Founded by Jacques Bisceglia, Jean-Luc Young and Jean Georgakarakos in the late 1960s. The now legendary status of BYG is mainly based on around 50 excellent free jazz and experimental records by mostly American artists released under the Actuel-series.

As the 1960s closed, the interest of major labels in free jazz started to fade away, creating a need for a new output for many American artists and their music. As a result many leading musicians visited or moved entirely to Europe, especially to Paris, where it seemed that free jazz (and jazz in general) was more appreciated than in the USA.

Most of BYG's Actuel-records are excellent free jazz discs, but they did also release a couple of MEV's improvised electronic albums, some progressive rock albums and a joint album featuring the music of Pierre Mariétan and Terry Riley.

There are other BYG records around, apart from the Actuel-series, but they are mostly reissues of fairly straightforward jazz albums.