Reason for the introduction of UMIS was to make available product which was not powered with media environment via the regular product departments in the german company. Mostly articles with low level prospects of success made UMIS possible for record collectors to dispose these world wide releases of the mother company's labels. Predecessor of UMIS was IMS (International Music Service) of PolyGram before the merger with MCA/Universal. IMS grew out of the PolyGram merger in 1986, when the two import services of Deutsche Grammophon and Phonogram were pooled together.