The Music Corporation of America (or MCA Inc.) was an American corporation in the music and television businesses. MCA published music, booked acts, ran a record company, and distributed television productions and home videos.
MCA was founded as a music booking agency based in Chicago, Illinois in 1924 by Jules Stein. MCA helped pioneer modern practices of touring bands and name acts. Prominent early MCA booked artists included King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton.
Lew Wasserman rose through the ranks to MCA for more than four decades, with Sonny Werblin as his right-hand man. Other executives within MCA were Presidents, Sidney Sheinberg and Lawrence R. Barnett, and Ned Tanen, head of Universal Pictures. Tanen was behind Universal hits such as Animal House, John Hughes's Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.
Wasserman expanded the company's presence into television (founding EMKA, Ltd., which owns the copyright to much of the pre-1948 Paramount Pictures theatrical sound feature film library and Revue Studios, the top supplier of television for all broadcast networks, spanning three decades). He also purchased the Universal Studios studio lot, but not the studio itself, in 1958, the same year the company was incorporated as MCA Inc.blank">http://new.umusic.com/history.aspx
MCA entered the record music business in 1962 with the purchase of the New York based US _Decca branch, including Coral Records and Brunswick Records. As Decca owned Universal Pictures, MCA assumed full ownership of Universal and made it into the top film studio in town, producing hit after hit.
In order to acquire Universal, Wasserman was forced to dissolve MCA's talent agency in 1962 - which represented most of the industry's biggest names - by Robert F. Kennedy's Department of Justice, as it violated anti-trust laws. In 1966, MCA formed Uni Records in Hollywood, Californiablank">http://www.bsnpubs.com/mca/uni.html and in 1967, MCA bought New York based _Kapp Records.
In 1968, the MCA Records label was established outside North America to issue releases by MCA's labels. Decca, Kapp and Uni were merged into MCA Records at Universal City, California in 1971; the three labels maintained their identities for a short time but were soon retired in favor of the MCA label. The first MCA Records release in the US was former Uni artist Elton John's Crocodile Rock in 1972. In 1973, the final Decca pop label release was issued.
MCA issued soundtrack albums for most films released by Universal Pictures.
In 1975, the company entered the book publishing business with the acquisition of G. P. Putnam's Sons. In 1979 it acquired ABC Records along with its subsidiaries Paramount Records, Impulse Records, and Dot Records. ABC had acquired the Paramount and Dot labels when they purchased Gulf+Western's record labels, thus MCA now controlled the following material once owned by Paramount Pictures: the music released by Paramount's record labels, and the pre-1950 films by Paramount as well.
The Chess Records catalog was acquired from the remnants of Sugarhill in 1985. Motown Records was bought in 1988 (and sold to PolyGram in 1993). GRP Records and Geffen Records were acquired in 1990. In the same year, MCA was purchased by the Matsushita group.
MCA also acquired other assets outside of the music industry. It became a shareholder in USA Network in 1981, eventually owning 50% of the network (the other half was owned by Paramount). It also bought a TV station in New York City, WWOR-TV (renamed from WOR-TV), in 1987, from RKO General, which was in the midst of a licensing scandal. It was forced to sell the station in 1991 by the Federal Communications Commission after Matsushita's takeover of MCA because foreign companies could not own over 25% of a US TV station.
In 1995, Seagram Company Ltd. acquired 80% of MCA and the following year the new owners dropped the MCA name; the company became Universal Studios, Inc. and its music division, MCA Music Entertainment Group, was renamed Universal Music Group. MCA Records continued to live on as a label within the Universal Music Group. The following year, G. P. Putnam's Sons was sold to the Penguin Group.
In 1998 Seagram acquired PolyGram from Philips and merged it with its music holdings. When Seagram's drinks business was bought by France-based Pernod Ricard, its media holdings (including Universal) were sold to Vivendi which became Vivendi Universal.
In the spring of 2003, MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records. Its country music label, MCA Nashville Records is still in operation. MCA's classical music catalogue is managed by Deutsche Grammophon.
MCA's non-music assets at the time of the company's renaming, including Universal Studios and the 50% interest in USA Networks, are now owned by NBC Universal (now full owner of USA), which is 80% owned by General Electric, and 20% owned by Vivendi.
