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aaronk
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At the first top 40 station where I worked from 1994 to 1999, we used a variety of CDs in the on air studio that included promo CD singles, full-length albums, TM Century GoldDiscs and HitDiscs, Broadcast Programming Chartbreakers, Hitmakers, and Network 40 CDs.
If I remember correctly, Hitmakers was attached to an industry trade magazine with the same name. Was the Network 40 / Album Network also a trade magazine? I'd love to know the history behind these two if anyone has any details. There's not much info online anywhere.
Are there any other similar promo CD comps that your stations utilized on air? (Starting in 1996, I became a Promo Only subscriber, and I did see them floating around various radio stations where I worked. Not once, however, did I ever see one in the on-air studio for any of the music we played.)
Edited by aaronk on 31 December 2018 at 2:19pm
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Aaron Kannowski
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aaronk
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Another CD series that we never used on air but I saw at various stations were the S.I.N. (Street Information Network) discs.
Top Hits USA gets mentioned here quite a bit, but I never ran across any at the stations where I worked.
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Aaron Kannowski
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Brian W.
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I have a couple of their discs that I've run across at
used shops.
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prisdeej
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Aaron, even though this was before the time I was in radio. WWKX, WJMN and WFHN have all
used XMiX Radioactive discs. The discs included many of the promo edits, LP versions and
special XmiX re-edits from 1995 onward. The Radioactive series is still available on a
monthly CD, but now includes 3 different formats - Rhythm and Top 40, Urban Radio and Rock &
Country. I subscribed to XMiX for sometime in the late 90's but switched to HitDiscs in
2003.
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aaronk
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That's interesting, Dave. I'm familiar with the X-MIX series, too, but I
always thought it was marketed toward club and mobile DJs like Promo
Only. I've not heard any of their remixes on the top 40 stations I worked
for or listened to over the years, the exception being weekend mix
shows.
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Aaron Kannowski
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Yah Shure
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I have no idea how many promo samplers they put out, but I found a used copy of one years ago that HITS Magazine (now Hits/Daily Double) issued: Return Of Post Modern (HT 004). There's no release year indicated on it, but judging from the four tracks on it I bought it for - The Pogues' "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" (listed as "from the current single"), The Stone Roses' "She Bangs The Drum", Voice Of The Beehive's "Don't Call Me Baby" and the year-older "Mayor Of Simpleton" from XTC - it had to have been 1989.
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aaronk
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I've not come across that Hits CD, John, but I have one called "Straight
Outta Sherman Oaks" that was issued by Hits. I'll have to look up the
catalog number, but I recall it has mostly hip-hop/rap songs.
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Aaron Kannowski
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prisdeej
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aaronk wrote:
I've not heard any of their remixes on the top 40 stations I worked
for or listened to over the years, the exception being weekend mix
shows. |
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Off the top of my head, the above mentioned stations spun these XmiX Re-Edit
versions as currents.
"Be My Lover" by La Bouche
"Diggin' On You" by TLC.
Their may have been others.
Here's my guess -- XMiX is based in Massachusetts, (north of Boston) and their was
some overlap with the XMiX producers and local jocks/MDs
at the time. Probably just a regional thing, but one never knows.
Edited by prisdeej on 31 December 2018 at 11:21pm
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crapfromthepast
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Short answer: None of the stations I worked at officially used any of the promo services. Quite a few used promo CD singles from the major labels, in the 1990-1995 time frame.
Personally, I accumulated whatever promo service CDs I could find, usually in used record stores. At the time, I appreciated getting the radio edits for the hits. In hindsight, I appreciate even more the failed singles that labels wanted to turn into hits. The non-hits from that time frame indirectly explain why the hits were indeed hits. Great stuff for us musical historian-types.
Hitmakers started in 1987, I think. TuneUp also started in 1987, with various flavors that evolved over the years to match the evolving radio formats (Next40, Rock40, Top40, etc.) The CMJ discs also started in 1987. A Little On The CD Side started in 1990. Spread The Jam was produced by Navarre here in Minneapolis, starting around 1991 or 1992. Powertrax started in 1994. B.L.A.S.T. ran from 1994 to 1998.
I'm sure there were more. They came and went pretty quickly.
Usually, the discs were free, but the record companies would pay to have their tracks included on them. The discs were excellent promotional tools, and were very convenient for reaching the ears of the PD or MD. I don't think they actually got used on air, except for specialty shows or college radio types that didn't get regular CD service from the labels.
I gobbled up in-store retail promo CDs whenever I could. Those turned up very frequently in the stores, since those stores were the exact target audience for them. I got to buy them because I knew the owners pretty well. Schwartz Brothers released about 12 numbered CDs from 1989 to 1991. In Play released 10 CDs in 1990 through 1991.
In 1989 or 1990, I joined a record pool that would mail me a batch of 45s each week. Record Source International, based in Mineral Wells, TX. It was much more convenient than visiting the local one-stop, which I only found out about late in my college career. In addition to the 45 packages, RSI would mail me a little mini-magazine with useless articles and ads geared toward DJs and jukeboxes.
I found two jukebox services through the ads in that little mini-magazine: Hot Hits and Spotlight On Hits. I signed up for both in 1991, branding myself as a jukebox operator. Hot Hits usually used the radio edits, Spotlight usually used the LP versions.
