RKO/Unique Records

RKO Records and Unique Jazz are two record labels. They began in 1955 as Unique Records, a New York pop music record label. After several small pop hits, such as "Man in the Raincoat" by fourteen-year-old Priscilla Wright, the label was acquired by RKO General in 1957, who had recently acquired the venerable RKO Movie Studio and placed its owner Stanley Borden in charge of its music entertainment division.

In an effort to create entertainment synergy, RKO also acquired the struggling Mutual Radio Network in an attempt to enhance the record company by creating a national audience for the product. Unfortunately, the concept behind the arrangement was that rock and roll music was a passing fad, and that the pop music of the 1920s through the early 1950s would endure. With that in mind, RKO signed former recording acts like Rudy Vallee, the Harmonicats and Ted Lewis in hopes of recapturing their glorious pasts. To this mix they added popular movie stars like Herb Jeffries, Edie Adams and Frances Langford, former vaudeville stars (and RKO movie regulars) like the Vagabonds, plus current popular TV stars such as George DeWitt, then the host of the top rated Name That Tune. RKO-Unique also issued the album Music To Suffer By by Leona Anderson.

Records (album)

Records is a compilation album by American rock band Foreigner, released in 1982 to span the band's first four albums through 1981. Along with their sophomore effort, Double Vision, this album is the group's best-selling record. It has been certified 7 x platinum by the RIAA. Some notable hits, such as "Blue Morning, Blue Day" are omitted.

Track listing

All songs by Lou Gramm and Mick Jones, except where noted.

With the exceptions of "Head Games" and the live version of "Hot Blooded," all tracks on this album are the 45 RPM single versions (edited and/or mixed differently from their respective album counterparts).

When this album is bought on iTunes, the track "Hot Blooded" is the studio version of the song, not live.

679 Artists

679 Artists (formally known as Sixsevenine and 679 Recordings) was a Warner Music Group-owned record label based in London, England.

It was started by Nick Worthington who after leaving XL Recordings in 2001, started the company with Warner Music Group, and holds the position of MD and A&R Director. It is named "679" as this was the address of the Pure Groove record shop on Holloway Road.

The label's first release was The Streets' debut, Original Pirate Material (which was named The Observer's best album of the 2000s).

The label progressed with subsequent albums from artists including Death From Above 1979, The Futureheads, Kano, King Creosote and Mystery Jets, and also included the million-selling second Streets album, A Grand Don't Come for Free.

In 2011, it released Plan B's The Defamation of Strickland Banks which has sold over 1 million copies.

The founder of 679 has recently formed a new record label called 37 Adventures.

Former artists

1605 (record label)

1605 (pronounced as sixteen-o-five) is a techno and tech-house record label, founded in 2007 by a Slovenian DJ and producer UMEK. With 140 releases by more than 250 artists 1605 is the biggest label UMEK has founded since Recycled Loops and Consumer Recreation. UMEK started the label to promote tracks from talented artists, regardless of their fame and the strength of previous releases.

Creative concept

The label's creative concept is based on its sound as well as on its visual appearance.

1605's sound relies on UMEK's creative feeling as he acts as A&R manager and decides personally which tracks are signed by the label. Tracks are usually released digitally and sold online in various outlets such as Beatport, iTunes, Trackitdown, Juno and others. The only project, which was released also on a CD, was UMEK's 2010 album Responding to Dynamic.

1605's music can also be heard on the label's podcast and on websites such as Soundcloud and Mixcloud.

The label is also building its recognition by using a distinctive graphic design for artwork (release covers, promo material). Using only artwork in grayscale with occasional yellow tones, all release covers feature parts of vintage pictures from the 1930s Great Depression in the USA and personal drawings by the label's graphic designer.

Unique (band)

Unique was a short-lived post-disco studio act from New York, best known for their crossover number "What I Got Is What You Need" released in 1983 for a well-established dance label, Prelude Records. The group was formed by producer/songwriter Deems J. Smith in 1982 and consists of Smith and Darryl K. Henry. The said hit song somewhat established itself on the Billboard Dance Singles and Black Singles charts and even scored over the atlantic reaching No. 27 on UK Singles Chart.

History

Around 1982, record producer Deems J. Smith hired studio musicians to appear in a project he named Unique. He was signed to dance record label Prelude and under this name released two singles: "What I Got Is What You Need" in 1983 and "You Make Me Feel So Good" in 1984. Other people involved in the group were Mona Maria Norris and Darryl K. Henry who co-wrote "What I Got Is What You Need." Smith wrote the second song alone and it was mixed by an aspiring dance-pop producer Shep Pettibone.

Chart performance

Unique (disambiguation)

In mathematics and logic, a unique object is the only object with a certain property.

Unique may also refer to:

RKO Pictures

RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures (also known as RKO Productions, Radio Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, RKO Teleradio Pictures and, for a short time, RKO Pathé) is an American film production and distribution company. It was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) vaudeville theatre circuit and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone. By the mid-1940s, the studio was under the control of investor Floyd Odlum.

RKO has long been celebrated for its series of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid-to-late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years. The work of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and Citizen Kane.