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Beautiful Music Syndicators

sdwulfdawg

sdwulfdawg

Does anyone still syndicate a Beautiful Music format?

I remember when Bonneville, Muzak, and Schulke used to put out their Beautiful Music formats via tape to stations in the height of the format.

What do BM stations utilize now for programming services on the stations that still air the format? How do they keep their playlists fresh with new instrumentals?
 
sdwulfdawg said:
Does anyone still syndicate a Beautiful Music format?
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No.
sdwulfdawg said:
I remember when Bonneville, Muzak, and Schulke used to put out their Beautiful Music formats via tape to stations in the height of the format.
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Muzak did not syndicate to radio stations. It was a "background music" service for stores and offices.

Other radio syndicators included RPM, KalaMusic, Drake-Chenault, Churchill, FM-100 Plan, Música en Flor (Mine, and only for Latin America), Peters Productions. The big three were Shulke, Bonneville and FM 100.
sdwulfdawg said:
What do BM stations utilize now for programming services on the stations that still air the format? How do they keep their playlists fresh with new instrumentals?
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There are essentially no instrumentals in that music style. And the very few stations doing that format are using digitized versions of the old tapes or creating new ones with old recordings. Of course, there are some more current vocals and some movie and TV themes that might fit, but there is really no new material at all.
 
DavidEduardo said:
No.

Muzak did not syndicate to radio stations. It was a "background music" service for stores and offices.

Other radio syndicators included RPM, KalaMusic, Drake-Chenault, Churchill, FM-100 Plan, Música en Flor (Mine, and only for Latin America), Peters Productions. The big three were Shulke, Bonneville and FM 100.

There are essentially no instrumentals in that music style. And the very few stations doing that format are using digitized versions of the old tapes or creating new ones with old recordings. Of course, there are some more current vocals and some movie and TV themes that might fit, but there is really no new material at all.
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Great answer. I still remember when the former KQFM 100.3 in Portland, Oregon ran a Beautiful Music format and advertised quite heavily their ancillary Muzak "Q Music" services for businesses.
 
sdwulfdawg said:
Great answer. I still remember when the former KQFM 100.3 in Portland, Oregon ran a Beautiful Music format and advertised quite heavily their ancillary Muzak "Q Music" services for businesses.
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Many early FMs made money off the SCA background service and ran the station format at a loss.

A good example was XHM in Mexico City, owned by the equivalent of 7-11 which had many, many neighborhood stores before big supermarkets came to Mexico. They ran an SCA service for in-store use which had gentle music with specials and product promotions every few songs.

On the public main signal, they also ran "X-H-M... un oasis en FM" with few commercials except ads for the stores and some suppliers.

Similarly, WFID in Puerto Rico, the first FM there, had few commercials on the station, but made nice money from the background music service on the SCA, which was, interestingly, called "Beautiful Music".
 
If you have just shy of seven grand to spend, Dave Scott has an almost 7000 title beautiful music library on hard drive at his radiomusic.com website.

As for in store background music? Muzak had a variety of knock-offs including one called Musiplelx available in Southern Ohio and Central Indiana. Self produced tapes taking up a subcarrier of a co-owned FM in those areas.
 
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Ma Gee said:
If you have just shy of seven grand to spend, Dave Scott has an almost 7000 title beautiful music library on hard drive at his radiomusic.com website.

As for in store background music? Muzak had a variety of knock-offs including one called Musiplelx available in Southern Ohio and Central Indiana. Self produced tapes taking up a subcarrier of a co-owned FM in those areas.
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Are you a member of Beautiful Instrumentals and Vocals on Facebook?

People who know about beautiful music share information like this there.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Are you a member of Beautiful Instrumentals and Vocals on Facebook?

People who know about beautiful music share information like this there.
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But the only place you can talk to the actual owner and programmer of a Beautiful Music syndicatior is... right here! 😇
 
Beautiful Music was a successful format back in the 70s and 80s. If the numbers were good, it was the genius of the syndicator; if the numbers were not good, it was an engineering problem.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Still is. If offices and stores don't want it, that's their decision, but the format is still offered in several versions.

Classical & Instrumentals Easy instrumentals, Environmental (the one everyone thinks of) and possibly Elegance. There are a couple of other formats offered that might qualify.
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Muzak/MoodMedia offers hundreds of formats and even customized services for retailers and other businesses
 
vchimpanzee said:
The group has a former programmer of a syndicator.
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I'd like to expand my library and, perhaps part time (like weekends and overnight hours), program my part 15 station with a Beautiful Music-like format, hence my curiosity here (I am listening to all these stations, and modelling my station as a sort of amalgamation of all of them (plus airchecks of historic, now defunct B/EZ Listening stations). I'd do oldies, classic hits and whatever else I feel like the rest of the time. Then I need to get licensed so I can stream (likely via Live365 or something similar).

