Mercury Records - Later History

Later History

In 1961, Philips, a Dutch electronics company and owner of Philips Records, which lost its distribution deal with Columbia Records outside North America, signed an exchange agreement with Mercury. A year later, Philips' U.S. affiliate Consolidated Electronics Industries Corp. (a.k.a. Conelco), bought Mercury and its subsidiary labels. In 1963, Mercury switched British distribution from EMI to Philips.

In 1962, Mercury began marketing a line of phonographs made by Philips bearing the Mercury brand name.

In July 1967, Mercury Records became the first U.S. record company to release cassette music tapes (Musicassettes).

In 1969, Mercury changed its corporate name to Mercury Record Productions Inc. while its former parent Conelco became North American Philips Corp (N.A.P.C.) after Philips brought control of the company.

In the 1970s, the company began using a label design featuring a painting of three famous Chicago buildings: Marina City, IBM Plaza and John Hancock Center.

In 1972, Philips along with German Electronics giant Siemens merged their record operations with Deutsche Grammophon to become PolyGram. That year PolyGram brought Mercury from N.A.P.C. Mercury's corporate name was changed to Phonogram Inc. to match a related company in the UK that operated the Mercury label there.

In 1981, Mercury, along with other U.S. PolyGram-owned labels, which included Polydor, RSO Records, and Casablanca, consolidated under the new name PolyGram Records Inc. Around this time, Mercury moved its headquarters to New York City.

Under PolyGram, Mercury absorbed the artists and catalogue of Casablanca Records (also home to the 20th Century Records back catalogue), which consisted of heavy metalers Kiss and disco stars Donna Summer and Village People, and primarily became a rock/pop label with Kiss, Scorpions, Rush, John Cougar Mellencamp, Kurtis Blow, Tears for Fears, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Treat, Candy, and Def Leppard.

Mercury, by having Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Def Leppard, Kiss, and Scorpions on their roster, was a premiere label for glam metal. Most of these bands were on Vertigo Records in Europe (that label specialized in progressive rock and hard rock including sub-genres like glam metal).

In late 1998, PolyGram was bought by Seagram, which then absorbed the company into its Universal Music Group unit. Under the reorganization, Mercury Records was folded into the newly formed The Island Def Jam Music Group (IDJMG). Mercury's pop roster was predominantly taken over by Island Records, while its hip hop artists found a new home at Def Jam Recordings, which in turn formed an imprint, Def Soul Records, that absorbed some of Mercury's R&B acts. Mercury's former country unit became Mercury Nashville Records. IDJMG revived the Mercury imprint in the US in 2007.