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Geffen Records
Parent company	Universal Music Group
Founded	1980
Founder	David Geffen
Distributing label	Interscope-Geffen-A&M (US) Polydor Records (Non-US)
Genre	Pop, R&B, pop-rock, hip hop, hip hop soul , electropop, alternative rock
Country of origin	US
Location	Santa Monica, California
Official website	Official website of Geffen Records

Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.

Contents 1 Company history 1.1 Beginnings 1.2 DGC Records 1.3 Geffen's acquisition by MCA 1.4 Interscope-Geffen-A&M 2 Labels under Geffen 3 See also 4 External links

Geffen Records was founded in 1980 by music industry businessman David Geffen who, in the early 1970s, had formed Asylum Records. Geffen stepped down from Asylum after being diagnosed with a cancerous cyst but, following confirmation that the growth was benign, returned to work and struck a deal with Warner Bros. Records to create Geffen Records. Warner provided 100 percent of the funding for the label's operations, while Geffen retained 50 percent of the profits, and distributed its records. (International distribution outside the US and Canada, meanwhile, moved from WEA in 1982 to CBS until 1990.)

Geffen Records' first signee was disco superstar Donna Summer, whose gold-selling album The Wanderer became the label's first release in 1980. The label followed it up with Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was Lennon's first album of all-new material in several years. Two days after it entered the charts, Lennon was assassinated in New York City. Subsequently, the album went on to sell millions and gave Geffen its first number one album and single (the rights to the album are now owned by EMI).

Geffen Records also had early success with several "big 80s" acts including Quarterflash, Oxo, Asia, Wang Chung, and a pre-Van Halen Sammy Hagar.

As the 1980s progressed, Geffen Records continued to sign a handful of established music icons, including Elton John, Cher, Don Henley, Wang Chung, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, and Jennifer Holliday. Toward the end of the decade, the company also began making a name for itself as an emerging rock label, thanks to the success of Whitesnake (US only), Guns N' Roses, Tesla and the mainstream comeback of '70s era rockers Aerosmith.

With the success of stadium rock bands on the Geffen label, they prompted to create a subsidiary label, named DGC Records in 1990. DGC is an acronym for David Geffen Company. The label focused on more progressive sounds and would later embrace the emergence of alternative rock, with influential acts like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Beck, Weezer, Counting Crows, Hole, The Sundays, Teenage Fanclub and The Stone Roses, as well as early releases by hip hop heavyweights The Roots.

DGC Records at first saw minor success with Sonic Youth, whom they signed after the indie success of their 1988 album Daydream Nation. The follow up, Goo and first on DGC, was a minor success, and featured a few cult singles including "Kool Thing," and "Dirty Boots." The album was the first Sonic Youth album to crack the top 100 in America.

Following repeated recommendations by the members of Sonic Youth (most notably Kim Gordon), DGC signed the unknown Seattle alternative rock band Nirvana who had not been satisfied with the support they were getting from there indie label, Sub Pop. The band quickly hit the studio to record the follow up to 1989's college radio favorite, Bleach, entitled Nevermind. The label hoped it would achieve the same success as Sonic Youth's Goo which was released a year earlier. Upon the release of the first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Nevermind sold 500,000 copies in its first 5 weeks, more than the label had hoped for in the next year. The album was released September 24, on January 11th 1992, the album knocked superstar Michael Jackson's comeback album Dangerous off the number 1 spot. It did the same with Garth Brooks' Ropin the Wind 3 weeks later. Over the course of 1992, three more singles spawned from Nevermind, "Come As You Are," "Lithium," and "In Bloom." The success of these singles propelled alternative rock and Seattle's own "grunge rock" into the forfront of mainstream media. By the end of the 90s, Nevermind had sold 10,000,000 copies in America alone. Nirvana released one more studio album, In Utero which to date has sold 5,000,000 copies before singer Kurt Cobain's suicide in April 1994. Nirvana have 8 platinum albums, 3 of which were studio albums, they are often considered the greatest rock band of the 90s.

