Festival Records Pty. Ltd. was an Australian record company with its own label, Festival Studios. The company had strong Australasian A&R and actively signed and developed local talent.
The company was established by Australian merchant banking company Mainguard, and was incorporated on 21 October 1952. Mainguard acquired Casper Engineering in Redfern, Sydney, installed two 10-inch shellac record presses, and Festival was born. One of its early A&R representatives was L. J. Hooker Investment Corporation Ltd., who then sold it to Rupert Murdoch's News Limited in 1960. Vinyl manufacture began in Gladesville, Sydney, in March 1953. The recording studios opened in Pyrmont, Sydney, in 1966, and at some time vinyl manufacture and head office operations moved there as well.
A different company, Festival Records (NZ) Ltd., operated in New Zealand as initially a t venture with a New Zealand cinema company, Kerridge Oden. In 1998 Kerridge was brought out and Festival Records Pty. Ltd. took sole ownership.
Festival Records Pty. Ltd. progressively purchased Festival Records Retail Marketing, operational from about 1982 through to the late 80s, possibly into the 90s. After becoming insolvent, the company was sold to Warner Music in 2005.
Name variations:
- Festival Records Pty. Australia
- Festival Records Pty. Ltd. Australia
Catalogue numbers:
From 1961 Festival introduced a straightforward alphanumeric cataloguing system:
Each licensed label had a letter code such as AM (A&M), A (Atlantic), D (Decca), I (Island), LY (Liberty) and so on. Festival branded releases used F. The second letter in the alphanumeric code indicated the format: K (single), X (EP, later 12"), C (Cassette), L (Long Play) and D, introduced in the 1980s, for CD. The first letter in the code was an S if it was stereo, followed by the label code and eventually the numbers. Singles had numbers under 10,000. EPs and 12" singles were between 10001 and 20000. All others were in sequences above that. Until the end of 1972 stereo LPs had a 9 before the numerical sequence, mono did not. Thus SAML-932,101 was a stereo LP from A&M. AML-32,101 was the mono version.
In 1973 the system was simplified. Mono was largely gone so the S and the 9 were removed so that SAML932,101 would become AML-32101 (the commas were also dropped). Singles were still AMK-3055 etc. In late 1973 the label code was also dropped so all LPs were L (that AML-32101 was now L32101), cassettes were C, EPs and 12"s just X, and singles K (that single would be K-3055). With one major exception (RML - Festival Retail Marketing) that was the system that survived until 1999.
