By Dale
When you think about collecting records there are a lot of variables or reasons as to who collects what and why they do.
I think the majority of collectors focus on genre and next artists. However, I know of collectors who focus on labels and others who concentrate on finding specialty discs.
There is one area that I have always found intriguing and that is the realm of promo records which of course includes DJ copies, Radio Station copies and Promotional copies. I have always been fascinated in them because they are generally harder to get, there are fewer numbers produced and in many cases a promo copy may be of a record that was never released regardless of who recorded it.
Promo copies were given to radio station dee jays to determine if first they could get some airplay and that airplay would generate feed back from the listening audience that was actually the record buying public. Before a record company would invest financially in huge production runs and high distribution costs it was prudent to test the water so to speak. This was their way of trying to figure out if the record was going to be met with success and be able to generate cash once released.
It is interesting, but the common misconception is that a record exec finds an artist, pairs them up with what they deem as the best possible song and then puts them into the recording studio to create what they believe to be the next big hit which automatically the buying public is waiting to immediately spend money for. Promotional Records play a huge part in finishing up journey from finding the next big star, the right song and making the journey to big time popularity and huge sales.
As I said finding Promo records is harder because of who they were distributed to. Most are marked as, “Not for Sale”, “DJ” Copy, “Promotional Copy” or “Radio Station Copy”. It is also difficult to find them in good to excellent condition.
It’s not uncommon to find a promo record with the same song on both sides of the record and that was done for a couple of reasons, first the record company did not want any mistake by the dee jays as to what was the A side or plug side. Secondly and this goes back in time, one side was pressed mono and the other stereo, so in that case depending on the equipment the radio station had at the time they could play the record and get the best sound from it. Another interesting fact about the promo records is that most of but not all of them were done with white labels regardless of the labels current label color. The reason for that was that radio stations would mark such things as the date the record arrived, the tempo of the song and the intro which was the instrumental pad up to where the singing actually started. All of these things were to fit them into the stations programming to their standards.
Most promotional records are more valuable for many of the reasons I have cited making collecting promo records very challenging and rewarding. Let me know in the comments below if you collect promo records and which ones!
Dale
dalescollectibles.com
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Now let’s say we have moved past that care issue. You will notice that everyone either notices a record that they will comment on or ask you about. It may be a song that they remember and a certain album cover triggers that thought and they bring it up and the conversation is on. Additionally, I always hear things like, I used to have a bunch of albums, but they got thrown out, or we needed the space and they had to go and maybe we started listening to CDs, so we gave them away. Whatever is said about those records is easy for you to talk about because they are something you are passionate about and without a doubt have a growing wealth of knowledge on anything to do with them.