Label

NUMERO UNO

Despite not being a true independent label, it was born as an Italian RCA subsidiary, Numero Uno had an independent management (at least until around 1975), home producers and a strong label image to be considered one of the most influential Italian record label ever. Label history is strictly connected to the most important and (still now after his death) well-loved Italian artist of the 70's and 80's, Lucio Battisti, and their first releases were made by Battisti's long time friends and backing group Formula Tre. 
Even Italy's most famous band, Premiata Forneria Marconi, simply known as PFM, released many of their albums on Numero Uno. Even if the label operated more in the solo artists and singer-songwriter field than in a real progressive or rock direction, they did indeed release some very important prog records by Formula Tre, Acqua Fragile, PFM, Il Volo, and even Jumbo before their nice three albums on Philips.
Many Numero Uno covers were released by one of the most important photographers and cover designers of the Italian 70's rock scene, Caesar Monti, who also released for Ricordi the covers of Museo Rosenbach and Rocky's Filj albums among the others.

The name Numero Uno was relaunched in 2020 by Sony Music with a series of reissues and productions by new artists.

Catalogue numbers: Numero Uno shared the same numbering sequence with most RCA subsidiaries, each having only a different prefix, in this case ZSLN or DZSLN for the albums and ZN for the singles, where the "N" stands for Numero Uno (in the same years RCA produced Delta label records with ZSLD for albums and ZD for the singles, It records with ZSLT and ZT,...). It's difficult to say the meaning of the initial D for some albums, these could be intended as deluxe packages (such as the gimmix cover for PFM's L'isola di niente or the booklet for their Live in USA) but not all the albums with DZSLN prefix have a particular cover.
Since 1977 albums began a new numbering series with prefix ZPLN, and after 1984 a new prefix ZL was used. Singles from 1977 onwards have a ZBN prefix.

Due to the high number of releases it's very difficult to compile a complete discography of Numero Uno records. 
The unique RCA-group numbering system makes it very difficult to find missing record numbers.

The following is only a partial discography, but it will slowly increase to include all the label releases.

Born as a partial discography including only the rock-oriented releases, the listing below is slowly expanding to become a complete singles discography. 
Any help with the missing titles is appreciated!!

The Q-Disc discography is at the moment limited to a few releases only. 
Q-Discs were 12" EP's with four songs, the series was launched by RCA at the end of the 70's to promote some of their artists.

All the albums and singles have the same label design, an olive green label with the orange/ white Numero Uno logo on the upper side. Label has never been changed. 
During the mid-70's some Numero Uno albums were also printed in Germany by BMG/Ariola group with a slighly lighter green background and sometimes these records were also housed in Italian printed covers when Italian pressing plants couldn't satisfy the demand.

Promo and juke box copies had a distinctive yellow label, later orange with the JB logo, and often carried the same catalogue number as the official releases but with a different prefix (ie. ZJN, JBZN and ZBJN instead of the standard ZN used on 45's), but sometime they were given a free number in the series, when not corresponding to one of the commercial releases.
In the 80's different colours were sometimes used for the background of the single labels.

Standard LP label
Promo LP white label	Custom LP label (Lucio Battisti)
Lineatre series LP label
Standard single label
juke-box single labels
80's different colours single labels
Q-Disc - promo label

A nice photographic book (with very little text in Italian only) on Numero Uno through the pictures of Caesar Monti has been released in 1999. See the Books section for details.

A detailed discography with pictures and info on Numero Uno can be found on the www.luciobattisti.info website 

Thanks to Domenico Giordano, Valerio D'Angelo, Annunziato, Romeo, Marco Bonacchi, for contributing to this discography with information, details, scans and additions.