Deutsche Grammophon (DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquarted in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of labels in 1999. It is the oldest surviving established record company. Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft was founded in 1898 by German-born United States citizen Emile Berliner as the German branch of his Berliner Gramophone Company. Berliner sent his nephew Joseph Sanders from America to set up operations. Based in the city of Hanover (the founder's birthplace), the company was the German affiliate of the U.S. Victor Talking Machine Company and the British Gramophone Company, but that affiliation ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. . Deutsche Grammophon pioneered the introduction of the compact disc to the mass market, debuting classical music performed by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic for sale in the new medium in 1983, the first recording being Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie. DGG/Polydor's entrance into the US market in 1969 came at a time when the big US classical music labels RCA Victor Red Seal and Columbia Masterworks were dropping their unlucrative classical artists and pressing poor-quality records. The fine quality both of recording and of pressings helped DGG succeed in America and attract artists such as Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra. In 1987 Siemens sold off its interest in PolyGram, and Philips became the majority shareholder. In 1998, the Seagram company of Canada purchased Deutsche Grammophon and PolyGram on behalf of its Universal Music Group subsidiary. Since then, UMG was sold and became a division of Vivendi. Deutsche Grammophon has a huge back catalogue of notable recordings. The company is reissuing a portion of it in its Originals series; compact disc releases are noted for their vinyl record stylized design. It is also releasing some of American Decca Records' albums from the 1940s and 1950s, such as those that Leonard Bernstein made for Decca in 1953. The conductor most associated with the label is Herbert von Karajan. Other conductors under contract included Ferenc Fricsay, Carlos Kleiber, Karl Böhm, Karl Richter, Eugen Jochum, Rafael Kubelík, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado, and Christian Thielemann. Recent signings include Long Yu, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gustavo Dudamel, and Myung-whun Chung. (Rondo DB)

Parent label	Universal Music Group
Labels	Archiv Produktion Panorama
Wikipedia	Deutsche_Grammophon
Country	Germany
Started	1898
Official website	https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/