[citation needed] The company traced its origins through Deutsche Grammophon back to the inventor of the flat disc gramophone, Emil Berliner.

In May 1998, it was sold to the alcoholic distiller Seagram which owned film, television and music company Universal Studios.

Vivendi remains the majority owner of the Universal Music Group (while the film and television division was sold to NBCUniversal) until 2021.

In February 2017, UMG revived the company under the name of PolyGram Entertainment, which currently serves as their film and television division.

Van Zoelen wanted to sell to Philips so that HDD would have sufficient financial backing when their major competitors returned after the war.

Shortly after PPI was founded it had made a formal alliance with DGG to manufacture each other's records, coordinate releases, and refrain from poaching each other's artists or bidding against each other for new talent.

In 1971, the UK record labels of Philips, Fontana, Mercury, and Vertigo were amalgamated into a new company called Phonogram, Ltd.

PolyGram's highly successful marketing during the disco craze included the Casablanca FilmWorks production Thank God It's Friday (1978) and its associated soundtrack.

This can also be attributed to multi-million selling albums and 45s by the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, the Village People, Andy Gibb, Kool & the Gang, and rock band Kiss.

[4] In 1969, PolyGram established a direct mail-order business in the UK, Britannia Music Club, which ran till 2007.

When US operations were running at full capacity, PolyGram expanded aggressively, and would press large quantities of records without knowing the demand.

In late 1979, PolyGram was caught off guard by the sudden end of the popularity of disco music, leaving it with an underutilized distribution network, profligate labels, and over optimistic product orders.

Another contributing factor to PolyGram's financial woes was the massive failure of the big budget musical Sgt.

The film starred the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton at the height of their popularity, and featured the Beatles covers by them as well as Aerosmith, Billy Preston, and Earth, Wind & Fire.

The film was highly anticipated to surpass the box office success of both the Saturday Night Fever and Grease, mostly due to its popular music stars.

The resulting losses nearly wiped out the profits the company had made on both the Saturday Night Fever and Grease soundtracks.

The company took further loses when the disco craze ended in 1979 and record sales for both the Bee Gees and Casablanca's Village People plummeted.

[6] During the late 1980s and early 1990s, PolyGram continued to invest in a diversified film unit with the purchases of individual production companies.

He cut the workforce from 13,000 to 7,000, reduced PolyGram's LP and cassette plants from eighteen to five, and decreased the company's dependence on superstars by spreading the repertoire across different genres and nurturing national and regional talent.

[7] Under its newly reorganized form, PolyGram decided to discontinue Philips as a pop and rock label in the UK and much of Europe, though it was still frequently issued records in France and South East Asia, where it issued many albums and singles by Chinese and Hong Kong pop artists.

[8] The assets of the former 20th Century Fox Records were fully acquired by the firm in July 1982,[9] and subsequently were consolidated with the Casablanca label.

After an attempted 1983 merger with Warner Elektra Atlantic failed, Philips bought 40% of PolyGram from Siemens, acquiring the remaining 10% in 1987.

PolyGram embarked on a new program of acquisitions, including A&M[11] and Island Records[12] in 1989, Swedish company Polar Music which held the rights to the ABBA catalogue, Motown and Def Jam in 1994 and Rodven (Venezuela) in 1995.

PolyGram and Granada TV formed a joint venture, Big Picture Productions, in 1990 as a music programing firm which, at Cannes in 1990, purchased exclusive international distribution rights to Brown Sugar (The two-hour special featured black female performers and was hosted by Billy Dee Williams) from the New York–based Gene David Group.

[18] (In hindsight, analysts have pointed out how Philips ultimately benefitted from the manufacture and sale of blank CDs, which played a significant part in the music piracy that began to affect the industry in the early 2000s.

[25] On October 23, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer agreed to purchase PolyGram Filmed Entertainment's pre-April 1996 library for $250 million, which included over 1,300 films from various assets PolyGram had acquired within that point, but did not include the ITC Entertainment library, which was sold on January 19, 1999 to Carlton Communications for £91 million.

[30]Whilst the home video division rebranding was successful (with CIC being renamed Paramount Home Entertainment UK toward the end of 1999[31][32]), the theatrical division rebranding would prove to be a failure, as films from the rebranded Universal Pictures International flopped at the box office, the company therefore announced in October 1999 that their operations would be downgraded to the home video market only and renewed their UIP deal with Paramount for five years, the remains of PolyGram's theatrical assets would then be folded into United International Pictures.