Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by Massimo M.
As is widely known, the presence or absence of the barcode on the cover of an LP it is one of the elements that allows us to place the production of our LP in time.
It is therefore important to clarify this element as far as possible.
Brief history of barcodes on vinyl records
The history of barcodes is relatively recent and begins in the 40s, when engineer Norman Joseph Woodland designed the barcode symbology. However, it took three decades before we began to see what is now in common use, namely barcodes on all commercially available products. In 1974 it was the first barcode object to be scanned, namely a package of chewing gum, but it took almost another ten years before the music industry came to fully implement the use of barcodes.
Barcodes on LPs
It was in the United States that the first LPs were sold with barcodes. According to some, although it is not certain, Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces, released in 1979, was the first LP to come out with this type of encoding. In a short time an increasing number of record companies joined the barcode revolution and from then on they barcoded the releases of their albums. Some labels, such as CBS, applied the codes even backwards and added them to most of their albums that were still in print.
Based on what we have seen so far it can be argued that for albums printed before 1979 they will not have the barcode on the cover and this element helps us to date the print of the disc we have. If, for example, you own a print of Pink Floyd’s Wish you were here without the code printed on the cover you are sure to have a vinyl produced in the seventies. It is not said that it is a first press of course, but still worth checking. To learn more about how to recognize a first print you can consult the specific guide.
Barcodes on 45 rpm
Barcodes are of course also used for 45 rpm discs. CBS also introduced the barcode on the 45 rpm label (vinyl format) in early 1983 with Journey’s Separate Ways (Worlds Apart). At first it was an exception, but by the end of 1983 cbS 45 had barcodes on the label design. WEA labels added barcodes several years later, as did PolyGram labels. A&M didn’t have a barcode on the label until 1990. Some record companies like MCA and RCA/BMG didn’t have barcodes on the 45s until much of the 90s.
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