Croatia Records is the largest record label in Croatia, based in Zagreb.

Summary
Croatia Records d.d. is a company led by Želimir Babogredac, an important sound engineer. It releases mostly (but not all) mainstream music, and it has had many popular Croatian musicians of many music genres such as Dražen Zečić, Arsen Dedić, Mišo Kovač, Josipa Lisac, Goran Bare, Teška industrija, Thompson, Maksim Mrvica, Crvena jabuka, Jelena Rozga, Novi fosili, Opća opasnost, Rade Šerbedžija, Jacques Houdek, Parni valjak, Leteći odred, Mladen Grdović, Dino Dvornik, Dino Merlin, Hari Rončević, Adastra, Radojka Šverko, Klapa Sveti Florijan, Giuliano, Dječaci, Mate Bulić, Disciplin a Kitschme, Srebrna krila, Divlje jagode, Bosutski bećari, Indexi, Sinan Alimanović, Lu Jakelić, Mia Dimšić, Mia Negovetić, Nina Donelli and others. Today, Croatia Records claims to have a 70% share of the Croatian music market and has 30 record stores. Being a successor of Jugoton, from which it gained a very large audio and video collection, Croatia Records is also active in re-releasing numerous digitally remastered former Yugoslav pop and rock titles. During the global retro trend, the company decided to re-introduce gramophone records as well.

History

The company that is today Croatia Records was founded in 1947 in Zagreb, the capital of the then-People's Republic of Croatia under the name Jugoton, a publicly owned company which was the largest record label and chain record store in the former SFR Yugoslavia. Jugoton signed many popular Yugoslav artists such as: Indexi, Bijelo Dugme, Električni Orgazam, Haustor, Idoli and Leb i Sol, and also many popular foreign stars for the Yugoslav market including: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, David Bowie, Queen, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode etc. The company also owned a chain of record shops across Yugoslavia. Many Yugoslav entries in the Eurovision Song Contest were signed with Jugoton, like the 1989 winners Riva.

Croatian independence
After the change from socialist state to parliamentary democracy in 1989, the question of Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia was raised. In 1991, shortly before the declaration of Croatian independence and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the company's name Jugoton, a portmanteau word of Jugoslavija (Yugoslavia) and tone, was changed to Croatia Records. Parallelly, the major labels in Serbia and Slovenia such as PGP RTB and ZKP RTLJ were renamed to PGP-RTS and ZKP RTVS. The company was now owned by the independent Republic of Croatia, but since socialism had ended, it was sold off to private owners. Since the year of 2000, Croatia Records is ran by professionals from the music industry who are in the partnership company called AUTOR d.o.o. (limited company). In 2001, the musician Miroslav Škoro became the leader of Croatia Records, until his resignation in 2006.

Croatia Records Music Publishing

Croatia Records Music Publishing (CRMP d.o.o.) is a company owned by Croatia Records d.d. that works in the managing of rules for the use of copyrighted music and its digital sale.

Founded in 1947 as part of Jugoton, today Croatia Records Music Publishing is its own company. Croatia Records Music Publishing has the largest catalog of Croatian songs and the largest catalog of master recordings made in the last 40 years of the most famous Croatian singers such as Arsen Dedić, Đorđe Novković, Damir Urban, Nenad Ninčević, Zlatan Stipišić - Gibonni, Zdenko Runjić.

Controversy
Often, the company was a target of public complaint on various issues.

Croatia Records has been the object of an issue raised by singer Branimir Štulić over royalty rights. Štulić claims that the royalties of songs by former rock band Azra, of which he was the lead singer in the 1980s, and which was then managed by Jugoton. Štulić has named a sum of 12 million Euros that he thinks Croatia Records owes him, but he has not tried to take legal action to claim it. Želimir Babogredac said in response that Croatia Records has all the legal rights to release titles by Štulić and Azra, as the company is a direct successor of Jugoton, whom these artists were signed for. He also said that the sum Štulić claims is too large. However, he added that Croatia Records is proud to have the very popular Štulić in the list of its artists and that he may receive a payment from the sale of audio CDs only if he joins the Croatian Composers' Society - ZAMP.

Related pages
Suzy Records
Menart Records
Music of Croatia
Croatian popular music
List of record labels

References

Other websites
Croatia Records Official site
 Croatia Records Music Publishing official website
Croatia Records at Facebook
Croatian Roots Music  - Roots music edition of Croatia Records
Croatia Records USA - Distributor for the United States and Canada
Croatia Records at Discogs

Croatian record labels
Zagreb