10/10/2022
In Australia, the World Record Club was formed in 1957, and soon established its own design studio for production of distinctive sleeves which formed part of a strategy to differentiate their offerings from the major record companies. The club was already boasting of "tens of thousands" of members by late 1962. A select range of premium items were also offered under the label of The Record Society (Aust.) Pty. Ltd. As was the case in the UK, in the mid 1970s the World Record Club was taken over by EMI, and rationalisations ensued - a new uniform numbering system (R-, C, K, S and T for various formats, and the same catalogue number), and a uniform bland-style cover art for 2-3 years - the intent may well have been to boost regular EMI LP sales by running the club down. From this time, a focus on cost reduction resulted in less effort being put into original design work, and increasingly, titles were released with the recording company design stamped with a small World Record Club logo, or just a sticker on the back of the sleeve.
The initial label design followed the UK 'globe' design, except with the South Pole in the centre. In September 1958, the 'strobe' design was introduced, in beige for mono releases and (from April 1960 when it was introduced) light green for stereo. In 1971, the blue 'herald' design was introduced (a variant of this, in brown, had been used for releases by Record Society from the late 1960s, and was later brought out in gold for the WRC 'Retrospect' Series). This design changed slightly in c1980, with the text spread over the whole label, rather than being aligned to the right of the N-S axis. It changed again to a buff-coloured design in ~1983, and finally to a dark beige design in 1984/5 (although already from the 1970s, many releases appeared with the original label design, notably Philips, Vanguard and Deutsche Grammophon).
Australian World Record Club releases on the strobe label can be dated approximately by the address/es given on the rear sleeve.
The World Record Club Ltd. was the name of a company in the United Kingdom which issued long-playing records and reel-to-reel tapes, mainly of classical music and jazz, through a membership mail-order system during the 1950s and 1960s.
In addition to titles imported from recording companies like Everest Records and Westminster Records, which it obtained on franchise, it made a series of recordings of international artists using its own engineers. Although often of great musical interest and very acceptable technical quality, these recordings do not appear in shop catalogues of the time as they were not available new through record shops.
The label was taken over by EMI in 1965 but continued to be used as a sub-label for mail order, covering a wide range of musical genres, and distributing in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
