Colección Carlos Martín Ballester is led by Carlos Martín Ballester, a long-term 78 rpm record researcher and collector based in Spain. Since 1994, he has been collecting flamenco, Andalusian and Spanish historical recordings (78 rpm records and cylinders), that represent the private part of the collection with more than 10,000 items, has become the most extensive collection known in this field. In addition, the general recording archive items are available for public purchase on various platforms, including eBay.

The collection began to increase substantially towards 2000 due to the purchase and selling activity, currently with almost 100,000 items, is composed by other genres such as politics, theatre, advertising, etc. Over the past three decades, different kinds of outreach activities have been carried out, for instance conferences, digitalizations, research publications, exhibitions, among others. One of the most remarkable is the record/book collection that includes the leading names and recordings of flamenco cantaores.