Promo Compilation CDs

Hi Folks:

I know there was a thread on this before, however I was unable to search it out. But the latest Mark Ronson thread made me think of the 90s Promo CDs we were serviced with in Canada. We had compilations from each of the majors with that weeks new singles (for all formats). I had asked before if these were similarly distributed in the US.

Here's a link to an image of an MCA disc from 1992:
http://shadowy.brainiac.com/mca10.gif

Here's a better image of a Warner Music CD from 2001:
http://onesecondbush.com/Compilations/warner_music_canada.jp g
(Hmmmmm! I notice it leaves a space on the "jpg" extension - security at work I guess; so you'll need to fix that when you click the link) :)

I just wondered if this was a Canada only thing, but I would think being subsidiary companies, they would take their cues from the mother corps in the US.


Edited by Jody Thornton

I'll agree with Aaron, we'd get promo sampler CDs from time
to time but no real pattern to it. Atlantic and MCA seemed
to do this the most. It's been 15 years since I've been in
programming so I have no idea if it's still done.

We did get monthly sampler CDs from a couple of independent
sources we'd occasionally use for the odd song we didn't
get label service from (or maybe had a unique mix). We
never got charged for them. One was called "NU Music
Traxx" or something like that, I'm blanking on the others.

I do remember visiting a friend who was working at a
station waaaaay out in Maine back in the mid-90s. They had
a bunch of sampler CDs similar to what Jody described that
came from some source in Canada (this station was right on
the border). He didn't think it was a subscription
service. Songs that were CanCon compliant had a little
Canadian flag next to the track.