HMV
Encyclopedia
His Master's Voice is a trademark
in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper
listening to a wind-up gramophone
. In the photograph on which the painting was based, the dog was listening to a phonograph cylinder
.
artist Francis Barraud
, A.R.A. and titled His Master's Voice. It was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly-formed Gramophone Company
. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a fox terrier called Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, along with a cylinder phonograph
and a number of recordings of Mark's voice. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the trumpet, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas.
In early 1899, Francis Barraud applied for copyright of the original painting using the descriptive working title Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph. He was unable to sell the work to any cylinder phonograph company, but The Gramophone Company purchased it later that year, under the condition that Barraud modify it to show one of their disc machines. The image was first used on the company's publicity material in 1900, and additional copies were subsequently commissioned from the artist for various corporate purposes.
Later, at the request of the gramophone's inventor Emile Berliner
, the American rights to the picture became owned by the Victor Talking Machine Company
. Victor used the image more aggressively than its UK partner, and from 1902 on all Victor records had a simplified drawing of the dog and gramophone from Barraud's painting on their label. Magazine advertisements urged record buyers to "Look for the dog".
countries, the Gramophone Company did not use this design on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the upper half of the record labels by the picture painted by Frances Barraud, commonly referred to as Nipper or The Dog.
The company was not formally called "HMV" or His Master's Voice, but was identified by that term because of its use of the trademark. Records issued by the Company before February 1908 were generally referred to as "G&Ts", while those after that date are usually called "HMV" records.
This image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the USA, Canada and Latin America
, and then by Victor's successor RCA
. In Commonwealth countries (except Canada) it was used by subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI
.
The trademark's ownership is divided among different companies in different countries, reducing its value in the globalised
music market. The name HMV is used by a chain of music shops owned by HMV Group plc, mainly in the UK
, Ireland
, Canada
, Singapore
, Australia
, Hong Kong
, and Japan
.
In 1921 the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London
. In 1929 RCA bought Victor, and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company which Victor had owned since 1920.
In 1931 RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI, which continued to own the "His Master's Voice" name and image in the UK. In 1935 RCA sold its stake in EMI but continued to own Victor and the rights to His Master's Voice in the Americas. HMV continued to distribute RCA recordings until RCA severed its ties with EMI in 1957 which led EMI to buy Capitol Records
.
World War II
fragmented the ownership of the name still further, as RCA Victor's Japanese subsidiary The Victor Company of Japan (JVC
) became independent, and today they still use the "Victor" brand and Nipper in Japan only. Nipper continued to appear on RCA Victor records in America (except for a period from around 1968 to 1977), while EMI owned the His Master's Voice label in the UK until the 1980s, and the HMV shops until 1998.
In 1967, EMI converted the HMV label into an exclusive classical music
label and dropped its POP series of popular music
. HMV's POP series artists' roster was moved to Columbia Graphophone and licenced American POP record deals to Stateside Records
.
The globalised market for CDs
pushed EMI into abandoning the HMV label in favour of "EMI Classics
", a name they could use worldwide; however, it was revived in 1988 for Morrissey
recordings. The HMV trademark is now owned by the retail chain in the UK. The formal trademark transfer from EMI took place in 2003.
Meanwhile, RCA went into a financial decline. The dog and gramophone image, along with the RCA name, is now licensed by RCA Records
and RCA Victor owner Sony Music Entertainment
from Technicolor SA, which operates RCA's consumer electronics business (still promoted by Nipper the dog) that predecessor company Thomson SA bought from General Electric
in 1986, after GE bought RCA. The image of "His Master's Voice" now exists in the United States as a trademark only on radios and radios combined with phonographs, a trademark owned by Technicolor subsidiary RCA Trademark Management SA.
With that exception, the "His Master's Voice" dog and gramophone image is in the public domain in the USA, its United States trademark registrations having expired in 1989 (for sound recordings and phonograph cabinets), 1992 (television sets, television-radio combination sets), and 1994 (sound recording and reproducing machines, needles, and records).
On 1 April, 2007, HMV Group
announced that Gromit, the animated dog of Wallace and Gromit
, would stand in for Nipper for a three-month period, promoting children's DVDs in its UK stores.
The 1958 LP album "Elvis' Golden Records" shows pictures of various RCA 45s with Nipper on their labels. On the British version, these images were blacked out, for obvious copyright reasons. This editing took place with many other RCA releases in England.
The movie Superman Returns
(2006) contains a scene early on set in Kansas, in which a "His Master's Voice" radio is clearly shown. His Master's Voice radios have never been sold in the USA, due to RCA holding the "Nipper" copyright. The movie was made in Australia, and the nearest "prop" was obviously used.
In the 2008 film Valkyrie
, a Deutsche Grammophon
recording of Ride of the Valkyries
with Nipper and "Die Stimme seines Herrn" motto on the label was shown spinning on a 78 rpm wind-up gramaphone as the music played in the protagonist's living room.
