PolyGram N.V.

PolyGram N.V. was a Dutch-German multinational major music record label and entertainment company, formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by the Dutch corporation Philips and the German corporation Siemens to hold their record companies, and it was renamed PolyGram in 1972. The name reflected the Siemens interest Polydor Records and the Philips interest Phonogram Records, and the company traced its origins through Deutsche Grammophon back to the gramophone inventor Emil Berliner. It later grew into the largest global entertainment company by adding film and television divisions. In May 1998 it was sold to the distiller Seagram, which owned Universal Studios, and its music operations were folded into Universal Music Group and its film and television operations into Universal Pictures. Universal Music Group revived the name as PolyGram Entertainment in February 2017.