Homokord

[John Svensson]

Do we have any experts here? That is a German label as I've recently discovered, but I know very little about them other than what google paid out. I have a disc en route with two sides that seemed to be odes to life under the Kaiser, but the seller states the disc (#50184) is from 1922-23. The label is the most colorful version of that employed between 1910-23 <colored backdrop of maiden with trees and phonograph in the bushes>. I would have thought that songs like "Life Under the Kaiser's Crown" would be pre-war...um, the first pre-war, that is. I'm sure these are pretty common discs in Germany, no? John

[WDC]

There's a great description on the German forum, here's a translation:

Thhe label was founded in 1904 in Berlin by Hermann Eisner and others, who later would also found the Artiphon label. The original name of 1904 was HOMOPHON. However, this caused legal name rights problems with the ZONOPHON(E) Co.

Homophon lost the lawsuit and the right to continue using its name. In August 1911 they changed it to HOMOKORD. But only the label name was changed while the company name still remained as HOMOPHON.

For the English market, they changed the spelling to HOMOCHORD. Ca. 1924 they would change that to HOMOCORD.

Homophon/Homocord was a German company until 1928 and only had a "branch office" in England.

In 1925, the British Columbia took over the English Homocord (Homochord) label - but not the German label!

Due to this takeover, the German Homocord was also granted access to use patents owned by the English Columbia.

In 1932 the Lindström AG [note: known for labels such as Parlophon and Gloria] took over the German Homophon and discontinued the use of the brand name.

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Source: http://grammophon-platten.de/e107_plugi ... ?5539.last

There's also a great chart for record dating. I like the early Homphon records quite a lot as they are announced as "Homophon Record"

[John Svensson]

Thanks for the link and information...I had not found that. John

[JHolmesesq]

Here's a photo of the UK Homochord label from my collection, with a very rare recording of Nat Star's Dance Orchestra on it! These records are very hard to come by today, so I presume that the more established companies had a bigger market share - although going on what has been written in this thread it doesn't sound like the company put much effort in to selling these at all if they only had a small office here in the UK.

[WDC]

I digged out my earliest one with the Homophon label. This one is accounced and, of course, single-sided.