Sony BMG in the context of Bertelsmann

Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Music Group, an American subsidiary of multinational conglomerate Sony. Founded on January 15, 1889, Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels, along with Epic Records, former longtime rival RCA Records, and Arista Records. RCA and Arista were originally owned by BMG until Sony's acquisition at the end of their merger in 2008.

Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.

Founded in 1929 as American Record Corporation, it was acquired by the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1938 and renamed Columbia Recording Corporation. In 1966, the company was reorganized to become CBS Records. Sony bought the company in 1988 and renamed it SME in 1991. In 2004, Sony and Bertelsmann established a 50–50 joint venture known as Sony BMG to handle the operations of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), but Sony bought out Bertelsmann's stake four years later and reverted to using the 1991 company name. This buyout led to labels formerly under BMG ownership, including Arista, Jive, LaFace and J Records into former BMG and currently Sony's co-flagship record label, RCA Records, in 2011 and led to the relaunch of BMG as BMG Rights Management. Arista Records would later be revived in 2018.

Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers.

It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) from the four major music labels (EMI, Universal, Warner, and Sony BMG), as well as many independents. All tracks were originally sold in 256 kilobits-per-second variable bitrate MP3 format without per-customer watermarking or DRM; however, some tracks are now watermarked.

Twenty Five is the second compilation album by English singer-songwriter George Michael, released in the UK on 13 November 2006, celebrating the 25th anniversary of his music career. It was released on 13 November 2006 by Sony BMG. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number 23 on the Billboard 200, and it reached the top 20 on most other album charts. After Michael's death in December 2016, the album re-entered the Billboard 200 at a new peak position of number 12.

The album mostly contains songs from Michael's solo career but also from his earlier days with Wham!. The album is sold in two formats: a 2-CD set and a limited edition 3-CD set. The 2-CD set contains 29 tracks, including four recorded with Wham! and three new songs: "An Easier Affair", "This Is Not Real Love" (a duet with the English singer Mutya Buena) and a new version of "Heal the Pain", recorded with Paul McCartney. The limited edition 3-CD version contains an additional 14 lesser-known tracks, including one with Wham! and another new song called "Understand".

Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its relaunch and completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008.

Although it was established in 1987, the music company was formed as RCA/Ariola International in 1985 as a joint venture to combine the music label activities of RCA's RCA Records division and Bertelsmann's Ariola Records and its associated labels which include Arista Records. It consisted of the BMG Music Publishing company, the world's third largest music publisher and the world's largest independent music publisher and (since August 2004) the 50% share of the joint venture with Sony Music, which established the German American Sony BMG from 2004 to 2008.

BMG Rights Management GmbH (also known simply as BMG) is an international music company based in Berlin, Germany. It combines the activities of a music publisher and a record label.

BMG was originally founded in 1985 and relaunched in October 2008 after Bertelsmann sold its stake in Sony BMG to Sony. From 2009 to 2013, the investment firm KKR held 51% of the company, which became one of the world's largest music publishers during that time. BMG is 100% owned by Bertelsmann and one of the group's eight business divisions.