Up until the early 1960s, radio stations had to rely on movie soundtrack albums when they needed background music for locally-voiced commercials. At that point enterprising companies like Pepper, CRC and others began supplying generic music beds in various styles to radio and TV clients in convenient :30 and :60 second lengths. Soon specialty cuts for seasonal sales (especially Christmas) were included, and these were supplied to radio stations on 33 1/3 RPM vinyl record albums, usually on a market-exclusive basis. That meant that if your station purchased a particular series of albums, no one else within a 50-mile radius would be sold the same material.

Around 1985 suppliers such as TM, Toby Arnold and others switched from vinyl to CD and later to online distribution, which is the state of the industry as I write this. Early musical styles included middle of the road, rock, easy listening, novelty (such as 1920s music, Dixieland, comical and international) and sounds of the season. Most producers of these libraries solicited input from their stations as to which styles were the most popular. Stations could amass libraries of dozens or even hundreds of disks which also included sound effects for commercials. Eventually libraries became so large that sound effects and music libraries were split and sold
separately, each becoming more and more specialized.

What you see here are some of the album covers of the various production libraries, which I have retouched slightly in Photoshop to compensate for the fading and aging they have undergone over the years.

Ken Deutsch
Sunday, July 17, 2016

Click on an image to access a much larger version.
American Image's "The Wizard"	Mark Century's "The Profitmaker"
Capitol Media Music's "The Professional"	Capitol Media Music's "The Professional"
CRC's "The Money Maker"	CRC's "The Money Maker"
CRC's "The Money Maker"	FirstCom's "The Creative Department"
FirstCom's "The World's Best"	Otis Conner's "The Sound System"
Otis Conner's "The Sound System"	Otis Conner's "The Sound System"
Audio Sellers' "The Money Machine"	Audio Sellers' "The Money Machine"
Tanner's "Image 45"	Pepper-Tanner's "Mars" Production Library
"The Professional Production Library"	TM's "Masterplan"
TM's "The Production Source"	TM's "The Production Source"
TM's "The Production Source"	TM's "The Production Source"
TM's "The System"	TM's "The System"
Toby Arnold's "The Production Master!"	Toby Arnold's "The Production Master!"