German multinational corporation, who ran the Parlophone labels. It traces its origins to a grammophone factory funded in 1896 by the Swedish inventor Carl Olef Lindström, who sold his fonographs and grammophones under the names Lyraphon and Lynophon.
In 1904 Lindström sold his workshop to engineers Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz of Salon Kinematograph Co. GmbH, company founded in 1902 that sold Lindström grammophones under the name Parlophone). While the pair became the company's directors, Lindström was retained as chief engineer and designer. The companies were merged to form Carl Lindström G.m.b.H. ; In 1906 Zuntz died and was replaced by Otto Heinemann, his brother in law. The company went public as Carl Lindström A.-G. in 1908 in order to raise more capital. By 1906 it had already sold 150000 grammophone machines.
Lindström was exclusively a grammophone manufacturing and sales company until 1910 when the first Parlophon records hit the market in . Backed by the inmense success of his grammohpones, Lindström initiated an agressive expansion program:
Through 1910 to 1914, the company adquired the local German and European companies Favorite GmbH) in 1913.
The final tally of labels by 1914 was ERA (11) operating in Argentina. Fonotipia in Italy operated as a factory and recording agency for Odeon. Atlanta was a Dacapo license managed by an Argentinean record company that appropriated the label during the world war.
In 1911, through the Fábrica Odeon factory.
Somewhere between 1910 and 1914, Disco Artigas
In 1913 the company granted The Argentine Talking Machine Works, the first argentine record factory, and third of Latin America.
With the adquisition of Fonotipia, and the opening of a French franchise, By 1914 Lindström owned factories in Berlin, Paris, Viena, London and Milan.
In 1914, on the onset of WWI, Otto Heinemann immigrated to the USA with the intention of selling phonographs and Odeon records, and created the Otto Heineman Phonograph Supply Company, Inc. in Nov. 1915.
WWI caused the loss of major company factories, including the Berlin Odeon Werke and factories in Paris and the UK and the company was forced to cut ties with Okeh label in 1918 and Era remained as an independent label before going defunct.
After the war, the company recovers, but Lindström resigns in 1922. In 1920 or 1923 Lindström creates Parlophone Co. Ltd., circa 1926.
By the mid 20s, Odeon offices were present in most of Europe, colonial UK, colonial inc. Indochina, Japan, Central Europe, Russia and Latin America. Most of these franchises, which doubled as grammophone and record stores, possesed recording capabilities and had the dual responsibility to "import" recordings to Europe and produce recordings for the local market, whether from their own factories or by adquiring pressings from . During the 20s and 30s, around 70% of the Odeon repertoire were pressed for export.
The Homocord.
Max Strauss resigned as director in 1933 and immigrated to England under pressure of the nazi regime in 1936, losing control of the company and breaking relations with brittish-owned EMI. From 1936 to 1945, the company was run by a nazi appointed man known as Johannes Kepler, operating the Odeon label idependently from the brittish parent company. Lindstorm's infrastructure and factories were destroyed by 1945 and the company hitherto dissappeared.
It is unknown if the company was reopened by EMI or simply rebuilt its office wholly ignoring the nazi period, but it reappeared as EMI Electrola GmbH in 1972.
