Why Musicians on Two Different Record Labels Between Countries?

I never really understood why some bands are on different record labels between countries. I'll give some examples:

Donovan, The Hollies: EMI in the UK, Epic in the US
Genesis: Charisma in the UK, Atlantic in the US
Pink Floyd: EMI in the UK, (after DSOTM) Columbia in the US and Japan
Dire Straights: Vertigo in the UK, Warner Brothers in the US
The Kinks: Pye in the UK, Reprise in the US

Couldn't their labels distribute to other countries? What causes musicians to have to have different record labels across countries? The one I find most puzzling is Donovan and The Hollies. They were signed to EMI like The Beatles but they had to be distributed in the US by Epic instead of Capitol?

I must be missing something about the mechanics of how labels distribute records across borders in different countries.

 

The record label a particular artist is signed to in one country usually has to get a separate distribution deal in another country. Also, for an example, EMI distrubuted RCA catalog in the U.K.. That is why artists like Diana Ross was on EMI in the UK. I don't know the facts, but Epic in this country could have been a distributer of EMI product in this country.

I dunno...

 

What you're missing is simply that artists don't always sign worldwide deals. Björk, for instance, signed a different deal with a different label in nearly every large territory. Why? Collectively, she made more money from advances than if she'd signed a single, worldwide deal. Additionally, she retained greater artistic control, since she could play one label off the other if it came down to a need - if things weren't happening in America, she could concentrate on Europe; she's not dependent on one label to do ALL her promotion . . . sort of a divide and conquer approach.

Not to single out Björk, plenty of artists do that nowadays.

Back in earlier times, sometimes two deals were made, one for the UK and one for the rest of the world. Or one deal for the North America and another for the rest of the world. This was before other markets became important for "rock" music. Now, Japan is the second biggest market, continental Europe is huge, and places like Brazil and Australia matter a lot. (Abba often get credit for being the first artists to sell as well or better, relatively speaking, in places like Austria and India, as the UK or US.)

That's why an artist might have three or four or five separate deals today.

When the US and UK were the biggest markets, a UK artists (like Donovan) had a stake in US label support too. Often, the deals were set up so that the corresponding label had an option. If they choose not to pick it up, the artist was free to find another label in the secondary territory. I don't know if that applies to Donovan or not, but it does apply to the Beatles (at least for a time) appearing on the Vee-Jay label.

 

aswyth

great post

 

In most cases, the artist has nothing to do with where their records are released outside their home country. Most artists without clout sign a deal in one country and then the record company that owns the rights makes arrangements to have the material released elsewhere.

For those artists who were on EMI in the UK (Columbia, Parlophone, HMV, etc.), you have to remember that US Capitol was openly hostile to picking up the rights to UK pop music. Until the Beatles, UK pop basically didn't sell in America. And even after the Beatles, Capitol still had a whole plateful of American artists on its roster who were selling good numbers (examples: The Beach Boys, Nat King Cole, Lou Rawls, Wayne Newton, Al Martino, Nancy Wilson, The Lettermen). So Capitol chose those British acts that it thought had the best commercial potential, not to mention an obvious link to the Beatles (examples: Peter & Gordon, Cilla Black).

Also, because it had already turned down some of the other big EMI bands of the era, it couldn't get them back when all hell broke loose. They had the right of FIRST refusal, not the right of second or third. Those acts that Capitol turned down ended up with an EMI subsidiary called Transglobal, whose sole purpose was to find a US label for UK acts from EMI that Capitol had rejected. In addition to the Beatles ending up on Vee-Jay and Swan, two other examples of this were Gerry and the Pacemakers, who were already on Laurie in 1963, and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, who ended up on Liberty (later reassigned to Imperial).

As for acts such as The Animals and Herman's Hermits, in those cases the US deal was with the producer, Mickie Most. He, like Shel Talmy (The Kinks, The Who) and Georgio Gomelsky (The Yardbirds), had the right to negotiate a deal with a US label independently of the UK. In one of those odd circumstances, Talmy got The Who on US Decca before they had a UK label. Therefore, the early Who singles were on UK Brunswick, which was the label used by US Decca to release its hits in the UK -- similar to the US London label, which released much music from UK Decca in the US. It must have been awfully confusing to the Brits to see one of their own artists on a label that specialized in releasing music recorded in the US!

To go case-by-case --

Donovan:

He was on Pye, not EMI, in the UK (as were the Searchers). Pye, as an independent label, didn't have a US outlet at the time, so it had to license its recordings to individual US labels. Donovan was first on Hickory in the US in 1965, which was mostly a country label and thus a poor match. About a year later, starting with "Sunshine Superman," his material ended up on Epic in the US. He remained on Pye in the UK.

The Hollies:

They must have been another early reject by Capitol, as they were already on Imperial here in 1964. They didn't have a really big US hit for two years, until "Bus Stop" in 1966. The Hollies ended up on Epic in 1967.

Genesis:

They bounced around in their early years. They were originally on British Decca; their first 45 came out on Parrot (a London subsidiary) in the US, but when it stiffed, the label chose not to release their first LP here, and no one else picked it up, either. (It later came out on London as From Genesis to Revelation.)

They moved to the new Charisma label starting with Trespass, but the label did not initially have a US outlet, so it, like Pye, licensed the material to whatever label would pick it up in the US. In the case of Trespass, it was the Impulse! label (yep, the jazz label). Eventually, it ended up on the parent label, ABC, and moved to MCA when ABC was bought in 1979. The rights to Trespass are now owned by Universal in the US.

After that debacle, Charisma did set up a US branch, which was distributed by Buddah Records at first, and later by Atlantic. The first pressings of Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Genesis Live and Selling England by the Pound were on Charisma in the US. Only the last was initially distributed by Atlantic. The facade of US Charisma shut down in 1973; Genesis stayed on Atco at first, then moved to Atlantic in 1978, where they stayed for a couple decades.

Pink Floyd:

After a certain point, Pink Floyd owned the rights to its own music, so it negotiated separate deals for the US and the UK. The band chose to stay on EMI in the UK, but Columbia outbid Capitol for the US rights. I'm pretty sure that Columbia had a 20-year lease on its Floyd material, so pretty much all of it has reverted to the band, which has chosen to re-release its stuff on EMI/Capitol in the US for uniformity's sake.

Dire Straits:

I don't know the story there. Vertigo had no US outlet by 1978, but it was part of the Phonogram (i.e. Polygram) family, so it could have come out on Mercury or Polydor here. Perhaps US Polygram saw no commercial potential...

The Kinks:

See my brief note on The Who. They were signed with Shel Talmy, who made separate deals in the UK and the US.

 

Thanks for the replies, makes more sense now.

Tim- I thought after his first two albums, Donovan switched to EMI for the Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow LPs and beyond.

 

The albums are on EMI now, but in the 1960s, there was some kind of nasty contract dispute in the UK. The singles came out on Pye all the way through "Goo Goo Barabajagal," as did some of the albums, most notably A Gift from a Flower to a Garden. But four of Donovan's US Epic albums were not released in the UK at all in the 1960s and didn't show up there until 1994. Those were issued on EMI.

In the 1970s, Donovan was briefly on the UK Dawn label before finally going to UK Epic for the Cosmic Wheels album, thus having his records released on the same label in both countries for the first time.