Columbia Music Entertainment

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Columbia Music Entertainment

Parent company	Columbia Music Entertainment, Inc.
Founded	1910
Founder	Fredrick W. Horn
Distributing label	Columbia Records (In Japan) Savoy Records (in United States)
Genre	various
Country of origin	Japan
Official website	Columbia Music Entertainment

Columbia Music Entertainment TYO: 6791 is a Japanese record label founded in 1910 as the Nipponophone Company Co., Ltd. (Nippon Phonograph Company). It affiliated itself with the Columbia Graphophone Company of the United Kingdom and adopted the standard UK Columbia trademarks in 1931. It changed its name in 1946 to Nippon Columbia Company Limited and adopted its present name in 2002. Until 2001, it also manufactured electronic products under the Denon brand name. Outside Japan, the company operates as the Savoy Label Group which releases recordings on the SLG, Savoy Jazz and Denon labels.

Aside from common historical roots, the current Columbia Music Entertainment label has no direct relation with either the American Columbia Records (part of the Sony BMG group in the United States and operates in Japan as Sony Records) or the British EMI group, of which the original Columbia Graphophone Co. was a part.

This label is notorious for having Ayumi Hamasaki, the best selling female and solo artist in Japanese history, on their record label before her rise to fame. After her first single and album, both titled NOTHING FROM NOTHING flopped, due to little to no promotion, they dropped her. She later subsequently met her current Producer, Max Matsuura, who is now President of Avex.