To fill the void of Nirvana's demise, DGC began to see new faces, Weezer who scored big with The Blue Album, Counting Crows and their multi-platinum albums August and Everything After, as well as Recovering the Satellites, and also Beck who hit big with the top 10 album Mellow Gold and the top 10 single, "Loser," scoring DGC's first top 10 since Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in early 1992.

Along with the new faces, DGC alumni Sonic Youth pumped out their highest peaking album, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star which peaked inside the top 40, a first and final for Sonic Youth. The song "Bull in the Heather" was also a big hit and saw MTV play.

Of these bands the only three still together are Weezer, Sonic Youth, and Counting Crows. Sonic Youth and Counting Crows have not seen much commercial strength since the 90s however. Weezer have however released 4 albums since the multi-platinum The Blue Album, all of which have gone Gold and 2 of which have achieved platinum status. Weezer scored a top 40 hit in 2001 with the success of "Hash Pipe," propelling The Green Album to platinum. 2002's Maladroit featured the hits "Dope Nose," and "Keep Fishin'," neither of which achieved high chart positions. In 2005 Weezer released the second most downloaded song of the year with "Beverly Hills," the album Make Believe saw Weezer reach a peak on American album charts at number 2. "Perfect Situation" was also a top 50 hit and the number 1 played Modern Rock song for 4 weeks. The band is scheduled to release its 6th album in early-mid 2008.

Nirvana are also releasing their celebrated 1993 MTV Unplugged appearance on home video for the first time. It is only the second home video release after 1994's Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! which was a collage of live performances originally conceived by the late Kurt Cobain.

After a decade of operating through Warner, when its contract with the company expired, David Geffen sold the label to MCA Music Entertainment. (later renamed Universal Music Group) in 1990. The deal ultimately earned him an estimated $1 billion in cash and stock, and an employment contract that ran until 1995. Following the sale, Geffen Records operated as one of Universal's leading independently managed labels. Geffen stepped down as head of the label in 1995 and collaborated with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg to form DreamWorks SKG, an ambitious multimedia empire dealing in film, television, books, and music. Geffen Records would distribute releases on the new operation's DreamWorks Records subsidiary.

Universal Music Group acquired PolyGram in 1998, resulting in a corporate reorganization of labels. Geffen Records, along with A&M Records, was subsequently merged into Interscope Records. Although Geffen continued to exist as its own imprint, it was now reduced in size and stature to fit into the greater expansion of Interscope. Geffen's DGC division, meanwhile, virtually ceased all of its operations, with most of their artists signing directly with Geffen or Interscope. Today, DGC exists an exclusive imprint for all Nirvana material that has continued to be released in recent years, in addition to being the American home to English act The Klaxons.

By 2000, despite Geffen Records no longer being independently operated within UMG and taking a more submissive position behind Interscope, it continued to do steady business—so much so that in 2003, UMG folded MCA Records into Geffen. Though Geffen had been substantially a pop-rock label, its absorption of MCA (which also included the ABC Records, Dunhill Records, Song Bird Records, Duke Records, Peacock Records, Back Beat Records and Hickory Records and Famous Music Group, which included Dot Records and Paramount Records, among other back catalogues) led to a more diverse roster; with former MCA artists like: Mary J. Blige, The Roots, Avant, Blink-182, and Common now featured on the label. Meanwhile, DreamWorks Records also folded, with much of that company being absorbed by Geffen as well.

Geffen's absorption of the MCA and DreamWorks labels, along with its continuing to sign new acts like Ashlee Simpson, Angels & Airwaves, Nelly Furtado,ProZac and Snoop Dogg, as well as the recently signed hip-hop artist The Game, have boosted the company to the extent that it is now gaining equal footing with the main Interscope label, leading some industry insiders to predict that it might revert to operating as a dominant imprint at UMG again soon.

Main article: Universal Music Group

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• A.I.G Records

• Geffen Records artists
• [[List of record lab

A.I.G RECORDS

• Geffen Records