MCA Records 100 Universal Plaza Universal City, California
The Music Corporation of America, legally incorporated as MCA, Inc., was a United States based corporation in the music business. The successor company is Universal Music Group. MCA published music, booked music acts, and ran a record label.
MCA was founded as a music booking agency based in Chicago, Illinois in 1924 by Jules Stein. MCA helped pioneer modern practices of touring bands and name acts.
MCA entered the record music business in 1962 with the purchase of the US Decca branch, including Coral Records and Brunswick Records. These labels were folded into MCA Records in 1973.
In 1979 it acquired ABC Dunhill Records along with its subsidiaries ABC Records, Paramount Records, Impulse Records, Dot Records and Dunhill Records. Chess Records was acquired in 1985, Motown Records was bought in 1988 (and sold to Polygram in 1993). GRP Records and Geffen Records were acquired in 1990. In the same year, the MCA Corporation holding company was purchased by the Matsushita group.
In 1995, Seagram Company Ltd. acquired 80% of MCA INC. and the following year the new owners dropped the MCA name; the company became Universal Studios, Inc. and its music division, MCA Music Entertainment Group, was renamed Universal Music Group. The following year the new owners sold G. P. Putnam's Sons to the Penguin Group. In 1998 Seagram acquired PolyGram from Philips & merged it with its music holdings. When Seagram's drinks business was brought by France-based Pernod Ricard, its media holdings (including Universal) were sold to Vivendi SA which became Vivendi Universal.
In the spring of 2003, MCA Records was folded into Geffen Records. Its country music label, MCA Nashville Records is still in operation.
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