This full colour Columbia sleeve is probably from the mid 1920s, when the Viva-tonal Recording Electric Process was introduced.

Square dancing was a popular social activity in Australia during the 1950s, and Eddie Carol one of the leading dance callers.

Home Recreations LD, 388 George St, sold the Australian designed and made Salonola, 'The Instrument with the Human Voice'.

The Pianola Company, 252 Collins St, in Melbourne also sold the Aeolian Vocalion range of record players and had 'Complete Stocks of the Worlds Best Artists in Vocal and Instrumental Music’.

Music store Allan's is still in existence,  as Allans Billy Hide. The Melbourne CBD store is now located at 152 Bourke St.

The name SONORA is derived from the latin verb SONARE, to make a noise. Its logo was a bell, with the slogan 'clear as a bell'. Two players are advertised on this sleeve,  the 'Barcarolle' and the 'Etude'.

Jim Davidson and his New Palais Orchestra were one of the leading dance bands in Australia in the 1930s, recording for Regal Zonophone. This record sleeve serves promotional purposes, both for Davidson, and for two other records released that same year (containing music from popular films of the time).

During the 1940s and ’50s there were numerous small recording studios in the big cities where anyone could record a one-off acetate disc or perhaps have a small run pressed. This intriguing sleeve is from a record made by Harry Dallimore of Gulgong, and mentions in a typed note on the back that was one of the last 78 rpms pressed in Sydney. This would date it to the late ’50s or even the early 1960s. Unfortunately the NFSA does not have the disc, only the sleeve.

During the 1920s and ’30s there was a shop selling records and/or record players on just about every block of George St in Sydney, NSW. The NFSA collection has record sleeves from at least nine different shops between Circular Quay and the Town Hall.

Goodwin’s Music Warehouse, 59 Gouger St in Adelaide, offered a range not only of various types of 'Phonos’ but also pianos, player pianos, discs and player rolls. For reasons not immediately obvious they also applied for a patent for their record sleeve, although it seems identical to all the others available.

Miss Dutton’s, Drummoyne, a few kilometres to the north-west of central Sydney, sold tennis equipment as well as music.

It wasn’t only the main city centres which offered records and record players. Bennett’s Melody Shop, Bondi Junction, in Sydney’s east sold records and a range of phonographs.

The Aeolian Coy in Sydney manufactured the Vocalion range of 'disc talking machines’, as well as selling records from the major labels of the time such as Vocalion, Columbia, HMV, Zonophone and Regal.

In 1925 Wocord released the first disc recordings made in Australia. They not only recorded the discs but also advertised them on a short-lived Melbourne radio station, 3PB, and sold the special record players needed to play them.

Wocord didn’t last long, as their 'indestructible’ records were made with a cardboard base covered in a thin layer of flexible plastic which disintegrated when it got wet and the records would not play on a normal record player.