His Master's Voice
| His Master's Voice | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Parent company |
EMI (British Commonwealth except Canada) RCA (western hemisphere) JVC (Japan) |
| Founded | 1908 |
| Status | Inactive |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
His Master's Voice, abbreviated HMV, is a famous trademark in the music and recording industry and was for many years the unofficial name of a large British record label. The name was coined in the 1890s as the title of a painting of a dog named Nipper, listening to a wind-up gramophone. In the original painting, the dog was listening to a cylinder phonograph.
The trademark image comes from a painting by English artist Francis Barraud and titled His Master's Voice. It was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly formed Gramophone Company and adopted by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the United States. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a terrier named Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother, Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, with a cylinder phonograph and recordings of Mark's voice. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the horn, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas.
In early 1899, Francis Barraud applied for copyright of the original painting using the descriptive working title Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph. He was unable to sell the work to any cylinder phonograph company, but the Gramophone Company purchased it later that year, under the condition that Barraud modify it to show one of their disc machines. The image was first used on the company's catalogue dated December 1899, and additional copies were subsequently commissioned from the artist for various corporate purposes. In July 1900, the gramophone's inventor, Emile Berliner, took out an American copyright to the picture, and it was adopted as a trademark by the Consolidated Talking Machine Company, which was reorganized as the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901. Victor used the image more aggressively than its UK partner, and from 1902 most Victor records had a simplified drawing of Barraud's dog-and-gramophone image on their labels. Magazine advertisements urged record buyers to "look for the dog."
In British Commonwealth countries, the Gramophone Company did not use the dog 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 with the Nipper logo.
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