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Balkanton ( bg, Балкантон) was a Reported by an EEFC tourist in June 2008
/ref> Second-hand Balkanton records are widely available at tourist-oriented market stalls in Sofia and other Bulgarian cities.
Balkanton ( bg, Балкантон) was a state-owned
State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownersh ...
record manufacturing company in Bulgaria
Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...
founded in 1952. Many of the produced records were, or still are available in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
.
Balkanton's plant in Sofia
Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...
was equipped for all aspects of record manufacturing from recording the masters and pressing the vinyl records
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog signal, analog sound Recording medium, storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove ...
to printing the cover.
Multi-channel sound recording was introduced in 1972 with equipment purchased from England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. In 1982 Balkanton received its own digital recording
In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storage de ...
equipment. By the mid-1980s annual LP production reached 9 million units.
The company mainly produced LPs and from 1980 it started to manufacture cassettes
Cassette may refer to:
Technology
* Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback
** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in the ...
. Being the only record company in Bulgaria
Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...
during four decades, Balkanton accumulated a vast library of performances of folk, classical, Bulgarian and foreign popular music, theater, poetry and more.
After a couple of attempts to reorganize the company in the 1990s, it was finally privatized
Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
in 1999. Currently, Balkanton is reissuing some of its old recordings, mainly in the digital format, closing deals with digital distributors like Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
,https://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1289991868/ref=sr_shvl_1-all?ie=UTF8&keywords=balkanton&rh=k%3Abalkanton%2Ci%3Adigital-music%2Cn%3A163856011%2Cn%3A!624868011%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A625150011 Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...
, Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn ...
, 7digital
7digital Group Plc is a British publicly listed company that offers access to music, tracking and reporting for clients. London-based, 7digital provides end-to-end music services for the fitness, social media, DSPs, and gaming industries with b ...
and more.
Balkanton is located at No.6 Haidoushka Polyana Street, Sofia
Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...
, but is not known to have a company web presence./ref> Second-hand Balkanton records are widely available at tourist-oriented market stalls in Sofia and other Bulgarian cities.
References