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to A 5154 - 1960 |
to A 7171 - 1968 Jump from 5900 to 7018 in 1967 |
to A 7223 - 1968 |
| In
1956 Harry Warner and Albert Warner sold their interest in the studio and
the board was joined by new members who favoured a renewed expansion into
the music business: Charles Allen, Serge Semenenko and David Baird. With
the record business booming (sales had topped US$500 million by 1958) Semenenko
argued that it was foolish for Warners to make deals with other companies
to release its soundtracks when, for less than the cost of one motion picture,
they could establish their own label, creating a new income stream that
could continue promoting its contract actors.
Warner Bros Records opened for business on 19 March 1958. Its original office was located above the film studio's machine shop at 3701 Warner Boulevard in Burbank, California. For most of its existence it was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a convoluted series of corporate mergers and acquisitions from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. Over this period, Warner Bros. Records grew from a struggling minor player in the industry to become one of the top recording labels in the world. In Germany, the label was hendeled by Teldec until 1972 when WEA took over. |
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