Record Album Covers

why are there numbers on the side of record album covers, and does anyone know if they mean anything???

Public Comments

1. You may be referring to catalog numbers... They're still actually on CD's. Large music companies would catalog all their music into one large group, not by genre, artist, etc. Instead, they'd catalog them in the order they were released. There were different methods for different companies. For example, some may catalog by number for the year, then letter for the band name, then a number for the total number of releases by bands whose name start with that letter.
2. Those are the catalof numbers, indeed. They are also incorporated into the barcodes. "Soundscan" is the name of the company that keeps take of the codes in order to see the number of records sold, (such as in the Billboard Mag). Many indie labels don't have the barcodes, but will still have catalog numbers. The numbers are much smaller.