Word: polygram
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...Grainge joined Polygram's songwriting division and gradually moved up the ranks at the company, which would later become Universal following a merger with MCA. Eventually, under the tutelage of Doug Morris, the Universal chief executive he'll be replacing, Grainge rose to run the company's U.K. headquarters and then its international operations. As EMI has faltered in recent years, he has become a key force behind helping British acts break into the U.S. market, most notably, the troubled Winehouse. (Read a TIME profile of Amy Winehouse...
...brought Rick James and Lionel Richie and The Big Chill - a white, yuppie film with an amazing Motown soundtrack ("Aint Too Proud To Beg" was reduced to dishwashing music). By 1988, Gordy had had enough; he sold the company to MCA, which in turn sold it to Polygram, which in turn was bought by Universal. Really, though, who cares who owns it now? Just pop on one of those numerous greatest hits albums in your collection (or, ok, fine, The Big Chill soundtrack) and recall the glory of Motown. The music doesn't sound fifty years...
When Seagram bought Polygram in 1998 for $10.6 billion, the French-born ceo Alain Levy found himself out of a job. Not for bad performance: Levy had turned PolyGram into the world's largest music company by a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions at a time when CD sales were booming. After the company was sold, Levy, then aged 51, spent several years consulting and pondering the state of a changing industry, and quickly concluded that old models for growth were gone. CD sales peaked in 2000, damaging companies bedeviled by piracy and the online trading of free...
...music industry to realize the business opportunities presented by a generation of hipster parents who came of age going to touring music festivals like Lollapalooza, Warped and Ozzfest and who would be willing to pay to give their kids the same sort of experience. DuFine, a former Polygram executive who started her career at MTV, and her business partner, David Codikow, manage the rock band Velvet Revolver and helped put together the first two Down from the Mountain bluegrass and country-music tours. But it was DuFine's toddler daughter who planted the seed of Jamarama, innocently asking...
...from Afghan director Siddiq Barmak, which has just been released to critical acclaim and grossed €210,000 in its first three weeks. "So far, so good," says Mercier. "They've done as well as we expected." Previously, the closest Europe got to a Continentwide network was London-based PolyGram, a film studio that built distribution operations in all the major European territories. But in 1998, PolyGram was bought up by Seagram and absorbed into Universal Pictures. Universal kept its focus on the U.S., leaving Europe's distribution system shattered and scattered. A viable distribution network is a start...