When I was a teenager, I heard that someday records would be worth a fortune, so I went to places that sold new and used records and stocked up. I have a bunch of records that have the same, or similar warning as the OP title.
So, was this warning only against retail sale, or any and all sales, and the record stores shouldn’t have been selling them, even as used?
Your last sentence is correct. The reason is that the distributor intends for that product for a specific purpose like contests or giveaways as a form of advertisement and they don’t want stores to just take them and make the regular profit from them. Distributors don’t have to sell anything to anyone and it is possible for the distributor to just cut the store off from their products for this type of thing or just write their own fine for it and make the store pay it to keep receiving products.
This happens in lots of industries outside of music and there is a reason for it. The same is true of warnings not to split bulk cases and sell the products individually.
As I’m digitizing my records, I have two that say that the record companies own the records. Apparently, CBS owns my “Less than Zero” soundtrack, and MCA owns my Glen Frey album “The Allnighter”.
So I guess that means that if CBS and MCA wanted to, they could take back their 20+ year old records.
They used to put that notice on copies that were sent to radio stations to play. They probably still do that.
Yes they do. I work for a newspaper and one of the perks of the job is that every few weeks the arts department dump a load of “promo” CDs and DVDs they have been sent onto a desk and there’s a big free-for-all.
Often the CDs are in different cases than the regularly released version, with “PROMO ONLY - NOT FOR SALE” or similar printed on. Sometimes they are in the regular packaging but with a sticker on saying the same thing, and increasingly nowadays they are CD-Rs in a little plastic slipcase with a printed insert. These ones are usually individually numbered and labelled with the name of the journalist they were sent to, along with dire warnings that the music is “digitally watermarked” and can be traced back to said journalist if it appears on the internet.
The last of these is my least favourite, as I can’t sell 'em on eBay if they’re no good. 
(Not that there is really any market for CDs on eBau these days - file sharing has done for that.)
Yeah, I think I have some that say that they’re for radio stations, which seems strange to me because they’re from the 80’s, and even back then they had CDs, so you think crackle that they’d be playing them crackle, or at least tapes crackle.
25 years ago our local used record store had lots of promo albums for sale. I always figured a good many came from local radio stations.
I’m not a lawyer, but if you legitimately own the record, (i.e. they’re not stolen), then you would not be bound by the NOT FOR SALE sticker and could legally sell them. The record store that sold them to you was breaching a contract with the music publisher by selling the records and the stickers are used to try and keep the stores honest.
If it was a used record store that sold them, then the original contract covering promotional copies does not apply to them either and they are free to sell them.
Think economics…and cheap managers.
The radio station I worked at during that time still had turntables. They were ment for radio stations (QRK brand) and were not cheap.
Programs like “American Top 40” and “American Country Countdown” were still being shipped in disc formats. Around 1985 or so the programs started to ship in CD format and stations had to bite to bullet and buy new equipment.
I worked in college radio and the equipment we had was better than most of the local commercial stations.
I know of radio stations that were using combinations of vinyl records, cassette tapes, tape cartridges, and compact discs well into the 1990s.
My vote would echo those of the promo copy crowd. They wouldn’t necessarily have been shipped to radio stations or other media outlets though.
Here in the Nashville area, it’s not uncommon for a thrift store or yard sale to have multiple copies of CDs, still in their original packaging, labeled “For Promotional Purposes Only”. Sometimes an artist realizes that the project has tanked and donates or yard sales his/her remaining copies. I will add that these are seldom current and/or recognizable artists.
Read the last paragraph of the header for the Wikipedia article on promotional recording. The doctrine of “first sale” applies even if it technically wasn’t a sale.
If it legitimately wound up in your possession, you can sell it.
(When I was a college prof, sample copies of textbooks were given away sometimes with a “not for re-sale” label. I never sold any but that didn’t stop many others from selling them to people who came around regularly to buy them off profs.)
Thank you everybody for your responses.
Sometimes you’ll see this written on copies of video games that come packed in with the systems. Gamestop doesn’t seem to care, though, as I’ve seen such copies in the used section there.
Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would care, or why they bother to write that on the games anyway. It’s not really the same thing as sending a promo record to a radio station, it’s included as part of the item someone has bought and paid for.
Yeah the whole point is to keep someone from trying to pass something off new when it’s not for that purpose. You notice sometimes you get the same thing with packages of small items like Q-Tips or Aspirins.
For instance, Walgreens will sell a “3 pack” of baby asprin for $2.99 (that’s 90 pills). The identical bottle is sold for 99¢ per bottle (30 pills). But if you look at the bottles of the “3 pack of baby aspirin,” it’s identical EXCEPT it says, “these are intended for sale as part of a package. Not to be sold individually.”
That warning is for consumers “Don’t be fooled if the store is selling this for 99¢ they’re ripping the company off.” There’s no difference in the bottles, quality of the baby aspirin or anything. It’s just the differences in how the lots are sold.
So that warning on the label is for the consumer not to be fooled and pay full retail for a second hand thing. If you’re selling it on eBay or a used record shop, it’s obvious that this is not a new product. (Or at least on eBay it should be stated as such)