I had assumed Time Life was streaming music instead of selling large box sets of CD’s.
I avoided the trap of their subscription service. Remember the 99 cent cd’s that automatically enrolled buyers?
I guess licensing restrictions prevented a streaming service. I was willing to pay a reasonable monthly amount to access their rock sets.
I had assumed they went belly up decades ago.
I still remember the 60-minute infomercials for these compilations that I would see on TV sometimes. The one I remember most came out in the early '90s and was about rock & roll from the '50s through the present. I can’t remember what it was called, so I don’t know how to search for the ad on Youtube.
Was the one with John Sebastian as the front man?
I never really thought about Time Life Music as a business entity and wasn’t aware of their status as such.
But I’ve always felt that their compilations were really good. They often feature bands and songs you don’t generally see in compilations.
I can’t remember. I only saw the infomercial a couple times in 1993 or so.
I had a set from them when I was a teen (back when they were still selling tapes) called “Classical Thunder”, heavy-hitting classical songs. It turned me on to a bunch of composers I wasn’t previously familiar with.
Like others, I had assumed this entity was dead and/or no longer producing these compilations.
But right before the pandemic, a friend of mine requested my help. He had just purchased a 5-CD set of R&B/soul music from Time/Life. Problem was, his new pickup didn’t have a CD player. I ripped the CDs onto my computer and copied the songs to a USB stick, which he was able to play in his new vehicle.
He was extremely grateful. Unfortunately, less than a year later, he contracted Covid and didn’t recover. I was glad that I was able to do that for him so he could enjoy the music for a brief time before he passed.
Sorry to bring down the conversation. Carry on.
When you think about it, in this modern world of streaming services, everybody that’s signed up for one of the platforms now has every Time-Life compilation ever, minus maybe a track or two stuck in licensing limbo.
I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find that someone has made public playlists replicating the sets. I’ll go look just for fun. Will report back assuming I don’t get distracted by, you know, actual work.
I hope Debbie the operator lands on her feet.
Back in '92, my college roommate – with some chemically-assisted decision making – saw the infomercial at 2am and called to order. The next morning, he was very much “wtf did I do?” and was on the hook for the rather expensive compilation but the silver lining is that they really were some pretty great CDs. Especially in the era before Napster and music downloads and stuff.
Like everyone else, I would have assumed that streaming and mp3 sales would have killed the business model a long while ago.
Aw, man! Peter Noone is going to have to get a real job.
I guess you got distracted, so I went to Spotify and typed in Time Life:
Time Life Classic Rock - 60s-70s-80s-90s
Time Life Ultimate Love Songs Collection
Time Life Body + Soul Collection
Time Life Classic Soft Rock
etc., etc.
YouTube has similar collections available.
I don’t know if I would say I was distracted, but certainly those pesky clients started asking stuff of me. Anyway, in terms of Apple Music, yeah, there are similar playlists in there. The only one that I knew by name to look up was Freedom Rock, which I can’t even remember if it was Time-Life, but it’s there.
I thought Freedom Rock was part of the Time-Life collection of albums, so when I saw this thread I immediately had this going through my head:
“Hey man, is that Freedom Rock?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Well turn it up, man!”
I don’t think it was Time -Life though.
As it turns out, Freedom Rock was put out by Sessions Records, out of Colorado Springs at the time. I watched the ad, god help me.
Hehe, watched the ad? I had a roommate who bought Freedom Rock. It wasn’t a bad compilation, really. It wasn’t a really good one, either.
I have that on CD. One of the few CDs I kept when I purged my collection when I moved. Pretty awesome collection.