RED Music, stylized RED MUSIC, formerly RED Distribution, LLC (Relativity Entertainment Distribution) was a

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

-owned sales and marketing division that merged under The Orchard in 2017. RED previously handled releases for more than sixty independent record labels.

History

Founded in 1979 as mainly a hard rock

music distributor The music industry are individuals and organizations that earn money by Songwriter, writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music and sheet music, presenting live music, concerts, ...

called Important Record Distributors, which originally distributed

Metallica Metallica is an American heavy metal band. It was formed in Los Angeles in 1981 by vocalist and guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, and has been based in San Francisco for most of its career. The band's fast tempos, instrume ...

's first two LPs in the US, it became RED Distribution in the 1990s. In October 1999,

Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the ...

sold 80% of RED Distribution to Edel SE & Co. KGaA. In March 2016, Sony announced the acquisition of Essential Music and Marketing. As part of this deal, a new company was launched, Red Essential, which is based at the

Cooking Vinyl Cooking Vinyl is a British independent record label, based in Acton, London, England. It was founded in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and his business partner Pete Lawrence. Goldschmidt remains the current owner an ...

Group's West London offices. The company is now located in Farringdon. This division had very little correlation to RED in the United States besides its name.

Acquisition

On June 1, 2017, Sony Music announced that it would merge RED's British affiliate, Red Essential, into The Orchard. On June 5, Sony also included the American RED Distribution in its merger with The Orchard. The "RED" name will remain active as a new entity named RED MUSIC, which will provide marketing, label services, and joint ventures between Sony's labels and independent labels. As of September 2019, RED MUSIC was completely shuttered and consolidated into The Orchard.

References

{{Authority control Record label distributors Sony Music Musical theatre record labels Entertainment companies of the United States