Balkanton () was a

state-owned State ownership, also called public ownership or government ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, property, or enterprise by the national government of a country or state, or a public body representing a community, as opposed to ...

record manufacturing company in

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

founded in 1952. Many of the produced records were, or still are available in the countries of the former

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

. Balkanton's plant in

Sofia Sofia is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. The city is built west of the Is ...

was equipped for all aspects of record manufacturing from recording the masters and pressing the vinyl records to printing the cover. Multi-channel sound recording was introduced in 1972 with equipment purchased from

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. In 1982, Balkanton received its own

digital recording In digital recording, an audio signal, audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or Color, chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is s ...

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. Being the only record company in

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 (rendered 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 w ...

in 1999. Currently, Balkanton is reissuing some of its old recordings, mainly in the digital format, closing deals with digital distributors like

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Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

7digital 7digital Group PLC is a British 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 brands such as B ...

and more. Balkanton is located at No.6 Haidushka Polyana Street,

, but is not known to have a company web presence. Second-hand Balkanton records are widely available at tourist-oriented market stalls in Sofia and other Bulgarian cities.

References

Author Unknown. A Short History of Balkanton Records
Retrieved 18 August 2008 Bulgarian record labels People's Republic of Bulgaria Record labels established in 1952 Bulgarian companies established in 1952 Mass media in Sofia Manufacturing companies based in Sofia State-owned record labels {{Bulgaria-stub