Miriam Bienstock, a co-founder of Atlantic Records who ran the business side of the company in its formative years, helping to lay the groundwork for what became a colossus of the recording industry, died on March 21 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.

Her death was confirmed by her children, Caroline and Robert Bienstock.

The history of Atlantic Records, now part of the Warner Music Group, is populated by a small country’s worth of megastars from across the spectrum of jazz, pop and rock — names including Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Charles Mingus, Wilson Pickett, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Abba and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Its current roster includes leading acts like Coldplay, the hip-hop artists Flo Rida and Ty Dolla Sign and the English folk trio the Staves. But the label was born in 1947 of the shared interest of its three founders — Ms. Bienstock, her husband at the time, Herb Abramson, and their friend Ahmet Ertegun — in the music that came to be called rhythm and blues. The company was started with $2,500 from the Abramsons and a $10,000 investment from Mr. Ertegun’s dentist.

Though the company’s initial years, before white America became enamored of black music, were difficult ones, it was kept afloat and eventually spurred by a handful of hits, including “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” by Stick McGhee, “Teardrops From My Eyes” and “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” by Ruth Brown, and, after the producer Jerry Wexler joined the company, Ray Charles’s first signature tune, “I Got a Woman.” (Mr. Ertegun’s brother, Nesuhi, also joined the company early in its existence.)

Mr. Ertegun, a son of Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, was the chief talent scout. Mr. Abramson did the recording, and his wife handled just about everything else. Her duties included moving the office chairs out of the way to make room for the artists and recording equipment in the company’s first office; arranging for the designing and printing of the record jackets; receiving the finished records and carrying them upstairs; repacking the records for shipment to distributors and record stores; and, not incidentally, collecting payments, keeping the books and paying the artists.