Polydor were founded in Germany in 1946, Polydor Records is a major world music label signing a number of now hugely successful artists. The UK branch was established in the mid 1950s, coinciding with the rock n roll movement.
When Polydor first began, they were capitalise with the popularity of rock n roll music genre. They signed artists who are still well known today, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. However in the 1960s, Polydor signed a series of production deals with some of the most dynamic 'pop' entrepreneurs and managed to sign bands including the Bee Gees and The Beatles. The 1970s allows Polydor to experiment with other types of genre, such as disco, progressive rock and glam rock which included bands such as Slade and Swedish group who won a Eurovision song contest in 1974 that dominated the charts. They went by the name of Abba and their greatest hits Gold album still sells strongly today.
In the 1990s, Polydor was at its greatest peek, they were signing Ian Brown, who was originally in the band 'Stone Roses' and popular pop groups such as Boyzone, and rap artists such as Eminem and 50 Cent. Into the new millennium, the label continues to boast plenty of big pop names from Ronan Keating to Daniel Bedingfield whilst bands such as Scissor Sisters and Snow Patrol spearhead an impressive alternative rock genre. You could therefore suggest that Polydor does not focus on a particular genre, but instead follows the latest musical and popular trends which is most likely the answer to the question of their prolonged success.
When Polydor was first starting out, radio was the main source of technology to promote their label. However, as technology has evolved and developed, the Internet and television are now the two main sources. Online social network sites such as Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are used by bands which therefore helps promote and advertise them. Itunes music store helps to advertise artists through recordings and 30-second free samples which helps with their promotion. Music channels on digital television are all apart of helping to recognise and promote by debuting videos on popular chart shows. TV adverts are also popular with Polydor, an example of this is the campaign in the late 1990s to help promote and create recognition of the band Boyzone over in Asia. Also, as technology increasingly evolves, music is now beginning to be played on games such as Guitar Hero o again help promote them.
Piracy is continuously increasing and is creating a major issue across the music industry as it is damaging income for bands,labels and artists. Stars such as Lily Allen have tried to help campaign against piracy by threatening to leave the industry all together. Polydor is much against this and believe that copyrighting is a must and are distributing music onto safe applications such as iTunes and CDs in legitimate stores such as HMV at reasonable prices to help people resist illegal downloading from sites such as Lime wire.
