Sony Music Entertainment (SME or Sony Music) is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation.

The company, which evolved into Sony Music, was founded in 1929 as the American Record Corporation (ARC) through the merger of several smaller record companies. In the depths of the Great Depression, the Columbia Phonograph Company (founded in 1888) in the U.S. (including its Okeh Records subsidiary) was acquired by ARC in 1934.

ARC was acquired in 1938 by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (which itself had been formed by the Columbia Phonograph Company, but then sold off). The Columbia Phonograph Company had international subsidiaries and affiliates such as the Columbia Graphophone Company in the United Kingdom, but they were sold off prior to CBS acquiring American Columbia. RCA Victor Records executive Ted Wallerstein convinced CBS head William S. Paley to buy ARC and Paley made Wallerstein head of the newly acquired record company. CBS made Columbia its flagship label with Okeh its subsidiary label while deemphasizing ARC's other labels. This allowed ARC's leased labels Brunswick Records and Vocalion Records to revert to former owner Warner Bros. which sold the labels to Decca Records. Wallerstein restored Columbia's status as a leading record company and spearheaded the successful introduction of the long playing (LP) record before he retired as Columbia's chairman in 1951. James Conkling then became head of Columbia Records. Also in 1951, Columbia severed its ties with the EMI-owned record label of the same name and began a distribution deal with Philips Records. Okeh Records continued to be distributed by EMI on the Columbia label.

Gautham Vasudev Menon (born 25 February 1973) is an Indian film director and producer, who predominantly works in Tamil cinema. He has also directed a few films in Hindi and Telugu languages which are remakes of his own Tamil films. Many of his films have been critically acclaimed, most notably his semi-autobiographical Vaaranam Aayiram (2008), romantic classic Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (2010), his action-thrillers Kaakha Kaakha (2003) and Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (2006). Vaaranam Aayiram won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil.

Gautham was born to a Malayali father and Tamil mother on 25 February 1973 in Ottapalam, a town in Palakkad district of Kerala. Although, born in Kerala he grew up in Trichy. He did his schooling in Vailankanni Raj Mat. Hr., Sec School at K.K Nagar, Trichy and did his Mechanical Engineering in Mookambigai College of Engineering, Trichy, Tamil Nadu.

Gautham Menon was a student of mechanical engineering at Mookambigai College of Engineering in the batch of 1993, and his time there inspired him to make his lead characters of Minnale, Vaaranam Aayiram and Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa, students of the same course. He claims to have been inspired by films such as Dead Poet's Society and Nayagan and expressed his desire to his parents to change career path and become a filmmaker and consequently wrote his first film at his college hostel. His mother insisted he became an ad film maker by shooting various commercials and took an apprenticeship under filmmaker Rajiv Menon. He went on to work as an assistant director for Minsaara Kanavu in 1997, in which he also appeared in a cameo role.

Harris Jayaraj (Tamil: ஹாரிஸ் ஜெயராஜ்; born 8 January 1975) is an Indian film composer. He has written scores and soundtracks for Tamil, Telugu and Hindi films.

Harris Jayaraj hails from a pious Christian Nadar family from Tirunelveli and was born and brought up in Chennai. Harris studied at Krishnaswamy Matric School, K.K.Nagar. His father, S. M. Jayakumar, was a noted film guitarist and an assistant to Malayalam music director Shyam and later became a noted musician and film composer. At the age of six Harris began his formal training in carnatic music. His father wanted him to become a guitarist and made him learn classical guitar. Harris scored the highest mark in Asia on his 4th grade exam of Trinity College of Music, London. He has the privilege of being the first Indian to be the highest scorer in Asia.

He started his music career as a guitarist in 1987 at the age of twelve. After befitting as an ample guitar player, he started playing keyboard and developed interest over synthesizers. He then started programming with his Roland MC-500 and went on to work as a programmer and musician under more than twenty five music directors in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali and Oriya, working in more than 600 projects till the year 2000. He worked under noted composers including Raj-Koti, A. R. Rahman, Mani Sharma, Karthik Raja, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Vidyasagar. While working as an additional programmer under Rahman, he composed music for various television commercials including the famous Coca-Cola commercial featuring actor Vijay. In his early years, he admired music composers M. S. Viswanathan, percussionist Aruljothi Balagopal, A. R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Often referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1964, and began his solo career in 1971.

In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller", were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced numerous hip hop, post-disco, contemporary R&B, pop and rock artists.

Benny Dayal (Malayalam: ബെന്നി ദയാല്‍) (born on May 13, 1984)^{[citation needed]} is an Indian singer. He is a member of the band S5 launched by the channel SS Music. Originally from Kerala, he has worked as a playback singer with many noted composers to produce successful soundtracks.

Benny Dayal's parents hail from Kollam district, Kerala. Benny was born and bought up in Abu Dhabi and completed his schooling there and went on to complete his B.Com from Madras Christian College. After his graduation from MCC, he did a diploma in journalism from the same college. He was working as Admin Assistant with RR Donnelley. He quit his job in BPO and decided to dedicate his career to music. Most of the films he sung are for A. R. Rahman in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam. He has since worked with several music composers including Harris Jayaraj, Pravin Mani, Yuvan Shankar Raja, James Vasanthan, Joshua Sridhar and Devi Sri Prasad.