I ended up with WPLJ's music library - special radio station CDs 

Having grown up on Long Island, I can't think of anyone more appropriate to inherit those CDs.

That CD ripping project is gonna go on a lot longer...

I left radio in 2006 and just recently returned this year, but I remember these CDs very fondly. They would come in and I would immediately drop them onto a mini-disc from the station and take the disc home to rip into my PC. I still have all of them on my in MP3. My take from all the stations I've worked at since the mid-90s is over 14,000 songs. Between the THU and TMC discs I ended up with a fantastic collection.

Just fascinating. I love learning about industry stuff like this. I'm glad those CDs are now owned by someone who will appreciate and take care of them.

Having been a “mobile DJ” for 20 years I am familiar with these CD’s. They came out frequently, perhaps one every week if I remember correctly. I belonged to a different music service but considered this one. These replaced the older “record pools”. The large majority of these tracks were never played because they didn’t catch on.

It’s great that you’re preserving those CDs, I’m into audio preservation and the history of radio. I take old media like cassettes and vital records and digitally transfer them and put them onto cd, I am also blind and it is challenging at times but a lot of fun and I really enjoy doing it as a hobby. Right now I have standalone equipment that does that stuff, I’m also interested in Thomas Edison and the invention of sound recording, i’m hoping to get a MacBook Pro soon then I can digitally remaster records and cassettes onto cd like time life music does. I grew up with a country station in Hampton roads Virginia called, W C M S. It started in 1954 and went off the air in 2004, The station just celebrated its 50th year on the air it went off the air Thanksgiving weekend of that year. I’m really interested in the history of that station and I hate when people throw away history, I don’t know what they did with all of their shows from 54 to 2004, when the station first began I wasn’t born then but I’m fascinated and what it sounded like and I would like to hear that but cannot find anything about the station on line, it’s as if the station disappeared from the face of the earth. If they can have WSM the first country music station ever and keep its history why can’t WCMS and other radio stations around the country do that.

When I hear the name HOT AC, I would IMMEDIATELY call an HVAC repair person.

I guess you've just added a piece of music history to your collection.

My cousin is a contractor and was working on a building that once housed a radio station. The owner gave him a 1TB hard drive that was left behind that seemingly contained the complete top-40 hits of the past 50 years. I suppose it’s not any better than having pirated off the internet, but it was interesting to know that’s how they do it.

Radio stations copying vinyl to tape only happened at the biggest stations in the biggest markets. Those stations even kept the tapes for oldies in a big tape library. Medium market stations would only have the current Playlist on tape, playing oldies from vinyl. Small market and college stations played the records. I went to a sale of radio station singles in the mid 70's. There were thousands of records, but not that many unique one. Instead, there were dozens and dozens of copies of the same song. That is how the station avoided poor quality - they just tossed a copy after playing it for awhile and grabbed a new copy. The record companies made sure this was not a problem. Some stations also had electronics that would remove pops.

In the 70's & early 80's before CD's, if a station had an automated format, you would get this music on reel to reel. As you mentioned, TM Productions and Century 21 & Drake-Chenault (three automated radio station format programming companies) would supply a reel to reel every week of Top 40 or AC or whatever other format the company was programming to each respective subscribing station. Some of the current songs were purposely recorded back-to-back (2 songs tied together) with a back announcer indicating those prior two played songs. We had Century 21 "Z" Format which was like an AOR Format I believe, as we had switched over from a light Top 40 Format. You also would get an updated reel of "Re-currents" on a 2-week basis (I believe 2 reels were in rotation). We also had a large group of tapes which were classified according to the format and never changed, this was our core music library. So, the automation system had Reel To Reel Deck 1 being current hits, Deck # 2 being Re-currents, and Decks #3 & # 4 being oldies/gold or other music that comprised the core music format, that was not a current or recurrent hit, but fit into the program format.

