TM Studios Song Search

That's funny; I forgot to mention the weekly subscription service that I've been using since 1996 (only 25 years!)

Top Hits USA puts out weekly discs, and "recurrent" discs every two months. They started in 1992 and run to this day.

I've found that the six recurrent discs do a stellar job of rounding up radio's biggest 100 (approximately) hits of the year. I've used their recurrent discs consistently in my personal library since about 1999, and will continue to do so as long as they offer the service. They've had superb track selection, comparable to TM Century, and I'd argue that they've even been better at it than TM Century because of the recurrent discs. (If I had to jump into the biggest hits of 2005, for example, I can use the recurrent discs as a guide, knowing that anyone who listened to radio back then would immediately know everything on the recurrent discs.)

Their sound quality has improved over the years. Initially, they used an analog system to dink with the volume levels and give an artificial boost to the first few seconds. This mimics what we might do on the air, with the intent of being usable in an automated system. I do understand why it's there, but it's awful. I think they ditched the volume boost by the mid-'90s. They also shortened the fade on a lot of tracks.    

I think they switched to a digital mastering system around 1999, which vastly improved the sound quality.

One caveat which persists to this day: the last few seconds of the song include a high-frequency cue tone in one channel, which can be used in an automation system to trigger the next song. It's higher than human hearing, and well above the 15 kHz cutoff that FM broadcast uses. But it's annoying, and it's on every one of their tracks.

I use Top Hits USA for '90s-era songs only as a last resort.

For 2000 and everything after, I just don't care as about the music as much (I host a radio show that plays older music.) For me, I use the Top Hits USA discs exclusively for 2000 and everything after, because I know the versions will be the hit versions, and I just don't care so much about the cue tone at the end.

To answer Gordon's question: I got a copy of the full TM Century library, presumably what they stored internally on their hard drives. I'm not sure how it relates to what they sent out on the HitDisc/GoldDisc CDs. I don't know if it's complete; there are quite a few HitDisc tracks that aren't in the library that I have. All the tracks in my copy of the library have filenames that start with a unique eight-digit number. (The first one is 00000002 Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart.wav, because I know you're wondering.) The numbers seem to correspond to when the song was added to the library. The numbers around 00005000 seem to correspond to the 1990 time frame, for what it's worth. I was unimpressed with tracks having ID numbers smaller than roughly the 00005000 number (not a hard and fast cutoff; just a trend.)

eric_a wrote: Starting in the mid-00s, iirc, they started labeling certain tracks as exclusive PO Clean Edits, masking questionable lyrics. For what it's worth, I'm not aware of any non-lyrical edits but it's definitely possible.

I'm pretty sure they started doing this a long time earlier than the mid 2000's

I can remember HitDiscs labeled this way in the 80s and also noted that as a selling point on the GD3 demo disc, Circa 1990. They had this disc
set up to show how splendidly they managed to mask the words bull-sh*t from a Pink Floyd "Money" single.

Unless I misunderstood the statement above, They have been "Selling" that for a long time. Also calling their cuts "Radio" versions, rather than "45" versions.
The most notable in that respect was the Miami Sound Machine hit "Bad Boy." Where the intro from the album version sounded nothing at all like what the radio played.

AdvprosD wrote: eric_a wrote: Starting in the mid-00s, iirc, they started labeling certain tracks as exclusive PO Clean Edits, masking questionable lyrics. For what it's worth, I'm not aware of any non-lyrical edits but it's definitely possible. I'm pretty sure they started doing this a long time earlier than the mid 2000's

I thought Hykker was referring specifically to the Promo Only service -
which is what I meant to reference - but I may have misunderstood.
Agree that TM and others’ house edits definitely predate the ‘00s.

eriejwg wrote: When I was a subscriber to TM's PrimeCuts from 2005-2018, they had custom edits they called Xtra Clean for R&B/Hip Hop tracks that had radio edits but TM cleaned up even more.

The JRN Chartbreakers discs also had custom "extra
clean" versions, and not strictly rap songs...there
was one for Zac Brown Band's "Toes". The regular
radio edit ducks the word "ass" but leaves in the line
"roll a big fat one", the JRN version substitutes
"toes" for "ass", and the other line is ducked or
edited.

I don’t know the exact production dates on the Latin discs, but
eventually they became the PrimeCuts series, correct? PrimeCuts Latin
was still being serviced all the way until they closed up shop.

In the TM database, the disc numbers with the R at the end vs discs
with the N were to distinguish between the old discs with the red font on
the label and the newer ones with the black font that have the No Noise
logo. No Noise was a noise reduction system by Sonic Solutions. (Q-
Sound is something entirely different and was not used on GoldDiscs.)