2. Epitaph Records – Who are they?
Epitaph Records are an Independent Hollywood based record company, owned by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz. It was originally created to release Bad Religions records in the 1980’s.
In the 1990’s more Punk bands has joined the label, such as The Offspring, Claw Hammer, Pennywise and Down by Law.
Epitaph have had and currently have some huge world wide known metal bands such as: Bring Me The Horizon, Sleepwave, Parkway Drive and Escape the Fate.

3. Epitaph Records – Breakthrough Success
Epitaph Records gained their success in the 1990’s.
Despite being owned by the guitarist from Bad Religion, they changed record labels to Atlantic in 1993 and the guitarist was said to have left the band due to internal disputes, but actually left to run Epitaph full time.
That year Epitaph received wide spread fame from inside and outside the punk band community when Bad Religion, The Offspring and NOFX all released hit albums.
That was big year for punk in the mainstream having Rancid appear on Saturday Night Live.

4. Epitaph Records – Current Bands
Pennywise
Pianos Become the Teeth
Plague Vendor
Propagandhi
Refused
Retox
Roll The Tanks
SayWeCanFly
Settle
The Sidekicks
Sleeping With Sirens
Sleepwave
Social Distortion
Survive This!
This Wild Life
I Killed the Prom Queen
Jamie T
Joyce Manor
The Lawrence Arms
Letlive
Matchbook Romance
The Menzingers
Millencolin (U.S. only)
Motion City Soundtrack
Now and On Earth (formerly Skip The Foreplay)
Obey The Brave
Off With Their Heads
Parkway Drive (U.S. & Europe only)
Alkaline Trio
Anthem for the Unwanted
Architects (U.S. & Europe only)
Avion Roe
Bad Religion
Beautiful Bodies
Big Talk
Converge
Dangerous!
Defeater
Desaparecidos
Every Time I Die
Falling In Reverse
The Ghost Inside

6. Universal Music Group – Who Are They?
Universal Music Group is an American Worldwide music corporation that operates as a subsidiary of Paris-Based French media conglomerate Vivendi.
It claims to be the largest music corporation in the world.
UMG (Universal Music Group) also owns Universal Music Publishing Group which is cited as the second largest music publishing company in the world.

7. Universal Music Group – Success
Its origins go back to the formation of the American branch of Decca Records in The Decca Record of England spun American Decca off in 1939.
With the 2004 acquisition of Universal Studios by General Electric and merging with GE’s NBC, Universal Music Group was cast under separate management from the eponymous film studio.

8. Universal Music Group – Current Bands
There are too many bands to list all of them, this is just a short list:
10 Years
3 Doors Down
4minute
The 1975
5 Seconds of Summer
50 Cent
Λucifer
Raven-Symoné
Razorlight
Reba McEntire
Redman
Rev Theory
Rick Ross
Rich Boy

9. Difference Between the Two
The difference between the two companies is obviously the size, one is an independent company owned by an ex guitarists from the band “Bad Religion” whereas Universal Music Group is owned by a French conglomerate “Vivendi”. The idea behind Epitaph is that its more a personal record label, than something like Universal which is less personal and more business orientated. There is a significant difference between the amount of bands each company employs, the larger Universal Music Group has far more bands than Epitaph.