"Attention Kmart Shoppers" music

[Frank Cox]

This is really unusual and interesting:

https://archive.org/details/attentio...rt=titleSorter

The description is: "OK, I have to admit this this is a strange collection. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, I worked for Kmart behind the service desk and the store played specific pre-recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you could call it elevator music. Anyways, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period and this video shows you my extensive, odd collection."

There are also some old records from S.S.Kresge, the fore-runner of Kmart:

https://archive.org/details/attentio...itleSorter&and[]=firstTitle:S

[Jim Cassedy]

There are several U-Tube channels with hours of "Muzak" tapes from the 1970's & 80's K-Marts
& other stores. I used one of the "Christmas Music" loops one year in one of the screening
rooms I work at. Also search U-Tube for "Seeburg 1000", which was a disk-based background
store & office music system popular back then and you'll find many hours of "entertainment"
& 'elevator music'. The old Seeburg 1000 players & disk collections often show up on ebay too.
Have fun!

[Harold Hallikainen]

And Muzak was in the news recently with a bankruptcy filing: https://www.billboard.com/articles/b...nkruptcy-muzak

[David Ferguson]

The Seeburg 1000 player is great - Brad, don't you have one in one of your screening rooms? There's also a website which has a 24 hour internet radio stream of the music, which I often put on in the background.

Another favourite of mine is the Cantata 700 by 3M which uses 26 hour loop tapes, and very kindly someone has uploaded hours and hours of it onto youtube. The quality isn't great due to tapes degrading, but it's nice to have a record that it existed.

[Frank Cox]

I have some Seeburg 1000 Christmas mp3's. They're one of the things that I play in December.

Also interesting is Sounds of the Supermarket (from, I think, 1975) and for something more rock and roll there's Sound Warehouse Hot Trax from various months in 1984.

[David Bird]

Grew up in family-run supermarkets. We had both reel to reel and cassette based Muzak. I remember thinking the cassettes were really cool because when one ended the other deck would start up. As I recall, they would not play or were a different speed than conventional cassette decks. I still love listening to it when I hear it, the story of the psychology is fascinating.

[Frank Cox]

Just did a little google searching.

Sounds of the Supermarket:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2lwcoy...arket.zip/file

Sound Warehouse Hot Trax:
https://archive.org/search.php?query...d+Warehouse%22

Now why do I suddenly have the urge to fill up a shopping cart?

[Marcel Birgelen]

If you're feeling like going up-and-down all day, you can listen here, to probably the most elevatorish music on the planet.

[Van Dalton]

There's also a website which has a 24 hour internet radio stream of the music, which I often put on in the background.

Here is the direct URL to the Seeburg 1000 MP3 stream (44100/2/128Kb) for audio players:

http://74.82.59.197:8351/

If you access that URL in a browser it will bring up a Shoutcast status page, where you can find a playlist ("History" link) that shows the records most recently played.

Another favourite of mine is the Cantata 700 by 3M which uses 26 hour loop tapes, and very kindly someone has uploaded hours and hours of it onto youtube. The quality isn't great due to tapes degrading, but it's nice to have a record that it existed.

It seems like it should be possible to produce new music programs for the Cantata, using Audacity to assemble the program (each mono music track on either channel of a stereo file) and play it into a conventional reel-to-reel deck at 1 7/8, or sped up 100% and recorded at 3 3/4, to an 1800 or 2400-foot reel. The real trick would be to get the tape wound onto the proprietary reels the Cantata uses, in its oxide-out orientation.

[Kenneth Wuepper]

Van,
There was a new form of audio tape that was lubricated on the base side. There were a lot of cases where the tape was loaded coated side out due to the inability to tell the difference. Our local music station was fond of that lubricated tape and so on occasion the sound would be very dull due to being threaded with the oxide away from the heads.

That special tape found its best use in the cartridges for the endless loop "cart" machines that played commercials and other "spots".

I really liked the Silicon rubber (blue) pinch rollers at the capstan on the rack mounted machines with 10 1//2 inch open reel to reel transports.

[Van Dalton]

Interesting. Was it actually sold as reel-to-reel tape or was it meant for use in endless loop cartridges? I'm familiar with cartridge tape (from having played a lot with 8-tracks when I was younger) and it was easy to tell the oxide (brown) layer from the graphite lubricant (black) layer. You'd think they would have colored the lubricant backcoating differently (or used a colored base film) to make it easier to tell them apart.

Oddly, I have encountered 8-track carts where the tape got wound graphite-side out, probably due to some strange player or cartridge malfunction that caused the tape to fold over on itself and become inverted for part of its length or (at least once) its entirety.

[Jim Cassedy]

For a short time back in the 1980's I worked for a company, that as part of their business, recorded
radio "spot" commercials for various advertisers & then duplicated and packaged them into the
standard 'Fidelipac/NAB' type cartridges that were still widely used at that time at radio stations.
They "rolled their own" carts, so to speak, by buying the empty cart shells & and they had a
machine that would load a custom length tape loop into the cart, and splice the ends together.
I didn't work in that department, but I recall that the blank tape came in big bulk rolls about the
size of an LP record album that they called "pancakes" and that that the box labeled it as being
specially lubricated to be used in radio tape cartridge machines. I also recall that they used one
of the thicker tape sizes (1.5mil?) for durability. The "pancake" had a plastic core in the middle
and it was put onto a special 'split reel' before mounting on the tape loading machine.
(exactly like you'd do with a roll of film that arrived on a core)

[Kenneth Wuepper]

Ah, Yes! Those were the days! Analog forever...

[Frank Cox]

I see the someone uploaded 18 more of the Kresge records to archive.org since I posted this here originally.

So if you downloaded 'em before you might want to get the next 18 too.

[Randy Stankey]

I'd say that the ultimate in elevator music would be "The Girl From Ipenema" played by the 1,001 Strings Easy Listening Orchestra.

I bet that there are people who would pay big money to get an original recording of that song. Most people don't think it exists anymore.