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. |