Homage is played to the iconic dog and gramophone image in the 1999 feature film Wild Wild West
where in a dog resembling Nipper runs to the side of a recently departed character and looks into an ear horn. The film however, is set in 1869, 30 years before Barraud created his work.
The name HMV is still used by the chain of entertainment shops founded by Gramophone Company in the UK and Canada, which continued to expand internationally through the 1990s.
In 1998 HMV Media was created as a separate company leaving EMI with a 43% stake.
The firm bought the Waterstone's
chain of bookshops and merged them with Dillons
.
In 2002 it floated on the London Stock Exchange
as HMV Group
plc, leaving EMI with only a token holding.
HMV shops in Australia, Ireland and the UK also use Nipper. HMV applied for trademark status in order to use Nipper at HMV stores in Canada but abandoned the application in 2010, presumably because the rights to Nipper in Canada are part of the RCA
brand portfolio now owned by Technicolor SA and licensed to other companies.
As of August 2006, there are over 400 HMV stores worldwide, plus the website hmv.com, which is operated by HMV Guernsey
.
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper
Nipper
Nipper was a dog that served as the model for a painting titled His Late Master's Voice. This image was the basis for the dog and trumpet logo used by several audio recording and associated brands: His Master's Voice, HMV, RCA, Victor Talking Machine Company, RCA Victor and JVC.- Biography :Nipper...
listening to a wind-up gramophone
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
. In the photograph on which the painting was based, the dog was listening to a phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
.
Origins
The trademark image comes from a painting by EnglishEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
artist Francis Barraud
Francis Barraud
Francis James Barraud was an English painter - the son of artist Henry Barraud.His most famous work, His Master's Voice, is one of the best-known commercial logos in the world, having inspired the music industry trademark depicting a dog and phonograph, which is used by several corporations,...
, A.R.A. and titled His Master's Voice. It was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly-formed Gramophone Company
Gramophone Company
The Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organization for the famous "His Master's Voice" label...
. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a fox terrier called Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, along with a cylinder phonograph
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
and a number of recordings of Mark's voice. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the trumpet, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas.
In early 1899, Francis Barraud applied for copyright of the original painting using the descriptive working title Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph. He was unable to sell the work to any cylinder phonograph company, but The Gramophone Company purchased it later that year, under the condition that Barraud modify it to show one of their disc machines. The image was first used on the company's publicity material in 1900, and additional copies were subsequently commissioned from the artist for various corporate purposes.
Later, at the request of the gramophone's inventor Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner
Emile Berliner or Emil Berliner was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for developing the disc record gramophone...
, the American rights to the picture became owned by the Victor Talking Machine Company
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
. Victor used the image more aggressively than its UK partner, and from 1902 on all Victor records had a simplified drawing of the dog and gramophone from Barraud's painting on their label. Magazine advertisements urged record buyers to "Look for the dog".
The Gramophone Company becomes "His Master's Voice"
In CommonwealthCommonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
countries, the Gramophone Company did not use this design on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the upper half of the record labels by the picture painted by Frances Barraud, commonly referred to as Nipper or The Dog.
The company was not formally called "HMV" or His Master's Voice, but was identified by that term because of its use of the trademark. Records issued by the Company before February 1908 were generally referred to as "G&Ts", while those after that date are usually called "HMV" records.
This image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the USA, Canada and Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, and then by Victor's successor RCA
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
. In Commonwealth countries (except Canada) it was used by subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
.
The trademark's ownership is divided among different companies in different countries, reducing its value in the globalised
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
music market. The name HMV is used by a chain of music shops owned by HMV Group plc, mainly in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
In 1921 the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. In 1929 RCA bought Victor, and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company which Victor had owned since 1920.
In 1931 RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI, which continued to own the "His Master's Voice" name and image in the UK. In 1935 RCA sold its stake in EMI but continued to own Victor and the rights to His Master's Voice in the Americas. HMV continued to distribute RCA recordings until RCA severed its ties with EMI in 1957 which led EMI to buy Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
.
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
fragmented the ownership of the name still further, as RCA Victor's Japanese subsidiary The Victor Company of Japan (JVC
JVC
, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
) became independent, and today they still use the "Victor" brand and Nipper in Japan only. Nipper continued to appear on RCA Victor records in America (except for a period from around 1968 to 1977), while EMI owned the His Master's Voice label in the UK until the 1980s, and the HMV shops until 1998.
In 1967, EMI converted the HMV label into an exclusive classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
label and dropped its POP series of popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
. HMV's POP series artists' roster was moved to Columbia Graphophone and licenced American POP record deals to Stateside Records
Stateside Records
Stateside Records is a British record label which initially released licenced American recordings and is now a reissue label....
.
The globalised market for CDs
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
pushed EMI into abandoning the HMV label in favour of "EMI Classics
EMI Classics
EMI Classics is a record label of EMI, formed in 1990 in order to reduce the need to create country-specific packaging and catalogs for internationally distributed classical music releases....
