Olivia). He adopted a lighter, further commercially oriented approach for his third and fourth albums, Curtis (2007) and Before I Self Destruct (2009)—both were met with critical and commercial declines—and aimed for a return to his roots with his fifth album, Animal Ambition (2014), which was met with mixed reviews. He has since focused on his career in television and media, having executive-produced and starred in the television series Power (2014–2020), as well as its numerous spin-offs under his company G-Unit Films and Television Inc.

Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. (株式会社ソニー・ミュージックエンタテインメント, Kabushiki gaisha Sonī Myūjikku Entateinmento), often abbreviated as SMEJ or simply SME, and also known as Sony Music Japan for short (stylized as SonyMusic), is a Japanese music arm for Sony. Founded in 1968 as CBS/Sony, SMEJ is directly owned by Sony Group Corporation and is operating independently from the United States–based Sony Music Entertainment due to its strength in the Japanese music industry. Its subsidiaries include the Japanese animation production enterprise, Aniplex, which was established in September 1995 as a joint-venture between Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, but which in 2001 became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. It was prominent in the early to mid 1990s producing and licensing music for animated series such as Roujin Z from acclaimed Japanese comic artist Katsuhiro Otomo and Capcom's Street Fighter animated series.

Until March 2007, Sony Music Japan also had its own North American sublabel, Tofu Records. Releases of Sony Music Japan now appear on Columbia Records and/or Epic Records in North America.

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television personality. She is one of the best-selling music artists in history, having sold over 151 million records worldwide. Perry is known for her influence on pop music and her camp style, being dubbed the "Queen of Camp" by Vogue and Rolling Stone. The world's highest-paid female musician in 2015 and 2018, she was named by Billboard as one of the greatest pop stars of the 21st century.

At 16, Perry released a gospel album titled Katy Hudson (2001) under Red Hill Records, which was unsuccessful. She moved to Los Angeles at 17 to venture into secular music, and later adopted her stage name from her mother's maiden name. Perry recorded an album while signed to Columbia Records, but was dropped before signing to Capitol Records. She rose to fame with One of the Boys (2008), a pop rock album containing her debut single "I Kissed a Girl" and follow-up single "Hot n Cold", which reached number one and three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 respectively.

The LP (from long playing or long play) is an analog sound storage medium, specifically a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of 33+1⁄3 rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and a vinyl (a copolymer of vinyl chloride acetate) composition disk. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire US record industry and, apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound in 1957, it remained the standard format for record albums during a period in popular music known as the album era. LP was originally a trademark of Columbia and competed against the smaller 7-inch sized "45" or "single" format by RCA Victor, eventually ending up on top. Today in the vinyl revival era, a large majority of records are based on the LP format and hence the LP name continues to be in use today to refer to new records.

RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (RCA's former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, classical, rock, hip hop, afrobeat, electronic, R&B, blues, jazz, and country. The label's name is derived from its defunct parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

After the RCA Corporation was purchased by General Electric in 1986, GE sold its remaining interest in RCA Records to Bertelsmann in 1987, making it a part of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG); following the merger of BMG and Sony in 2004, RCA Records became a label of Sony BMG Music Entertainment. In 2008, after the dissolution of Sony/BMG and the restructuring of Sony Music, RCA Records became fully owned by Sony.

Lady in Satin is an album by the jazz singer Billie Holiday, released in 1958 on Columbia Records, catalogue CL 1157 in mono and CS 8048 in stereo. It is the penultimate album completed by the singer, and the last to be released in her lifetime. Her final album, Last Recording, was recorded in March 1959, and released just after her death. The original album was produced by Irving Townsend and engineered by Fred Plaut.