Record Collectors: Hollywood Record Labels in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

The affiliation between film and music is the cornerstone of modern entertainment industry synergy. This article examines one of the key chapters in that relationship: the period in the 1950s during which the major studios entered the record business. Ostensibly designed to capitalise on the emerging film soundtrack market, the flurry of mergers, acquisitions and the establishment of new record labels coincided with the rise of rock‘n’ roll and the explosion of the market for recorded popular music. The studios quickly found that in order to keep their record labels afloat, they needed to establish a foothold in popular music. The processes by which they achieved this transformed the marketing of recorded music, sparking a period of unprecedented commercial success for the record industry in the late 1960s. Simultaneously, from these record subsidiaries Hollywood learned how to market cinema to a youth audience, heralding the arrival of ‘New Hollywood’.