, often abbreviated to , is a famous trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record company. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone.
The Origin of the Trademark Image
The famous trademark image came from a painting originally titled , and then retitled . It was painted by British artist Francis Barraud in 1898, based on memories of his dog Nipper. The original version of the painting showed not the disc gramophone familiar in the trademark today, but rather a cylinder phonograph.
Barraud failed to sell it to any cylinder phonograph company, but in 1899 was able to sell it to the Gramophone Compan under the condition that he modify it to show a disc machine. The Gramophone Company first used the image on publicity material in 1900. At the request of the gramophone's inventor Emile Berliner, the American rights to the picture became owned by the Victor Talking Machine Company.
Victor used the image more aggressively than its U.K. partner, and from 1902 on all Victor records had a simplified drawing of the dog and gramophone from Barraud's painting on their label. Magazine advertisements urged record buyers to "Look for the dog".
The Gramophone Company becomes "His Master's Voice"
In Commonwealth countries, the Gramophone Company did not use this design on its record labels until 1909. The following year the Gramophone Company replaced the Recording Angel trademark in the upper half of the record labels by the famous picture painted by Frances Barraud, commonly referred to as Nipper or The Dog. The company was never formally called "HMV" or His Master's Voice, but was identified by that term because of its use of the trademark. Records issued by the Company before February 1908 were generally referred to as "G&Ts", while those after that date are usually called "HMV" records.
This image continued to be used as a trademark by Victor in the USA, Canada and Latin America, and then by Victor's successor RCA. In Commonwealth countries (except Canada) it was used by subsidiaries of the Gramophone Company, which ultimately became part of EMI. The trademark's ownership is divided between different companies in different countries, reducing its value in the globalised music market. The name is used by a chain of music shops, mainly in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
In 1921 the Gramophone Company opened the first HMV shop in London. In 1929 RCA bought Victor, and with it a major shareholding in the Gramophone Company which Victor had owned since 1920. In 1931 RCA was instrumental in the creation of EMI, which continued to own the "His Master's Voice" name and image in the UK. In 1935 RCA sold its stake in EMI but continued to own Victor and the American rights to . World War II fragmented the ownership of the name still further, as RCA Victor's Japanese subsidiary The Victor Company of Japan (JVC) became independent, and today they still use the "Victor" brand and Nipper in Japan only. (HMV shops in Canada and Japan are still not allowed to use Nipper for these reasons; nor did the shops HMV operated in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s.) Nipper continued to appear on RCA Victor records in America while EMI owned the His Master's Voice label in the UK until the 1980s, and the HMV shops until 1998.
The globalised market for CDs pushed EMI into abandoning the HMV label in favour of "EMI Classics", a name they could use worldwide; however, it was revived in the 1990s for Morrissey recordings. Meanwhile, RCA went into a financial decline; the dog and gramophone image, along with the RCA name, is now licensed by RCA Records and RCA Victor owner Sony BMG Music Entertainment from Thomson SA, owner of the trademarks in the Americas, which operates RCA's consumer electronics business (still promoted by Nipper the dog) that it bought from General Electric in 1986, after GE bought RCA. (Thomson bought the RCA trademarks, including Nipper in the Americas, from GE in 2003.)
The name HMV is still used by the chain of record shops founded by Gramophone Company in the UK, which continued to expand internationally through the 1990s. In 1998 HMV Media was created as a separate company and bought the Waterstone's chain of bookshops, leaving EMI with a 43% stake. In 2002 it floated on the London Stock Exchange as HMV Group plc, leaving EMI with only a token holding. HMV shops in the UK and Australia also use Nipper.
The image of "His Master's Voice" now exists in the United States as a trademark only on radios and radios combined with phonographs, a trademark owned by RCA Trademark Management SA in France. With that exception, the "His Master's Voice" dog and gramophone image is public domain in the USA, its United States trademark registrations having expired in 1989 (Sound recordings and phonograph cabinets), 1992 (television sets, televion-radio combination sets), and 1994 (sound recording and reproducing machines, needles, and records).
Controversy
HMV has been criticized for boycotting various artists due to business-related reasons, in turn handicapping the exposure of such said artists. Currently, Bob Dylan's albums are not being carried by HMV, due to him having signed a deal with Starbucks coffee to have two of his CDs sold in their shops.
