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Universal Music Group

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Headquarters: Paris, France, Santa Monica, CA and New York, NY
Chief Executive Officer: Doug Morris
Corporation Type: Unit of Vivendi (NYSE: V || Euronext: VIV)
Universal Music Group Website: http://www.umusic.com

The Universal Music Group is the largest of the "Big Four" major labels and is currently comprised of eight label group divisions as well as a host of unaffiliated stand-alone labels. Its complex history and evolution is rooted in numerous mergers, acquisitions and ownership changes dating back to 1962, when MCA (The Music Corporation of America) purchased the US branch of Decca Records from film studio Universal Pictures. For the next three decades, MCA Incorporated slowly transformed from a record label to the MCA Music Entertainment Group. In 1995, Seagram Company Ltd. of Montreal, Quebec acquired an 80% interest in MCA from the Japanese manufacturer Matsushita Electric Industrial. The following year, Seagram renamed their MCA Music Entertainment Group Universal. In 1998, the cash-rich Seagram, headed by Edgar Bronfman Jr. (later of Warner Music Group), purchased the PolyGram Group and merged its operations into Universal. In 2000, French conglomerate Vivendi acquired UMG from Seagram and renamed the group Vivendi Universal Entertainment. Four years later, in an attempt to recover from over-expansion in the late 1990s, Vivendi divided their Entertainment Group; selling off 80% of their non-music Entertainment branch to GE, (who formed NBC Universal) while keeping control of their subsidiary unit and reverting back to its former name, Universal Music Group.