Columbia Records

== Logos and branding ==
The acquisition of rights to the Columbia trademarks by EMI (including the "Magic Notes" logo) presented the company with a dilemma of which logo to use. For much of the 1990s, Columbia released its albums without a logo, just the "COLUMBIA" word mark in the [[Bodoni]] Classic Bold typeface.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://columbiarecords.com/  |title=Columbia Records Online – USA |date=February 8, 1999 |access-date=December 31, 2009 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/19990208003842/http://columbiarecords.com/ |archive-date = February 8, 1999}}</ref>  Columbia experimented with bringing back the "Notes and Mic" logo but without the CBS mark on the microphone. That logo is currently used in the "Columbia Jazz" series of jazz releases and reissues.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.columbiarecords.com/Jazz/main.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980115233233/http://www.columbiarecords.com/Jazz/main.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 15, 1998 |title=Columbia Jazz – Main Nav |publisher=Columbiarecords.com |access-date=December 31, 2009 }}</ref> A modified "Magic Notes" logo is found on the logo for [[Sony Classical]]. In mid to late 1999, it was eventually decided that the "Walking Eye" (previously the CBS Records logo outside North America) would be Columbia's logo, with the retained Columbia word mark design, throughout the world except in Japan where [[Nippon Columbia]] has the rights to the Columbia trademark to this day and continues to use the "Magic Notes" logo. In Japan, CBS/Sony Records was renamed Sony Records in 1991 and stopped using the "Walking Eye" logo in 1998.