Hungaroton was the one and only record

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 and music publisher company in Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 for about 40 years.

Hungaroton was founded in 1951

1951 in music

-Events:*January 29 – Nilla Pizzi wins the first annual Sanremo Music Festival with "Grazie dei fiori".*February – The first complete performance of Charles Ives's Second Symphony is given in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.*March – Alan...

, since then, its only competitors in the Hungarian music market were record labels like Melodiya

Melodiya

Melodiya is a Russian record label. It was the state-owned major record company/label of the Soviet Union.-History:It was established in 1964 as the "All-Union Gramophone Record Firm of the USSR Ministry of Culture Melodiya"...

, Supraphon

Supraphon

Supraphon Music Publishing is a Czech record label, it is oriented mainly towards publishing classical music, with an emphasis on Czech and Slovak composers.- History :...

 and Eterna from other socialist countries. Previously called Qualiton, its name was changed to Hungaroton in the mid 1960s. From then, the Qualiton brand remained for folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 publishing, and also new popular music brands (Pepita, Bravó

Bravo

Bravo may refer to:*Rio Grande, a river that flows through Mexico and the United States, also known as "Río Bravo"In media:*Bravo!, a specialty arts channel in Canada*Bravo , a youth magazine in Germany and Russia...

, Krém

KREM

Krem may refer to:* Krem, Ferengi in Star Trek: Enterprise* KREM-TV, a television station licensed to Spokane, Washington, United States* Krem Radio, a radio station in Belize...

) were founded.

In the early 1990s the massive import of foreign records caused a serious decrease in Hungaroton's sales. Although the original company has become bankrupt, new and smaller companies arose on the ruins of Hungaroton. The Hungaroton Gong and Hungaroton Classic companies went private in 1995, and were reunited in 1998 under the name Hungaroton Records Publisher Ltd.

Nowadays it publishes approximately 150 new records per year, half of it classical

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 and half of it popular music

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

.