Reminds me of when I found a set of top 40's records for radio stations. Some are 100% mint. Others you can tell was played. From my understanding it was more common the farther you go back to have managers, dj's and etc. take them home. Since they had to just throw them out. I think I have one that says. Must be returned when show is over. I always keep an eye our for stuff like that. The best mix tapes ever in some cases.

An interesting thing about CD singles in the U.S. was that it was not disinterest in the format the led to low sales but partly due to the record companies not making many CD singles available, especially in the 90's onward. I remember looking at record stores in the late 80's and 90's and finding few CD singles for sales, especially in the 90's. I recall reading an article that stated the record companies simply refused to release many CD singles. The likely reason was that upon the introduction of the CD in the 80's, there was a false perception that CD's cost a lot more to make then standard LP records or compact cassette tapes, when in fact that simply wasn't true. What this typically meant was that they could get away with charging $15 for a album on CD that sold for $10 on record or tape. For a album that only had one or two songs you really liked on it along with lots of filler, you really got screwed by this. There was even an antitrust case in the 90s that music industry lost where they were sued by the justice department for forbidding record stores to sell new releases CD for significantly less then the $15-$20 avg. price for new CDs if they wanted to continue to recieve CDs of popular artists to sell. This was one key reason illegal services like music file sharing services Napster (in it's original incarnation) became popular. When Apple introduce the iTunes music and it's then $.99 singles that took some of the steam out of illegal file sharing movement. The record companies weren't all that happy the cash cow in overpriced CDs was slowly fading away. But consumers were happy they had easy access to music singles again. Of course now many people just listen to subscription services like Spotify and Apple Music rather then purchasing their music.

I remember tuning into Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 once here in New Zealand and we heard his intros and outros and gags and so on, all running together with no songs. This was back in the ‘80s so I guess to save on freight they’d ship just that content and the local guy (if he was awake) would queue up the music which was already on hand. Very entertaining. I wish I’d taped it.

A friend of mine had a talking house AM transmitter, which she used to obtain a commercial AM radio license from the FCC. She had a data package to transmit to the satellite. Converting it from analog to digital. She used the Sam broadcaster as the software. I was referred to rpm. But I never used them.

That vertical CD player is so cool, haha! You always find really interesting bits and bobs mate. Thanks for the entertaining content and best wishes from the UK, my friend. :)

I live in NYC. I miss that station so bad. Miss Todd and jade in the morning.

It sure doesn't seem like 100% coincidence. It's like finding the body of Jimmy Hoffa and Bigfoot in the same place. And in a place like the NYC region and every thrift store there and curious people, what are the odds you would find all of that?

Top Hits USA didn't just sell to Radio Stations, they used to and still may sell to DJs and anyone willing to pay the subscription fee. I used to buy music from them back in the early 2000s when I was DJing. It was really affordable and they shipped fast. The radio edits were a big plus for me back then, as many of my clients were schools who didn't appreciate the profanity.

Obligatory "69..., Nice!", That out of the way. That's an awesome haul!, I'm glad that someone like you who got them! I love this "insider" stuff. most of this "ephemera" ends up lost in Dumpsters.

My God, Kevin, you got SUPER lucky with that haul!!!!

VWestlife, LGR and Techmoan...the holy Trinity of obsolete tech on RU-vid 🙂 Long may they reign!

Fascinating. A station I did OPS for was a RP/M tape syndication ('Progressive MOR') client...in 1978. That would make the owners amazing survivors in that business.

Those were very informative bits about music broadcasting. Thanks for sharing.

I know when I worked at KSYM-FM San Antonio, my music director talked about us paying royalties to ASCAP and BMI. Since we were a college station, we had an annual pledge drive that would help cover the fees. I think the payments were monthly. Record companies still send cds to us, but more labels are sending digital copies to our music director.

Wow! How cool those are. I'd kill to find a collection from a radio station like that. You definitely scored big time.

