Content area
Full Text
Compilation albums are taking over the world. This year has seen the release of 3,500 in the UK alone. You will probably get one for Christmas. Little wonder a recent Music Week article was headlined: `Compilations reach saturation point'.
Since 1983, when EMI, Virgin and Polygram first brought out the hits collection Now That's What I Call Music, record companies have adopted a more specialist approach to compilations. Tower Records now has a stall dedicated solely to new Christmas compilations, featuring festive efforts by Mariah Carey, Tony Bennett and The Beach Boys plus, of course, a representative from the king of compilation brands: The Best Christmas Album in the World . . . Ever! Stephen Pritchard is the marketing genius at Virgin Records who came up with the concept of The Best . . . Album in the World . . . Ever! series. The venture, which began last year, has been hugely successful, making pounds 45 million and giving Virgin around 13 per cent of the compilation market share.
But when did the nature of compilations change from a pick-and-mix of favoured school-disco classics to the cynical, brutally effective exercise in store-swamping that they...