Universal Music Group in the context of "Sony Music"

Santa Monica (Spanish: Santa Mónica, lit. 'Saint Monica') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to its climate, beaches, and hospitality industry. It has a diverse economy, hosting headquarters of companies such as Skydance Media, Hulu, Activision Blizzard, Universal Music Group, Starz Entertainment, Lionsgate Studios, Illumination and The Recording Academy.

Santa Monica traces its history to Rancho San Vicente y Santa Mónica, granted in 1839 to the Sepúlveda family of California. The rancho was later sold to John P. Jones and Robert Baker, who, in 1875, along with his Californio heiress wife Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker, founded Santa Monica, which incorporated as a city in 1886. The city developed into a seaside resort during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the creation of tourist attractions such as Palisades Park, the Santa Monica Pier, Ocean Park, and the Hotel Casa del Mar.

The media of Los Angeles are influential and include some of the most important production facilities in the world. As part of the "Creative Capital of the World", it is a major global center for media and entertainment. In addition to being the home of Hollywood, the center of the American motion picture industry, the Los Angeles area is the second largest media market in North America (after New York City). Many of the nation's media conglomerates either have their primary headquarters (like The Walt Disney Company) or their West Coast operations (like NBCUniversal) based in the region. Universal Music Group, one of the "Big Four" record labels, is also based in the Los Angeles area.

The major daily newspaper is the Los Angeles Times, while La Opinión is the city's major daily Spanish-language paper. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety are significant entertainment industry papers in Los Angeles. There are also a wide variety of smaller regional newspapers, alternative weeklies and magazines, including LA Weekly, Los Angeles magazine, the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and the Los Angeles Downtown News. In addition to the English- and Spanish-language papers, numerous local periodicals serve immigrant communities in their native languages, including Korean, Persian, Russian and Japanese.

Polydor, also known as Polydor Records, is a British record label that operates as part of Universal Music Group. It has a close relationship with Universal's Interscope Geffen A&M Records label, which distributes Polydor's releases in the United States. In turn, Polydor distributes Interscope releases in the United Kingdom. Polydor Records Ltd. was established in London in 1954 as a British subsidiary of German company Deutsche Grammophon/Schallplatte Grammophon GmbH. It was renamed Polydor Ltd. in 1972. The company is usually mentioned as "Polydor Ltd. (UK)", or a similar form, for holding copyrights.

Notable current and past artists signed to the label include Rainbow, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, the Cure, James Brown, Ray, Goodman & Brown, Atlanta Rhythm Section, John Mayall, Deep Purple, Cream, the Moody Blues, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Focus, Fishmans, Bee Gees, Lana Del Rey, Stephen Fretwell, the Jam, Style Council, the Shadows, James Last, Eric Clapton, Gloria Gaynor, Level 42, Sam Fender, S Club, Girls Aloud, Cheryl, Raye, Ellie Goulding, Jesy Nelson, Cian Ducrot and Destroy Lonely.

Music Corporation of America, formerly known as Universal Music Group Nashville, is Universal Music Group's country music subsidiary. It was officially opened in 1945 as Decca Records' country music division (now MCA Nashville). Capitol Records opened its Nashville office in 1950 and Mercury Nashville was founded in 1957. Some of the labels in this group include MCA Records Nashville, Mercury Nashville Records, Capitol Records Nashville and EMI Records Nashville. UMG Nashville not only handles these imprints, but also manages the country music catalogues of record labels Universal Music and predecessor companies acquired over the years including ABC Records, Decca Records, Dot Records, DreamWorks Records, Kapp Records, MGM Records and Polydor Records.

On April 25, 2025, Universal Music Group Nashville was officially renamed as the Music Corporation of America (MCA), which marked the return of the name previously used by UMG's predecessor parent company MCA Inc. from 1924 to 1996 and its subsidiary MCA Records as well as Universal Pictures's predecessor parent company MCA Inc. from 1962 to 1996 and its Revue Studios/Universal Television division.

Motown is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. Founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, it was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of motor and town, has become a nickname for Detroit, which is considered the center of the automotive industry in the United States and where the record label was originally headquartered.

Motown played a vital role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned label that achieved crossover success with white audiences. In the 1960s, Motown and its main subsidiary labels (including Gordy, Soul) were the most prominent exponents of what became known as the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop-influenced sound and appeal. Motown was the most successful soul music label, with a net worth of $61 million in 1988. Between 1960 and 1969, Motown had 79 songs reach the top-ten of the Billboard Hot 100.

PolyGram N.V. was a multinational major music record label and entertainment company formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a holding for their record companies, and was renamed "PolyGram" in 1972. The name was chosen to reflect the Siemens interest Polydor Records and the Philips interest Phonogram Records. The company traced its origins through Deutsche Grammophon back to the inventor of the flat disc gramophone, Emil Berliner.

Later on, PolyGram expanded into the largest global entertainment company, creating film and television divisions. In May 1998, it was sold to the alcoholic distiller Seagram which owned film, television and music company Universal Studios. PolyGram's music operations were thereby folded into Universal Music Group, and its film and television operations were folded into Universal Pictures, which had been both Seagram successors of MCA Inc. When the newly formed entertainment division of Seagram faced financial difficulties, it was sold to Vivendi, and MCA became known as Universal Studios, as Seagram ceased to exist. Vivendi remains the majority owner of the Universal Music Group (while the film and television division was sold to NBCUniversal) until 2021. In February 2017, UMG revived the company under the name of PolyGram Entertainment, which currently serves as their film and television division.

Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Recording Studios) is a music recording studio at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, which owned it until Universal Music Group (UMG) took control of part of it in 2013. It is ultimately owned by UMG subsidiary Virgin Records Limited.

The studio's most notable client was the Beatles, who used the studio – particularly its Studio Two room – as the venue for many of the innovative recording techniques that they adopted throughout the 1960s. In 1976, the studio was renamed from EMI to Abbey Road.

Chess Records was an American record company established in 1950 in Chicago, specializing in blues and rhythm and blues. It was the successor to Aristocrat Records, founded in 1947. It expanded into soul music, gospel music, early rock and roll, and jazz and comedy recordings, released on Chess and its subsidiary labels Checker and Argo/Cadet. The Chess catalogue is owned by Universal Music Group and managed by Geffen Records and Universal Music Enterprises.

Established and run by two Jewish immigrant brothers from what was then Poland, Leonard and Phil Chess, the company produced and released many singles and albums regarded as central to the rock music canon. The musician and critic Cub Koda described Chess as "America's greatest blues label".