Roland Corporation
Japanese audiovisual equipment company
Roland Corporation (ローランド株式会社, Rōrando Kabushiki Kaisha) is a Japanese multinational manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka in 1972. In 2005, its headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. It has factories in Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and the US. As of December 2022, it employed 2,783 people. In 2014, it was subject to a management buyout by its CEO, Junichi Miki, supported by Taiyo Pacific Partners.
Roland has manufactured numerous instruments that have had lasting impacts on music, such as the Juno-106 synthesizer, the TB-303 bass synthesizer, and the TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines. It was also instrumental in the development of MIDI, a standardized means of synchronizing electronic instruments manufactured by different companies. In 2016, Fact wrote that Roland had perhaps been more influential on electronic music than any other company.
History
Background
Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi had founded Ace Electronic Industries in 1960, with Ace having designed and manufactured electronic organs, drum machines, instrument amplifiers, and effects pedals. In March 1972, after one of Ace's major investors, Sakata Shokai, was acquired by Sumitomo Chemical (an industrial company with no interest in the music industry), Kakehashi resigned.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Roland Corporation” is japanese audiovisual equipment company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Roland, Corporation and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q848490. VIAF identifies the subject as 258509945. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972, 2005, 2022 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roland Corporation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.