A German multinational mass media corporation, founded in 1835. Based in Gütersloh, . It founded the record label Ariola in 1958.
In 1979 Bertelsmann acquired RCA in 1983.
Two years later, Bertelsmann and RCA started a t venture for their music divisions, RCA/Ariola Records. In December 1986, Bertelsmann purchased all of the t venture's stock and became the owner of both RCA and Arista in the process. The RCA, Arista, and Ariola labels were united in early 1987 as Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG).
On August 5, 2004, BMG entered into a t venture with Sony Music Entertainment on January 1, 2009.
It is now an international media company encoming television (RTL Group), book publishing (Penguin Random House, of which it owns 53%), magazine publishing (Gruner + Jahr), and media services (Arvato) in more than 50 countries.
BMG Rights Management, the successor of the original Bertelsmann Music Group, was founded shortly after Sony bought the original BMG’s recorded-music assets and Universal Music bought the original BMG’s publishing assets.