I don't do Facebook (and likely never will for philosophical reasons), or else I'd check out that group, unless it's public, so I can see it w/o an account.

DavidEduardo said:
But the only place you can talk to the actual owner and programmer of a Beautiful Music syndicatior is... right here! 😇
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Fun!

You wouldn't happen to have any remnants of your old libraries anywhere?

If you have any other advice or suggestions, I'd love to know! The audience is myself and a few friends, so I can do whatever I want; ratings don't matter!

c
 
Back in the late 60's I began working for Sentry Foods in Wisconsin. Since I worked in produce at the time when the departments weighed customers' purchases I spent most of the time in one spot...under a speaker in front of the scale. One day during a lull in the music I heard the call letters WQFM and through my investigation I discovered that WQFM played the exact same music over their airwaves as they were playing in all the Sentry stores. The music played continuously and they just faded it down for commercials. On weekends they played ethnic music and we could sometimes hear polkas, etc. in the background over the SCA. This practice continued until the owner, Hugo Koeth took his own life in the early 70's. After the station was sold the music was modernized, but remained as mostly instrumental until the 90's. I'm not really sure if the music came from the same source after WQFM was sold. I remember one day my sister and her college roommate were shopping in a discount record outlet in downtown Milwaukee and actually found an LP with the words "WQFM Fill Music" written across the top of the jacket.
 
vchimpanzee said:
You have to be a member.
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Ah, I see. I figured as much, as many Facebook groups I've lurked on in the past are private now. It seems to be some sort of new trend, wherein in recent years, Facebook membership is required in order to even read a groups' posts, whereas before, membership wasn't necessary.

c
 
cc333 said:
You wouldn't happen to have any remnants of your old libraries anywhere?
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No. In about 1989 I sold the library to one of my remaining clients, Omega FM in Lima, Perú. The library was large, and included both Jerry Lee's Philadelphia library and much of Art Kellar's one from EX Communications, including hundreds and hundreds of custom cuts recorded for the independent Beautiful Music association I was also a member of.
cc333 said:
If you have any other advice or suggestions, I'd love to know! The audience is myself and a few friends, so I can do whatever I want; ratings don't matter!
Click to expand...
Look in Europe, particularly France... and Japan. Both had lots of instrumentals well into the 90's, including in the case of Japan recordings just for that market by major European orchestras. Also look for the French label Delphine Records which has all the Clayderman, Nicholas de Angelis, Francis Goya and Jean-Claude Borelly among others.

Also go to Syndication of "Beautiful Music" format called Música en Flor 1982

The page is missing some graphics but if you scroll down you can hear my demo reel. It seems to run way too fast now, but I'm not able to adjust it now since I have neither the tape nor software to modify it.
 
DavidEduardo said:
No. In about 1989 I sold the library to one of my remaining clients, Omega FM in Lima, Perú. The library was large, and included both Jerry Lee's Philadelphia library and much of Art Kellar's one from EX Communications, including hundreds and hundreds of custom cuts recorded for the independent Beautiful Music association I was also a member of.
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Hmm, I see. I guess I'll have to slowly build up my own library from scratch. I have a respectable amount for a modest part-time program, so long as nobody minds repeats. A massive library already set and ready to go – as in pre-programmed tapes or reels – sure would be nice to have, though.

Someone found a handful of Bonneville tapes and posted copies on Youtube, which I of course downloaded and used as a helpful boost to my modest library. I'm sure there's others out there somewhere that I'll eventually run across.

DavidEduardo said:
Look in Europe, particularly France... and Japan. Both had lots of instrumentals well into the 90's, including in the case of Japan recordings just for that market by major European orchestras. Also look for the French label Delphine Records which has all the Clayderman, Nicholas de Angelis, Francis Goya and Jean-Claude Borelly among others.
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Will do.

I've noticed that instrumental music seemed to be more popular more recently overseas, and that much of the more recent material is recorded by foreign artists and orchestras. Paul Mauriat and his Orchestra was particularly prolific and recorded many albums, some as recent as the late 90s (Mauriat himself retired from conducting in 1998).

c
 
cc333 said:
I've noticed that instrumental music seemed to be more popular more recently overseas, and that much of the more recent material is recorded by foreign artists and orchestras. Paul Mauriat and his Orchestra was particularly prolific and recorded many albums, some as recent as the late 90s (Mauriat himself retired from conducting in 1998).
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I don't know the availability now, but back in the 80's I licensed a bunch of material that fits the format from the Canadian Talent Library, a group set up to provide Canadian content for MOR, AC and Beautiful Music stations back then.
 
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