By 1896 the Pathé brothers had offices and recording studios not only in Paris, but also in London, Milan, and St. Petersburg.

In addition to standard size cylinder records (2+1⁄4-inch-diameter (57 mm)), Pathé produced several larger styles.

In 1916, Pathé changed over to the customary rim-start format, a more nearly normal 80 rpm speed, and paper labels instead of the stamped-in, paint-filled text previously used.

Due to their fragility, unwieldiness, and much higher price, the largest sizes were a commercial failure and were not produced for long.

[4] Pathé was the first company to make master recordings in a different medium than the final commercial product.

This dubbing process enabled copies of the same master recording to be made available on multiple formats.

The process sometimes resulted in uneven results on the final commercial record, causing a pronounced rumble or other audio artifacts (This rumble was generally undetectable on acoustic wind-up phonographs of the period, but is noticeable on electric and more modern equipment.

As for the stampers, each stamper of both cylinders and disc (independently from the size) has the same serial number (different between both formats), and is more or less sequential, so that media from 1916 and before (before paper labels were introduced) can be more or less easily traced back after obtaining a great enough information about each "snapshot" of the Master Cylinder.

[6] After 1927, the company started taking a more modern approach and commenced using the simple system of master and stamper discs that the rest of corporations were using.

The needle-cut records were laterally-cut discs designed to be compatible with standard phonographs, and they were labelled Pathé Actuelle.

Attempts to market the Pathé vertical-cut discs abroad were abandoned in 1925, though they continued to sell in France until 1932.

In 1931 the label continued as VCM group ('Voce de Maestro [His Master's Voice] - Columbia - Marconiphone').