Atlantic records

Research Into Music Labels Atlantic Records

Atlantic Record is one of the major American record labels with very diverse artists and genres from hip hop to jazz artists, however the company rose to success within the first 20 years specialising in Jazz, R$B and Soul. The company had recordings from famous people such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, Ruth Brown and Otis Redding, a position greatly enhanced by its distribution deal with Stax Records. Craig Kallman is currently Chairman of Atlantic Records. The co-founder of the label, Ahmet Ertegün, who served as Founding Chairman until his death on December 14, 2006, at age 83. In 1967 Atlantic became a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts which is now known as the Warner Music Group. The label then started to expand the music it recorded to more rock and pop music. In 2004 Atlantic Records along with its sister label Elektra Records merged together to make Atlantic Records Group. The label also has a number of deals with previously independent labels such as Must Destroy and VP Records.

 There are many artists of different genres that are housed by Atlantic Records such as: Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Trey Songz, The Rolling Stones, fun, Skrillex, Cher, Ed Sheeran, Paramore, Led Zeppelin, Missy Elliot, Wiz Khalifa and many more popular artists.  In 1944 brothers Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegun decided to remain in the USA when their mother and sister returned to Turkey. The brothers had become fans of jazz and rhythm & blues music, having a collection of over 15,000 78rpm records. Ahmet stayed in Washington to take his post-graduate in music but then decided to enter the record business onse he realised his passion fir the music scene. He convinced the family dentist, Dr Vahdi Sabit, to invest $10,000 and recruited Herb Abramson, a dentistry student, and then in September 1947, he invested $2500 in the new Atlantic label.

In early 1949 a New Orleans distributor phoned Ertegun trying to obtain Stick McGhee's "Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee", which was unavailable due to the closure of McGhee's previous label, however, Ertegun knew Stick's younger brother so he contacted the McGhee brothers and they cut a re-recording. This was released in February 1949 and it became Atlantic's first hit, selling 400,000 copies, and ultimately reached #2 after spending almost half a year in the Billboard R&B charts, although unfailry, only $10 was given to McGhee himself for the session. Altantic started manking big money and recorded 187 songs in 1949 (more than three times the output of the previous two years) and received a manufacturing and distribution deal with Columbia Records, who would pay Atlantic a 3% royalty on every copy sold.

 Atlantic was one of the first independent labels to make recordings in stereo, it was the first to press records in new 45rpm single format and by April 1956 Miriam (Abramson) Bienstock reported to Billboard that Atlantic was now selling 75% of its singles as 45s whereas only one year earlier 78s had been outselling 45s by two to one. Atlantic played a major role in popularising the new genre that Jerry Wexler dubbed rhythm & blues and the profit from this was very good, a very big r&b record might achieve 250,000 sales, but from this point on in 1953–54, the industry began to see million sellers, one after the other, in the r&b field.

Atlantic was doing so well that in early 1959 some scheduled releases were held back and the company enjoyed two successive months of gross sales of over $1 million, thanks to hits by The Coasters, The Drifters, LaVern Baker, Ray Charles, Bobby Darin and Clyde McPhatter. However, the company lost two of its best and most successful artists, Bobby Darin and Ray Charles, who together accounted for one third of sales.

From 1961-62 Leiber and Stoller's successes maintained the label's fortunes, and these were further enhanced by a licensing deal with a small Memphis-based independent label Stax Records. The deal turned out to be a huge success and the Atlantic deal marked the start of a hugely successful eight-year association between the two labels, giving Stax access to Atlantic's promotions and distribution, and it meant easy money for Atlantic.

 Atlantis was sold to Atlantic was sold to Warner Bros.-Seven Arts for $17.5 million in October 1967, although all the partners later agreed that it was a poor deal which greatly undervalued Atlantic's true worth.

Over the course of the 1970s, Atlantic decided to quickly reinvent itself from an American R&B/soul label to the rock music scene and, thanks to a string of lucrative signings, the Atlantic roster soon boasted some of the most popular and successful rock acts in the world, such as Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Yes, Bad Company and Phil Collins. Led Zeppelin were fast becoming one of the biggest acts in the world, earning millions for Atlantic. Atlantic then suffered a catastrophic loss in February 1978 when a fire destroyed most of its tape archive, which had been stored in a non-air-conditioned warehouse in Long Branch, New Jersey. Although master tapes of the material in Atlantic's released back catalog fortunately survived due to being stored in New York, the fire destroyed or damaged an estimated 5000-6000 reels of tape, including virtually all of the company's unreleased master tapes, alternate takes, rehearsal tapes and session multi-tracks recorded between 1948 and 1969. The label celebrated its 60th anniversary in May 2007. That same year Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: More than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones for mobile phones. At the Warner Music Group, Atlantic’s parent company, digital represented 27% of its American recorded-music revenue during the fourth quarter. (Warner does not break out financial data for its labels, but Atlantic said that digital sales accounted for about 51% of its revenue.) Analysts said they were surprised that Atlantic — with the highest overall market share in the industry this year — had such a high percentage of digital revenue.