Around 1995, I got on the mailing list for AV Sebastian, a terrific mail-order vendor that catered to mobile DJ types like myself. I found that Top Hits USA had a series of recurrent discs that gave me all of the radio edits that I'd need for a full year - 6 discs a year, at 18 tracks a disc, and released just after the songs were hits. All killer, no filler! I signed up for weekly Top Hits USA service in early 1996 and dropped Hot Hits and Spotlight On Hits. I bought all the recurrent discs going back to their very first one from January 1992, the very same month that I started "Crap From The Past". I still use the Top Hits USA weekly and recurrent discs to this day.
Over the years, there have also been pre-packaged CD libraries that are geared toward particular formats. I bought the last known copy of The A-List, a tremendous 50-CD set that covers US pop hits from 1979 to 1990. The A-List was released in 1994, and was produced by a company I've never heard of called "swaitek". Sonically, the A-List set borrows most or all of its tracks from the TM Century discs. I've seen comparable sets covering the pop hits from the '70s, and mobile DJ sets that include 50 or 100 discs. These sets aren't documented very well, that's for sure. Anyone interested in a mint condition The A-List, in its original jewel boxes, send me a PM!
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Paul Haney
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Here at Record Research, we have the entire run of the
Country CD-X monthly discs. Been very helpful, especially
for the radio edits and yes, there are probably more of
those for Country hits than you would suspect.
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Bill Cahill
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You can find copies of "The Album Network" magazines on eBay. It was a weekly publication but I'd normally see
it around Album Rock stations. But they did have a Top 40 chart I believe, probably the "Network 40" and they'd
send you those CDs, but I don't even think you needed to subscribe to get them. There was a fine line between
some of the magazines and Independent Record promoters. (or no line at all)
I forget which magazine it was but they'd organize a call with groups of PDs to discuss new music as a
"service", but I believe it was really to sell what PDs were thinking about adding back to the labels. And the
organizer might subtly suggest songs.
I remember the calls as one of the PDs would have to put us on hold every now and then. One of the PD's noted,
"Hey that's the fourth time I've heard "I Love Rock and Roll" on the call, you might want to look at your day to
day song rotations", and the PD says, that's my THEME song, I start every show with it and my GM keeps giving
me a hard time about it". Then somebody on the call said, "Your GM is right!"
Edited by Bill Cahill on 01 January 2019 at 4:42am
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Hykker
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At the station I worked at (in a number of different
capacities) from 1991 thru 2004 we never subscribed to
any music services. Since we were an R&R reporter we
received pretty good label service, especially given
the market size we were in and most of the northern
New England label promo reps would stop by regularly.
We did receive quite a few monthly promo sampler CDs
including Promo Only and Hitmakers, plus ones from
Entertainment Resources Group (Nu Music Traxx, Nu
Dance Traxx), and Modern Tracks (several different
ones...dance, urban, mainstream pop and alternative
IIRC). We never asked for any of these, they just
started showing up. They did come in handy,
especially the dance ones for our Saturday night mix
show. Never heard of Xmix though.
I don't recall that we subscribed to Network 40, but
we did receive their samplers.
Occasionally, there were unique mixes on these
CDs...one that immediately comes to mind was Gina G's
"Ooh Ah Just A Little Bit" with a cold ending, which
is what we played.
This station never (at least when I worked there)
played CDs on the air...we got our first Scott Studios
system in 1994, before that everything was on carts.
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EdisonLite
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When did Promo Only expand from a genre (like Mainstream Pop) having one 20-song CD per month to digital, where there were many more than 20 songs in that genre being made available in a month?
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eric_a
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EdisonLite wrote:
When did Promo Only expand from a
genre (like Mainstream Pop) having one 20-song CD per
month to digital, where there were many more than 20
songs in that genre being made available in a month?
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It looks like they announced the POOL service
officially in their August 2011
Promo Only
Newsletter. I vaguely recall some digital
delivery options as early as the mid-'00s but limited
to the same tracks as the hard-copy CDs.
At one point, PO also had a partnership with the
company that became PlayMPE. They offered digital
delivery to radio stations, but that was essentially a
replacement for labels' promo single service. From
what I could tell, labels determined which individual
station recipients would receive each track.
As for other services, no one's mentioned Cutler
Currents CDs. I think we had these in the Hot AC
station in cluster where I worked in the late '90s.
Our country station across the hall used TM Century
Hitdiscs; our AC had already transitioned to music on
server but still had a wall of TM Golddiscs.
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EdisonLite
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Is there anyone here who got the Promo Only Mainstream circa 2011-2013 (the early years of the POOL service) and also get the POOL service? Were there a lot more mainstream songs included in POOL but not on the CDs? I recently bought most of the PO Mainstream CDs from 2001-2012 from a fellow Pat Downey subscriber (and the 1997-2000 CDs from someone else). I'm just wondering if the 2011 and 2012 Mainstream radio CDs I have aren't really representative of all the songs PO made available during those 2 years. But I guess it would take someone who both had PO CDs and the POOL service to know the answer to this :)
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aaronk
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Great info! I forgot about those ERG discs. I've seen those, too, but my stations never received them. I also thought they were more targeted toward mobile DJs rather than radio.
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Aaron Kannowski
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eriejwg
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I was considering at one point subscribing to ERG discs in
the last month or so after PrimeCuts ended production. A
DJ in Buffalo who i've networked with, Mike Setlock, is
the VP/Programming For ERG/Multi Music Group. Instead, I
went with Promo Only.
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: Hitmakers & Network 40 (Album Network)
