Hansa Records

In the early 1960s, brothers Peter and Thomas Meisel, grandchildren of Will Meisel, who was the founder of German music publisher Edition Meisel & Co. GmbH, assumed responsibility of the family's publishing company upon their grandfather's retirement, and founded Hansa Musik Produktion company and the Hansa record label in 1962.

Initially, the label focused on German artists and Schlager music,[1] later finding commercial success with artists such as Frank Farian's Boney M., Amii Stewart, Aneka, Modern Talking, Milli Vanilli, and others.

In 1977, the label signed an early lineup of The Cure (known at that time as Easy Cure),[2] but wasn't happy with the band's demos and refused to release "Killing an Arab",[3] suggesting that the band record cover songs instead.

[4] In the mid-1980s, after a decline in sales both domestically and internationally, Hansa Records was eventually purchased by Bertelsmann Music Group, who merged them with several other labels like Ariola-Eurodisc to form BMG Berlin Musik GmbH/BMG-Ariola, later to become part of international conglomerate Sony Music Entertainment, under which it was phased-out in 2009.

In the late 1970s they closed the first studio and consolidated operations to the second, simplify referring to it as Hansa Tonstudio.