It’s all around you, as much as you desire, on the radio, TV, countless digital platforms and other means of delivery. It goes with you on your phone, laptop and tablet. You’re bombarded with it in shops, pubs, bars, restaurants, cafés and on call-hold. These days music is everywhere, whether you want to hear it or not, to the point where it can be hard to get away from it.
But it wasn’t always like that. Up until Radio 1 launched in 1967 and opened the doors wider and gave easier access, and later launched shows by hugely infuential DJs such as John Peel, Mike Raven and Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman, if you wanted to discover new music, even the most popular stuff, you had to make an effort. Such as spending your late evenings with a finger on the radio dial, constantly tuning in to ‘drifting’ frequencies of the pirate radio stations that were a precious lifeline to music that was new and exciting.
If your taste was a little more eclectic and went beyond what was likely to figure in the Hit Parade (now know as the charts), then you really had to make the effort. Friends would gather together at someone’s house to listen intently to each other’s latest album purchase. You’d spend hours flicking through album sleeves in your local record shop, looking for sleeves that might offer some indication that the music inside might be worth hearing, and then ask if you could listen to it in one of the shop’s listening booths. Or if you got to know the person who worked on the record counter at Woolworth’s you could spend a few Saturday afternoon hours there listening to your requests, before the manager came along and told them to play something “a bit nicer”.
When ‘samplers’ – record labels’ budget-priced try-before-you-buy compilations of tracks from a range of artists on their label – came along at the end of the 60s, to music fans thirsty for something new they were affordable treasure troves. Samplers were many people’s introduction to what became their favourite artists. In many cases they were also a significant factor in some of those artists going on to become established stars.
Some of the artists were already stars, and tracks from them might be included so that punters weren’t shooting in complete darkness. Often their track-listing varied wildly in musical style, but then that was part of the point: to deliver a wide range of new music, in the hope that an artist flicked your switch and you went on to buy more by them. Of course it’s impossible to say how much they helped careers. But it’s also possible that without samplers some artists who went on to have long, hugely successful careers might not have got further than that difficult second album.
