History

Sture Borgedahl (born 1917) had been working in the music business since 1938 when he started selling sheet music at Nordiska Musikförlaget in Stockholm. After 24 years at Nordiska he started working for Sonora Musikförlag in 1962.

The production company and music publisher Air London, where Tony King was working, was launched by the English producers George Martin (The Beatles, Cilla Black), John Burgess (Manfred Mann), Peter Sullivan (Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck) and Ron Richards (The Hollies).

Sture had known George Martin for quite a few years since Sonora represented The Beatles in Scandinavia, and he thought the concept of Air was very interesting so at the end of that January night Sture asked  - "Why not Air Scandinavia?"

Through Tony King a meeting was set up in London a couple of weeks later and another couple of months later the business was alive and kicking  - on the 27^th of October 1969 the name Air Music Scandinavia AB was registered. Sture Borgedahl then owned 50% and Air London the remaining 50%.

The business gets started...

Air Music got a flying start. Many of the catalogues that Sture had worked with at Sonora, such as Dick James Music with music by Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and Elton John, followed him to the new company.

Sture also went to the US and the UK to get new sub-publishing deals with catalogues including music by songwriters such as Bob Dylan, John Denver and many more.

In the beginning it was only Sture and his secretary working for Air. But in May 1971, a young songwriter named Lars Wiggman entered the office trying to sell some songs to Sture. That wasn't something Sture was interested in at the time but as Lars offered to fill in for the secretary who was going away for three months, they had a deal. Lars must have done an impressive job ? he stayed with the company for 32 years!

Through the 1970?s the sub-published catalogue continued to grow and Air represented publishers and/or songwriters such as Tree Music, Combine Music (Kris Kristofferson, Tony Joe White, Dennis Linde, Dolly Parton), Burt Bacharach, Cherry Lane and many more.

The 1st of July 1974 Air also started to represent Chrysalis Music.

The local catalogue...

Apart from the sub-publishing business Air also immediately started to build its own local catalogue. The 21st of November 1969 the very first local Air song was registered at STIM - Rosen ("The Rose"). Rosen came to be an instant hit with the Swedish artist Arne Qvick.

Through the 1970's, the local catalogue continued to grow with songs written by writers such as Lasse Berghagen, Cornelis Vreeswijk, Barbro Hörberg, Tomas Adolphson, Anders Falk and many more.

Sheet music...

Since Sture had been working with printed sheet music since his very first years at Nordiska Musikförlaget in the late 30's, sheet music was very important to him also when he started Air. The company therefore made their own sheet music from the starting point. The first release was of course the very first Air song Rosen by Erik "Beman" Bergman.

The biggest success over the years was the POP series, an annual folio with the most popular songs of a certain year.

In 2004 the sheet music part of Air's business was sold to Gehrmans Musikförlag.

Record releases since the beginning of the 1980's...

Already during the 1970's Air made a few masters that were licensed to different record companies. There was success with albums such as Barbro Hörberg's Gråt i gräset and Gamla älskade barn (both licensed to Frituna) and Alf Robertson's Mitt Land (licensed to Mariann).

After a couple of years Air realized that they could release the records themselves instead of licensing them to other record companies. Alf Robertson's single Louise and his album Symfoni (1981) were the first releases on the Air Music label (distributed by Mariann Distribution).

Air's record business was most successful, during the mid 80's when a few albums by Adolphson Falk and Monica Törnell sold Gold. During the 80's, and first half of the 90's, records were released by artists such as Perssons Pack, Leif Strand, Limbo, The Girls, Lill-Babs, Putte Wickman & Ivan Renliden and Rollin' Phones.

During the second half of the 90's Air released the much appreciated trilogy Sånger i livets skeden ("Songs in phasesof life") including artists such as Ainbusk Singers, Anders Ekborg, Meiram (Helen Sjöholm & Anna Stadling), Sara Isaksson, Gertrud Stenung, Jeanette Lindström, Lina Nyberg, Jeanette Köhn, Lena Willemark and Fredrik Swahn.

The ownership through the years...