Polar Music

Polar Music is a Swedish record company founded in 1963 by Stig Anderson and his friend Bengt Bernhag. The first act that it signed was the Hootenanny Singers featuring Björn Ulvaeus. Polar eventually gained prosperity producing Ulvaeus' next group, international superstars ABBA. As a small Scandinavian company based in Sweden, Polar could not afford to set up operations worldwide and were only ABBA's record company in the Scandinavian countries. Therefore, ABBA's recordings were licensed to different record companies in each country, but usually to companies that had international operations, meaning they could effectively compete with each other to acquire the licenses in more countries if they proved successful in their own. The licenses gave the companies a few allowances to issue certain tracks as singles that Polar hadn't, or to modify single (and occasionally album) artwork. The licenses were for three years at a time, meaning that between 1989 and 1992, they had all expired. This enabled PolyGram to release Gold: Greatest Hits to major success around the world.