", a name they could use worldwide; however, it was revived in 1988 for Morrissey
Morrissey
Steven Patrick Morrissey , known as Morrissey, is an English singer and lyricist. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The band was highly successful in the United Kingdom but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career,...
recordings. The HMV trademark is now owned by the retail chain in the UK. The formal trademark transfer from EMI took place in 2003.
Meanwhile, RCA went into a financial decline. The dog and gramophone image, along with the RCA name, is now licensed by RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
and RCA Victor owner Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....
from Technicolor SA, which operates RCA's consumer electronics business (still promoted by Nipper the dog) that predecessor company Thomson SA bought from General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
in 1986, after GE bought RCA. The image of "His Master's Voice" now exists in the United States as a trademark only on radios and radios combined with phonographs, a trademark owned by Technicolor subsidiary RCA Trademark Management SA.
With that exception, the "His Master's Voice" dog and gramophone image is in the public domain in the USA, its United States trademark registrations having expired in 1989 (for sound recordings and phonograph cabinets), 1992 (television sets, television-radio combination sets), and 1994 (sound recording and reproducing machines, needles, and records).
Additional notes
The "His Master's Voice" logo was used around the world, and the motto became well-known in different languages. In Europe these include "La Voix de son Maître" (France), "La Voz de su Amo" (Spain), "A Voz do seu Dono" (Portugal), "La Voce del Padrone" (Italy), "Die Stimme seines Herrn" (Germany), "Husbondens Röst" (Sweden), "Głos Swego Pana" (Poland) and "Sahibinin Sesi" (Turkey).On 1 April, 2007, HMV Group
HMV Group
HMV is a British global entertainment retail chain and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company also operates in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index...
announced that Gromit, the animated dog of Wallace and Gromit
Wallace and Gromit
Wallace and Gromit are the main characters in a series consisting of four British animated short films and a feature-length film by Nick Park of Aardman Animations...
, would stand in for Nipper for a three-month period, promoting children's DVDs in its UK stores.
The 1958 LP album "Elvis' Golden Records" shows pictures of various RCA 45s with Nipper on their labels. On the British version, these images were blacked out, for obvious copyright reasons. This editing took place with many other RCA releases in England.
The movie Superman Returns
Superman Returns
Superman Returns is a 2006 superhero film directed by Bryan Singer. It is the fifth and final installment in the original Superman film series and serves as a alternate sequel to Superman and Superman II by ignoring the events of Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace .The film stars...
(2006) contains a scene early on set in Kansas, in which a "His Master's Voice" radio is clearly shown. His Master's Voice radios have never been sold in the USA, due to RCA holding the "Nipper" copyright. The movie was made in Australia, and the nearest "prop" was obviously used.
In the 2008 film Valkyrie
Valkyrie (film)
Valkyrie is a 2008 American historical thriller film set in Nazi Germany during World War II. The film depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country...
, a Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
recording of Ride of the Valkyries
Ride of the Valkyries
The Ride of the Valkyries is the popular term for the beginning of Act III of Die Walküre, the second of the four operas by Richard Wagner that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen. The main theme of the Ride, the leitmotif labelled Walkürenritt, was first written down by the composer on 23 July 1851...
with Nipper and "Die Stimme seines Herrn" motto on the label was shown spinning on a 78 rpm wind-up gramaphone as the music played in the protagonist's living room.
Homage is played to the iconic dog and gramophone image in the 1999 feature film Wild Wild West
Wild Wild West
Wild Wild West is a 1999 American steampunk action-comedy film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline , Kenneth Branagh and Salma Hayek.Similar to the original TV series it was based on, The Wild Wild West, the film features a large amount of gadgetry...
where in a dog resembling Nipper runs to the side of a recently departed character and looks into an ear horn. The film however, is set in 1869, 30 years before Barraud created his work.
HMV Group PLC
In 1998 HMV Media was created as a separate company leaving EMI with a 43% stake.
The firm bought the Waterstone's
Waterstone's
Waterstone's is a British book specialist established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone that employs around 4,500 staff throughout the United Kingdom and Europe....
chain of bookshops and merged them with Dillons
Dillons Booksellers
Dillons was a bookshop and subsequently a bookselling chain, based in the United Kingdom, which traded between 1932 and 1999.Founded by Una Dillon in 1932, Dillons was for most of its history most closely associated with its signature building on Gower Street in London, near University College...
.
In 2002 it floated on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
as HMV Group
HMV Group
HMV is a British global entertainment retail chain and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company also operates in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index...
plc, leaving EMI with only a token holding.
HMV shops in Australia, Ireland and the UK also use Nipper. HMV applied for trademark status in order to use Nipper at HMV stores in Canada but abandoned the application in 2010, presumably because the rights to Nipper in Canada are part of the RCA
RCA (trademark)
RCA is an American trademark brand owned by Technicolor SA which is used on products made by that company as well as Audiovox, ON Corporation and Sony Music Entertainment...
brand portfolio now owned by Technicolor SA and licensed to other companies.
As of August 2006, there are over 400 HMV stores worldwide, plus the website hmv.com, which is operated by HMV Guernsey
Guernsey
Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...
.