I have a promotional single from 1990 on vinyl: Pirates Of The Mississippi’s single “Feed Jake”, on Capitol Nashville.

I have been to that same thrift store, crazy coincidence!

I worked in radio for years. We used Audiovault which I loved News/Talk AM Country FM. I now use Station Playlist to manage my personal music collection. I have some old TM Century Golddiscs because the FM was AC before Country. I love the way cds sound and still play them. I bought the new Rolling Stones & Greta Van Fleet on cd they still sound exceptional. I usually rip mp3 @ 320kbps. I ripped some Billy Joel wav cause he is one of my favs.

They shouldn't have been for sale in ANY store, at ANY price, being Promotional Copies, Not For Sale, clearly stamped on them. Glad you got them, tho

We never taped our records. The actual records were played with good equipment with proper cartridges. We never had any records that had clips or pops.

I have a promotional CD of "The Real Slim Shady by Eminem. It has four versions of the song. Radio edit, uncensored, voice only, and music only. Some radio versions of songs are better than what you get on that artist's album. A couple of songs are I'm a Believer by smash mouth and Follow Me by Uncle Kracker. I toured a CHR/top 40 radio station in the late 90s and they were transitioning to digital hard disk playback. They used CDs but they ripped them to digital files on the hard disks. At the time they used Cart tapes for things like ads but they put those on the digital system too. I wished I could have gotten a cart machine and tapes back then.

That is so cool. I’d love to hit thrift shops to find some good music in any format. There’s not many here in Brooklyn, at least near to where I live.

That's so cool!! You've got a piece of history here, almost like you own a part of the radio station itself now.

Eurythmics' I Saved The World Today was released in October 1999 in Europe. It merely took it some time until it made its way across the pond.

I think the fact that they say NOT FOR SALE and Radio Disc kinda adds creed to them being from a radio station. I imagine these did come from WPLJ. Either way this was a great find and even if they're not from WPLJ you got a great deal at 4/$1.

Score dude! I use to do a rock show on wdbx 91.1 fm and in the nineties we still used cart machines, quick, easy and reliable just a little bulky.

When one of the radio stations near me a couple decades ago was cleaning out, a bunch of their computers and audio equipment ended up at my church's garage sale. Got a few 8088's including an IBM 5150 (which I shamefully tossed, before I learned to appreciate vintage computers), some Antec 16-bit studio-grade wavetable cards with XLR breakouts (probably used for playing jingles, etc), which I made use of for a number of years, and a couple 386-era servers that originally housed FULL height (twice the height of a CD-ROM drive) 3-1/2" and 5-1/4" SCSI drives, which I kept in operation for my own use until the last of them finally died. I still have one of those server chassis. Sits almost as tall as my desk, and rolls on casters. I converted it to take an ATX motherboard, and replaced the guts of the power supply (older power supply case that doesn't correlate with the mounts of modern ATX power supplies) with the guts of a modern ATX power supply, and my main i7 rig is currently running out of this 386-era server chassis.

"Now it's all online downloads" Because _of course_ it is.

That’s awesome that you got these!

Looks like I didn't miss much my ignoring the pop charts from 2000. This is when pop started to Suuuuuuck! I would love to put the following text under the 'rpm' logo: "We're not even trying..."

That was a find of a lifetime.Well done!

I worked in radio in the 90's and we used to get these all the time from various companies in many different formats (Jones, Tm Century, CDX and countless others). I had a pile of them just sitting around and sold them all for $1000 in 2005. I kept only a handful that had some songs I wanted to keep.

White port and lemon juice!

Great score of a nice piece of recent history!

Vwestlife what is that CD player's model number? It looks cool.

