A Pop-orientated label, formed in 1975 by Tony Macaulay and Roger Greenwood. A note in 'Music Week's 'Gossip' column for the 20th of September 1975 said that Macaulay and Greenwood's 'Balloon' was about to go up, which suggests that the company was at first intended to be known by that name. A month later, however, it was being referred to as Target: 'MW' of the 18th of October revealed that it had signed a licensing deal with EMI and that its records would be aimed at the mainstream Pop market, both black and white. In the event Target was to remain with EMI for most of its life: it ran from 1975-78, and issued around forty singles in a TGT-100 catalogue series. It boasted its fair share of Chart acts: Marmalade made seven singles for it, Blue Mink four, The Nolans five, and The Fortunes and Duane Eddy one each. Unhappily, the most successful days of all these artists were either past, or, in the case of The Nolans, to come: the label's only hit was Marmalade's, 'Falling Apart At The Seams' b/w 'Fly, Fly, Fly' (TGT-105; 1976).
Tony Macaulay left Target in the summer of 1977, and was replaced by Harry Barter. Then, in November of that year, Target moved from EMI and signed a worldwide licensing deal with WEA, who took over responsibility for manufacture and distribution ('MW', 19th November). The numbering sequence continued unaffected, and there was only minor changes to the label design, the typeface changing and the EMI logo at the bottom disappearing (2) for the first release, the Nolan Sisters' 'Love Bandit' (TGT-137; 12/77). With TGT-138 a credit to Warner Communications appeared at 12 o'clock; with TGT-139 it migrated to 3 o'clock, where it stayed (3). There were no more demo labels used after the move from EMI: the small black 'A' on some of the WEA-era labels (2) merely indicates the 'A' side, and can be found on several WEA-family labels at that time. The few post-EMI singles that I have seen in the vinyl have been CBS pressings, CBS being responsible for the majority of WEA manufacturing at the time. Target issued a couple of Marmalade singles in Ireland, through EMI, but it had to change its name to 'Bullet' as there was already a 'Target' in that country. Its final mention in 'Music Week' came in the issue of the 20th of January 1979, which broke the news that in the wake of its licensing deal with WEA running out (which had happened at the end of 1978) the company had been wound up. There was another, unrelated, Target label in the UK in the early '80s; it had a brown label with gold printing, and it numbered its handful of singles in the TARGET-00s. Thanks to John Holman for corrections to the discography.
