The Hungarian State Music Publisher, the legal predecessor of Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest, was founded by government decree seventy years ago, on July 1, 1950.

In 1948–1949, the communist rise to power in Hungary liquidated the private sector and ceased the independent activities of many small music publishers, flourishing since the 19th century: their property (including all contracts and obligations) was incorporated into a single state firm, the State Music Publisher. The new company took over a significant legacy from its predecessors: the early works of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, the compositions of Ernst von Dohnányi and Leó Weiner published in Hungary, and the fruits of the chorus movement starting in the 1930s, including the works of Kodály and Lajos Bárdos.

Thus, the state firm could start its activities in the 1950s with a large repertoire, and during its first 15 years, its only task was to supply the domestic concert life and music pedagogy. It published materials for the rapidly-developing Hungarian national music education system, books on music for musicians and those interested in music, and a vast number of contemporary Hungarian compositions.

For Hungarian composers, it was the State Music Publisher that offered the sole opportunity to publish, so new works of the most significant composers of the period, such as Ferenc Farkas, Rudolf Maros, György Ránki, and Endre Szervánszky were released one after the other. The publishing house operated with government support and was not driven by the search for business success.

At the end of the 1960s, new methods of economic management were introduced in Hungary: in the case of the State Music Publisher, it became clear that the domestic market alone would not be able to maintain the company, thus exports acquired more importance financially. To manage its international contacts more easily, it was at that point that the state publisher changed its name to Editio Musica Budapest (EMB).

This period coincided with the emerging of a new generation of Hungarian composers, which was interested in contemporary European trends while kept an independent Hungarian tone in mind. Their works were also noticed abroad in the 1970s, and Sándor Balassa, Attila Bozay, Frigyes Hidas, Miklós Kocsár, István Láng, Emil Petrovics, Sándor Szokolay, András Szőllősy and György Kurtág regularly received commissions, collaborated with musicians of the international stage, while their publisher could expand its international relations, and also paid increasing attention to domestic and foreign promotional activities. Editio Musica Budapest gained a leading position within the so-called socialist market, and also became important for the western market, which resulted in significant foreign contracts. The publisher's independence is shown by the fact that it was able to undertake the publication of works by composers, such as Zoltán Jeney, László Sáry, László Vidovszky and Péter Eötvös, who represented an extremely avant-garde style and were regarded by official cultural policy as suspicious.

Thus, immense social, political, and economic changes of 1989–1990 did not find the company unprepared, and it was able to integrate itself into the free market with relative ease. The previously mentioned international contacts allowed for the continuity and eventual increase in export. When privatization of state firms at the beginning of the 1990s was initiated in Hungary, there was great interest in Editio Musica Budapest from foreign investors. The privatization of EMB took place in 1994 when the Italian publisher Casa Ricordi bought a majority share in the Hungarian firm. Later both publishers were passed into the hands of the Bertelsmann Group, and in 2006 to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), the world's largest and most diverse music publisher. Then the name of the Hungarian publishing house changed to Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest (UMP EMB), and since then, in addition to distributing its own catalogue, it has represented the entire pop music catalogue of the Universal Music Group in Hungary, as well as the repertoire of the classical publishing group (Durand-Salabert-Eschig, Casa Ricordi, Ricordi Berlin, Ricordi London) as a sub-publisher. In 2017, UMPG transferred the publishing rights of pedagogical publications to the newly established namesake Editio Musica Budapest Music Publisher Ltd. (EMBZ) that also produces and distributes scores of UMP EMB. The management, expansion and promotion of copyrighted 20th century and contemporary works, as well as the Hire Library and Copyright Departments, have remained under the purview of Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest (UMP EMB).

 With a seventy-year history, as the heir to the nearly two-hundred-year-old Hungarian music publishing, and as the manager of the richest catalogue of Hungarian composition in the last hundred years, UMP EMB continues to strive to be an attractive and recognized partner for all generations of Hungarian composers at home and abroad.

A playlist from products of seven decades: EMB70