What a find! I’m sure Bryan Adams can take some constellation that this song would of had some air play on Canadian Radio due to CANCON regulations. These CD samplers would of had to come from PLJ. Or maybe Q107.3 who switched to K-LOVE that same evening. Nah, my moneys on PLJ. I think the AT40 80s edition (A Show) has Power 95 mentioned as an affiliate. Anyway, I love the videos and how you go down rabbit holes that few others wouldn’t notice. Between your channel. Techmoan and another channel, can’t think of the name are my tech go 2’s. He did the video on LED traffic lights. And I enjoy Cassette Comeback too.

6:25 The Remedy is my favorite song from Jason Mraz

K-Love is a commercial free religious station syndicated all over now. Surprised FCC allowed this as they should be below 92 MHz with the rest of the non commercial stations.

I got comments on my Marantz SR-940 video. I totally forgot that I used WPLJ as the demo station for the FM tuner.

Certainly a lot of nostalgia for me - I'm from the New York area, and I remember WPLJ when they were rock format. But I also worked as a DJ in the early 80's, and I remember the Promo 45's clearly. I was out of the "biz" by the time CDs became common, and hauling around 45's will always be remembered. Cart tapes were not only to preserve the quality, but they also auto-cued, which was appreciated. Lead-in's (talk-overs) weren't that common really in the 45 era, but we did have loops on cart, and of course stingers and bumpers.

WPLJ miss Them they were awesome

Lovely video, very interesting! Love your content sir!

Interesting. Always wondered what format they distributed music in back in the 90s into the 2000s

That's such an awesome set to add to your collection! It's also possible that they were donated to one store and sent to another. I've seen that happen with things I've donated. I've seen CDs like this on eBay but they cost a lot more than that. I almost bought some CDs of Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 from the '90s but they were kind of expensive, maybe I should have, those are just gonna get more rare and expensive.

TM Century CDs....I remember them well from my Radio days.

DJs get very similar cds with the same versions. I belong to X-mix which I used to get cds now digital downloads with the same versions for radio stations. In fact I believe some radio stations get there music from that service as well.

I picked up a box of similar Radio copy CD’s about 6 months ago, It took me a long, long time, but I managed to add all of them to Discogs.

4:00 But not always, I heard some records on radio, that are worn, not by clicks and crackle, but by distortion and loss in brilliance

I never considered 'Habitat for Humanity ReStore' to be a place to find things like this. Always thought they were just used / surplus home building / renovation materials. Thanks for the video!

I'd love to see you do a video on (Radio Edit) versions of songs one day. I find that crap so fascinating especially since I'm pretty much a millennial and whilst I heard the radio, I mostly listened to more underground bands that weren't played on the radio on the UK. Bands like Low, Bright Eyes and Explosions in the Sky. So nowadays when I see a rare single CD from a 90's band that says (Radio Edit) I am instantly intrigued to find out what they changed since the idea of changing music to fit a format is hilarious. But obviously if you weren't like me and listened to 90s and 00's pop music you were assaulted by radio edits; cutting out the solos and such. Anyway, maybe one day

A very nice find Kevin.

Some great finds there!

Excellent score :-)

Very cool that you bought those cd's! Yeah I'm from N.J. as well and I remember WPLJ. Very cool radio friendly station. I remember WNEW with rock music like Led Zepolin and I think they are gone. There is still Q104.3 that plays classic rock. Yeah CBS FM withe the oldies. The Doo Wop shop on Sunday nights. Great stuff! Now with everyone streaming these stations are leaving one by one which is sad. CBS FM is still around which is cool. But no more Doo Wop shop. Anyways.. Cool videos as always!

Nice Promo Disc find, and it's cool that you have versions of songs that are unique and not found on retail releases. I was wondering what labels had radio distribution deals with Top Hits USA. The Bering Strait track is Universal, and I saw a Columbia track (Sony Music). I wonder if Warner, EMI, and minor labels were also represented.

Regarding Radio Edits - CD singles probably was the place to find them (although some albums had them). It's interesting that now with online/digital as single track purchases became more popular (and more with streaming), the singles and alternative versions are readily available. Probably more so now than for a good number of decades.

