Columbia Records

=== The 1980s and sale to Sony ===
The structure of US Columbia remained the same until 1980, when it spun off the classical/Broadway unit, Columbia Masterworks Records, into a separate imprint, CBS Masterworks Records.

In 1988, the CBS Records Group, including the Columbia Records unit, was acquired by [[Sony]], which re-christened the parent division [[Sony Music Entertainment]] in 1991. As Sony only had a temporary license on the CBS Records name, it then acquired the rights to the Columbia trademarks ([[Columbia Graphophone]]) outside the U.S., Canada, Spain (trademark owned by [[Bertelsmann Music Group|BMG]]) and Japan (Nippon Columbia) from [[EMI]], a firm which generally had not used them since the early 1970s. The CBS Records label was officially renamed Columbia Records on January 1, 1991, worldwide except Spain (where Sony got the rights in 2004 by forming a joint venture with BMG<ref>[http://www.oepm.es/Localizador/LocNacExp] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040204010729/http://www.oepm.es/Localizador/LocNacExp|date=February 4, 2004}}{{dead link|date=February 2024}}</ref>) and Japan.<ref>{{cite news|agency=Reuters |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/16/business/cbs-records-changes-name.html |url-access=subscription |title=CBS Records Changes Name |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 16, 1990 |access-date=December 31, 2009}}</ref> CBS Masterworks Records was renamed [[Sony Classical Records]]. In December 2006, [[CBS Corporation]] revived the [[CBS Records (2006)|CBS Records]] name for a new minor label closely linked with its television properties (coincidentally, the new CBS Records is currently distributed by another Sony Music division, [[RED Distribution]]).