Editing Cast recording (section)

==Terms==
'''Original cast''': the premiere or original cast of the production (original Broadway cast; original London cast; original Toronto cast; original Australian cast, etc.). This can (rather confusingly) include revivals as well as first productions. Less misleading in this last case is "Revival Cast".

'''Studio cast''': assembled by a record company. In the early days, the studio cast singers were often lesser known performers with good singing voices, usually joined by one fairly well known star. [[Mary Martin]] made a number of studio cast recordings for Columbia in the early 1950s including ''[[Babes in Arms]]'', ''[[Girl Crazy]]'', and ''[[Anything Goes]]''. More recent studio albums have tended to be note-complete recreations of the original orchestrations, often with well-known singers (not infrequently from the world of opera rather than musical theatre) taking the leads: such as EMI's recordings of  ''[[Brigadoon (musical)|Brigadoon]]'' and ''[[Show Boat]]''.

The performers who appear in Broadway shows sing the score live each night. When a Broadway cast album is made, it is (as a rule) recorded in a studio and produced with the home listener in mind (although live recordings of the original cast are not unknown). While it is strictly correct (if misleading) to call a movie soundtrack a "cast recording" since it does record the performances of the film cast, it is even more misleading, not to mention incorrect, to call any recording a "soundtrack" that has no connection with a motion picture or recorded television production.

'''[[Soundtrack album]]s''' fill a very similar function for films with music. Soundtrack and cast albums sometimes have much in common, especially when the film concerned is a motion picture version of an original stage musical, and it often makes sense for record shops to put the two genres in the same section. But the cast album of a stage musical is very specifically not a soundtrack.