That's just awesome.

You must have been very lucky to find that CD collection in a thrift shop. I would've imagined that if that CD collection was sold on eBay, it would've sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

In the early 90s, when I DJ'd for a hot fm A/C station, we used a CD service called Century 21 (yep, like the real estate company, but maybe unrelated, I really don't know). They did the same thing, put out at least 1 CD a month, maybe 2, full of all the new stuff. We just had to load the CD Denon cart players to the correct track number on the music log (Selector), and cue it up. I went into a 25 plus year career as a TV/Video audio op soon after, so I lost track when the audio vault/automation came in (but I've seen plenty of that in TV). Thanks for sharing such a great find!

There's a documentary called The Ballad of Bering Strait about the band. It's worth a look.

That 2006 one has one of the songs I like! VANESSA HUDGENS!!

I say WPLJ Really tastes good to me!

Wow nice find!

Even though I'n not a gambler or a probability expert, That you got 1 promo disc marked as being from WPLJ, from the same store, I'd make a bet that the others ARE also from there.

That great you got those CDs.

Those CDs are comparable to TM's Hit Disc series which released a bunch of songs as promos with a similar format. The majority of those songs were never hits. DJ's, like that ones you would see at weddings and other events would have these as well, so radio wasn't the only consumer of these types of promo discs.

I have a number of American promo records in my collection which were sent out here to Australia to flog off. Some had same song both sides; Stereo/Mono, others had same song both sides; both sides stereo, and still others had same song both sides; both sides mono while others had original A/B side pairings, stereo or mono, with the plug side marked by either a star, asterisk or "Plug Side" on the label to be featured.

We have a couple of American Top 40 cds we found at a garage sale years ago. Unfortunately, they are from the Shaddoe Stevens era so we actually never listened to them all the way through. They also have the not for resale and other warnings on them. Interesting to see information about these

Wow you got a great bargain...I found a few promo cassettes once.

WPLJ NYC only good station in NYC goes off ... Nice!

Nice find!

dang thats a clean 45

7:53 Track 7, "Catch my Disease" was a GOOD song but wasn't really played much on the radio. I personally liked it. mellow and catchy.

That is a really great find! I'm surprised they didn't just toss them.

That's quite the collection. I hope you archive them.

1:55 69? Nice.

When you were describing WPLJ's last format it sounded similar to SF KFOG 104.5, it went off the air 4/20/2016. 1982-2016, it had a decent run.

1251 by The Strokes you could talk for 23sec on the standard mix. Plenty of time for time, weather, upcoming concert announcements and station ID.

You have good luck . And good video

I have a whole bunch of those I bought at a flea market.

Nice find.

Oh nice!! I had some Top Hits U.S.A video discs imported for my video DJing!!

I used to listen to WPLJ when I was growing up in the 80s. :D

awesome find, I'm a little jealous

I got quite a number of 12-inch singles when WSMU went all-digital; could have taken all seven cartons, but I didn't have the space.

7:23 Joan Osborne was doing music in 2006? Wow, I remember her 1995 hit "One of us" and watching her perform it at the Grammys. I think that song was on one of the first cassette tapes I made.

That's interesting because the way I thought a radio station works is that the record company sends a station an individual track and the station uses a specialized multi-track CD player and a computerized mixer to switch between songs and promos. Didn't know there was a company sourcing tracks for different stations and genres. Hmmm...

10:20 Not sure how that worked, but on cart decks, you had a third track that was looking for the tone. On a reel to reel, you were looking for a 20 or 25 hz tone, depending on box. Had foil to tell you end of tape, rewind, had 35 to say start of tape keep playing until cued. Still have a tone decoder for those subaudibles somewhere in the station. Thanks. I forgot how annoying Radio was before digital.

8:21 Depeche Mode’s “I Feel Loved” was mislabeled as I Feel Love, and learning that they didn’t cover that song has disappointed me so much