RCA Victrola was a budget record label introduced by RCA Victor in the early 1960s to reissue classical recordings originally released on the RCA Victor "Red Seal" label. The name "Victrola" came from the early console phonographs first marketed by the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1906. Many of RCA Victrola's reissues included recordings from the historic RCA Victor "Living Stereo" series first released in 1958, using triple channel stereophonic tapes recorded as early as 1954. There were also some first stereo releases of recordings that had previously been available only in monophonic versions. For several years, Victrola released both stereo and mono versions of many albums, many of them in "reprocessed" (fake) stereo. In 1982, RCA began issuing a series of budget priced Victrola audio cassettes, retailing for $2.99 each. Beginning in the late 1980s, RCA issued a new CD and cassette series on the Victrola label consisting of stereo recordings of mostly standard symphonic and instrumental works drawn from former Red Seal issues. The fairly short-lived RCA "Papillon Collection" and RCA Victor Silver Seal label also offered low priced reissues of stereophonic Red Seal recordings of the standard classical repertoire. The Victrola label was eventually replaced by RCA Victor Gold Seal, which continued with digitally remastered historic performances, including the complete Toscanini recordings released by RCA Victor and the complete Rachmaninoff recordings issued by Edison Records and RCA Victor. (In 1973, when the Rachmaninoff collections were first released on Red Seal LPs, RCA reported that it had frequently utilized record collectors to provide vintage recordings because its own archives are incomplete.) With the 2004 merger of BMG (the parent company of RCA Victor recordings) and Sony (the parent company of Columbia recordings), RCA Victrola, as well as Silver Seal were abandoned as active labels. Some of these recordings can still be found on various websites. Sony, however, continues to reissue historic recordings from both the RCA Victor and Columbia catalogs. (Rondo DB)

Parent label	Sony Music
Labels
Wikipedia	RCA_Victrola
Country	United States of America
Started	1962