The Major, Major-Independent and Independent Music Labels

Major Music Companies

The same as the film industry, there is also major people who are involved in the music industry. The first thing that i will go through is the major music labels. The music industry is dominated by four major multi national companies and they are Universal, Sony Music, Warner Brothers and EMI. They are known as the major companies because as well as 'having their finger in; the other businesses such as film, TV and electronics. Universal Music Group (UMG) is the largest American music corporation as well as being the biggest in some of the other categories, their publishing  company is the second largest in the world which makes Universal overall; a very big company.

Sony Music is also an American company and is obviously part of Sony Corp. Sony Music was founded in 1929 and have continued strong and have placed themselves as the second largest music company in the world.
Warner Music Group is another American major label global record company which is headquartered in New York. The company controls some of the largest and most successful recording labels in the world which include Parlophone and Atlantic Records.
EMI is a British (Finally!) multinational music recording and publishing company  and occasionally an equipment manufacturing company which is HQ'ed in London. At the time of it's break-up, it was the fourth largest business group and family record labels in the recording industry. The company then began to have financial troubles and $4 billion in debt in February of 2011. They would then have to sell their arm of the company to Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion and Sony/ATV for $2.2 billion.

Major- Independent 

The major independent companies are normally owned by the major companies such as Universal and Warner Brothers. They are create their own content as an independent companies but the majo companies take profits from them and give them their share. They try to reach different kinds of audiences in a different kind of genres. For example,  because Universal is the big company, they make all of the films that people want to see such as Despicable Me 2; which smashed box office record. While the major independent will make the smaller films to reach the smaller audiences.The five big major independent studios are Columbia, Island, Syco, RCA and Virgin.
Volumbia Records is a premier recording label which is currently under the ownership of Sony Music Entertainment and was founded in 1888.
Syco Music which was previously called Syco Records is a British record label whic was founded in 2002. It is distributed by Sony Music only for the United Kingdom music industry while in America all of the music that it produced is released by Columbia for The United States.
The RCA Music Group was the umbrella group to Sony Music Entertainment between the time of MAy 2004 to 2009. But then later sometime between July 2011 and October 2011, the music group was then merged into RCA Records to become one company.
Virgin Records is a British record label that was founded by many iconic figures in 1972. The comany then began to grow when platinum artists such as Janet Jackson and te Spice Girls began performing with the company. Virgin Records is currently owned by Universal Music Group.

Independents

There are those companies who are a lot smaller than the Majors and `Major-Independents which will have either little or no financial connection to the majors. These types of companies decide to concentrate their energy on a much smaller number of acts. An example of a successful independeny company could 'Domino Records'. Normally for independent companies, that start off as record labels who then may or may not be chosen by a major company which will then in title make them a major-independent.