Motown: History and Key Facts

Motown is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. Founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959, it was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of motor and town, has become a nickname for Detroit, the center of the automotive industry in the United States, where Motown was originally headquartered.

Motown played a vital role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned label that achieved crossover success with white audiences. In the 1960s, Motown and its main subsidiary labels (including Gordy, Soul) were the most prominent exponents of what became known as the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop-influenced sound and appeal. Motown was the most successful soul music label, with a net worth of $61 million in 1988. Between 1960 and 1969, 79 Motown songs reached the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100.

In March 1965, Berry Gordy and Dave Godin agreed to license the Tamla Motown label name for future UK releases through EMI Records. Shortly after, as Berry Gordy owned the brand name, Tamla Motown also became the primary name used outside the US for non-EMI licensees.

In 1997, EMI bought 50% of the rights to Motown back catalogue for re-releases in Europe, sharing ownership with Polygram (Now Universal Music).

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Motown by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.