Festival Records (NZ) Ltd. was an independent company from the Australian company, Festival Records Pty. Ltd. until the 1990s, being substantially owned, and controlled on a day to day basis by Kerridge Odeon (KO), a NZ cinema company, whilst the Australian company of the same name was completely owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
Festival Records (NZ) Ltd. was incorporated in November 1966. Prior to that date the Australian Festival releases were distributed in NZ by G.A. Wooller & Co. Ltd
They shared much catalogue, but not all. In the 1990s, News Corp bought out KO. Until that time Festival Records (NZ) Ltd. is best regarded as an affiliated company to the Australian Company.
Catalogue numbers:
From 1961 the Festival companies introduced a fairly rigid cataloguing system:
Each licensed label had a letter, these included AM (A&M), A (Atlantic), D (Decca), I (Island), LY (Liberty) and so on. Festival branded releases used F. This sat to the left of the format letter. These were K (single), X (EP, later 12"), C (Cassette from the late 1960s) and L (Long player). D was introduced for CDs in the 1980s. To the left of the label code was an S if it was stereo. To the right of the letters were 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.
Name variations:
- Festival (NZ) Ltd.
- Festival Records (N.Z.) Ltd.
- Festival Records (New Zealand) Ltd.