The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hello Everyone, I would like to start this off by saying there is a TL;DR (Too long didn't read, basically a shortening) at the bottom considering the length of this message.
Anyways, today I was looking at some of my later Victor labels, & noticed something.
Let me make a sort of timeline. I believe this is the right order, but im mostly going off of comparisons between a few im certain are in order. Also, forgive me for the large amount of pictures.
1). What i believe the first style of this label type. Notice how it says: "For best results use Victor needles"
2). What I believe to be second style of this label type. The most major change is the (unfortunate, in my opinion) loss of the gold coloring & the off green-ish replacement. But, you will also see how they change the name of the needles, calling them RCA Victor needles instead of Victor needles.
3). This is where it gets interesting. I assume this style where they have the circular RCA label at the bottom comes after the previous, since it gets continued onto the definitely later labels. This is weird, because now they begin referring to the needles as simply Victor needles again.
4). Same style as the last label, only this time it's the RCA Victor style. Notice how the needles are still called Victor.
5&6). Here are what I believe to be some of the latest versions of this format, and now we see what I mean, the needles are again being referred to as RCA Victor.

So yeah, that's my pointless rant on Needle Nomenclature. What do you think the reason for this is? I checked different records of the same label and they all seemed to stand by what I said here, so that should clear up the possibility of some sort of special pressing.

TL;DR
Victor goes from referring to their needles as Victor Needles, to RCA Victor needles, then back to Victor needles, then back to RCA Victor needles again.

Very interesting. This is the kind of "mad discographer" study which was one day one of the thread styles on the once populated 78L forum, and also sometimes still is here. That a youngster as you is interested in this, returns to me the joy of discovering that this hobby is still alive.
Very brilliant!
There is some place in the internet, I don't remember if it's in the David Sarnoff papers or where, where you can find many Victor directors meetings acts, where you can find records of decisions about the company marketing policies, etc. if you do a search on the forum you'll find the links to these. But I don't remember neither which era was it from.
The kind of labels you've analysed so well, belong to the period from 1940 onwards, the last one you show is from early fifties, just before the big coloured Nipper dog appears. There was also a chronology of these labels somewhere in 78L forum.

Inigo wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2025 12:07 am Very interesting. This is the kind of "mad discographer" study which was one day one of the thread styles on the once populated 78L forum, and also sometimes still is here. That a youngster as you is interested in this, returns to me the joy of discovering that this hobby is still alive.
Very brilliant!
There is some place in the internet, I don't remember if it's in the David Sarnoff papers or where, where you can find many Victor directors meetings acts, where you can find records of decisions about the company marketing policies, etc. if you do a search on the forum you'll find the links to these. But I don't remember neither which era was it from.
The kind of labels you've analysed so well, belong to the period from 1940 onwards, the last one you show is from early fifties, just before the big coloured Nipper dog appears. There was also a chronology of these labels somewhere in 78L forum.

Thank you for your complements! Not to sound stuck up or anything, but I definitely have noticed the small amount of people my age interested in Phonographs. its even to the point that at the show in PA on Saturday, they called it a crisis, and even had machines donated so that they could be sold to younger people interested in the hobby. Sometimes it keeps me up at night thinking how the community will look in my older age..

But anyways, another thank you for your information! I'll try to find the papers you were talking about soon.

The directors meetings are a long and hard task, but there is interesting information about many aspects, sales figures, decisions to launch this or that model, etc