Template talk:Timeline of Major Record Labels

Decca, MCA, Warner

I'm a little confused about some of the dates we're using in this template. The Universal Music Group article's infobox claims that company was "Formerly called" Decca Records from 1934 to 1971, MCA Records from 1971 to 1989, and MCA Music Entertainment Group from 1989 to 1996. The Decca Records article points out that the company was founded in the UK in 1929 and in the US in 1934, and that "The US Decca label was the foundation company that evolved into UMG." So why are we using 1929–1990 for Decca and 1990–1996 for MCA (which I have just changed to MCA Music Entertainment Group in the legend, to more closely match the current dates)? And why is Music Publishers Holding Company in here at all? Shouldn't the bar that ends in Warner Music Group begin with Warner Bros. Records in 1958? - dcljr (talk) 20:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

In my opinion, this template is so wrong as to be worthless. Part of the problem is that it tries to take a worldwide perspective, and the complex international agreements between international companies do not lend themselves to a bar graph. We shouldn't have Music Publishers Holding Company at all. How utterly confusing. Just because a sheet-music publishing company was merged with a record company many decades later does not imply it was a major label in 1928. It was non-existent as a record label that year! Now would be a good time to have some consensus regarding this template, who should be included, and what years they could be considered a "major" label. Thank you for bringing this topic up. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 20:14, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Improving the timeline

It seems that this template is trying to do two different things at the same time (and failing at both): to show which labels were "major" ones at different times and to show the historical development of "today's" major labels. I think it's nice to have both kinds of information if we can do it right (obviously, antecedents to major labels that were not themselves major labels should be displayed differently). First, then, we have to agree on what defines a "major" label and which labels fit that definition; then we need to consider how those labels came about (from what mergers, acquisitions, etc., back to the founding of their "source" companies). According to Record label#Major labels (extrapolating a bit from the text under the image), there were six major labels in 1988:

• Warner Music Group
• EMI
• Columbia Records / CBS Records (in 1988 it wasn't Sony Music yet)
• BMG
• Universal Music Group
• PolyGram

So, what were the majors before then? Was there a time when there were seven "major" labels? Eight? Ten? How far back does this idea go? As for the chain (or sometimes "web") of companies that led to these "majors", I've started to collect info about that (from the articles linked to above) in a big table, but I can't post it here at the moment. Stand By. Meanwhile, regarding the appearance of the timeline, I'm envisioning lots of little lines (or thin bars), which are smaller labels, becoming thicker lines/bars, then progressively thicker bars as the companies become progressively fewer and larger "major" entities, ending in today's "big three" labels. I'm not sure that can easily be done using the timeline extension, but, worst-case scenario, we would just switch to displaying an externally created SVG image to do it (which I cannot personally create, but lots of people can). - dcljr (talk) 01:58, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Excellen post. Just for an idea of what we may be chewing into,

North American Majors (by my definition) in:

• 1890: North American Phonograph Company
• 1898: National Phonograph (Edison), Columbia, Berliner
• 1905: Victor, Columbia, Edison
• 1925: Victor, Columbia, Brunswick/Vocalion, possibly Pathe
• 1930: Victor, American Record Corporation
• 1935: Victor, Decca, American Record Corporation
• 1940: Victor, Decca, Columbia
• 1948: Victor, Decca, Columbia, Capitol, possibly Mercury

78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 15:53, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Ugh... I'm getting nowhere with my information collecting, because every time I try to work on it, I almost immediately get bogged down in the details of who owned what, when (and where!), and what actually constitutes valid "from" and "to" dates for many of the companies involved — and then I give up on it for another week. (To tell you the truth, I'm having a hard time even figuring out a good way to organize the info just for myself, much less for eventual use in this template!) Maybe I'll try going forwards chronologically based on your list (thanks for that) instead of backwards from the "big six". - dcljr (talk) 13:39, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

In the meantime, is there a way of altering the Key, so that, for example, HDD, PPI, GPG and PolyGram are on the same column, rather than it being alphabetical? I'm sure this would be more user friendly. Woolpack Jack (talk) 20:23, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

I've tried to improve the situation by making the labels in the legend/key start with the text used in the timeline, whether an abbreviation or a full name, followed by the other thing (full name or abbreviation) in parentheses. I've kept it alphabetical, since that (presumably) makes it easier to look up when you're going from an unknown abbreviation used in the timeline to the explanation of that abbreviation in the legend. The problem with arranging the legend in any other way is that the timeline extension automatically breaks each column in the legend at 4 rows (if it would have been longer — I don't know if there's a way of changing this), but the companies don't all come in natural groupings of 4. And you can't specify more than 4 columns of labels, which was perfect when there were 16 companies (4 columns, 4 rows), but now there are 17. Anyway, I wasn't able to figure out a good way of arranging them non-alphabetically… maybe someone else can. - dcljr (talk) 05:26, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

"the timeline extension automatically breaks each column in the legend at 4 rows" - but before you changed it the columns went 4-2-4-2-4-1. No row in the table had more than four companies, so I thought there'd be a way of arranging it so that: one row in the table = one column in the legend. This is surely easier than having to hunt around the alphabetical listing. Although, now that its a uniform 4-4-4-4-1, that must make it easier than it was before. :) Woolpack Jack (talk) 20:35, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

"I've tried to improve the situation by making the labels in the legend/key start with the text used in the timeline" - that was a good idea btw. Woolpack Jack (talk) 20:42, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

"but before you changed it the columns went 4-2-4-2-4-1." Right. Because "columns" was set to 3 in the "Legend" line, so it was trying to show three columns containing 6, 6, and 5 entries, respectively; but each of them was getting wrapped after the 4th entry. See? Anyway, you're welcome to try rearranging the legend/key entries into a more logical order (this is determined by the order of the entries in the "Colors" section). I just couldn't get something I thought was better than alphabetical. - dcljr (talk) 01:11, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

So the 4 rows thing: is that something that was set up for this timeline, or is it a Wikipedia default? If it was going to be changed to '1 column per timeline row', the columns would need to have a 4-2-3-4-1-3 formation. How would I get it to do that? Woolpack Jack (talk) 11:44, 24 August 2018 (UTC)