Sony Records (Japanese imprint)

The “Sony Records” imprint was created in 1991 by dropping “CBS” from the CBS/Sony walking eye label. In 1998, the walking eye was dropped in favor of the "SONY RECORDS" box design, and non-Japanese artists (mostly from Sony's Columbia) were moved to SME Records. (Note that the old Sony walking eye design was briefly picked up directly by Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. in 1997-1998 for a small number of releases. These releases do not say "Sony Records" anywhere and should therefore not be filed here.) Today Sony Records is exclusively for Japanese music and is one of the 4 frontline imprints of Sony Music Records Inc.

WARNING: Catalog numbers / release dates found at http://www.sonymusic.co.jp/Music/Arch/ during the Copy Control CD era (around 2003) do not match. SMEJ has excluded the CCCD releases (around SRCL-5xxx) from artist discographies, including only the non-CCCD versions (around SRCL-6xxx) but with the CCCD release date, not the re-release date. Please do not fill out missing catalog numbers for releases of this type from sonymusic.co.jp!