Music Master Catalogue

Music Master 1990

Long before the Internet and Google search, if you wanted to look up information about a record/song/artist, you had to find out the old fashioned way by looking in a book.

Retail record stores across the country had to subscribe to a music catalogue that was so big it made the bible look like a pamphlet. Imagine a book that listed all formats, all track listings, all catalogue numbers, record labels & release dates for EVERY record that is currently available to buy.

That book was Music Master.

With monthly supplements to keep the information up to date and a full yearly reprint, thIs book was the music bible for the Retail music industry.

If anyone wanted to order a record this was the place to start. To order a title you needed three important pieces of information.

1. Is it still available?. 2. What label is it on? (Or more importantly who's distributing it?) 3. What's the catalogue number.

This book had it all. It cost an absolute fortune to buy and was a pain in the bum to flick through but I spent many happy hours looking though it trying to find classic stuff to purchase for myself never mind customers. You may have needed a magnifying glass to read the writing and the paper was so thin it could tear very easily, but it was an essential part of any proper record shop. I can find very little information on the net about when they started or stopped printing this book, how many editions there were or if anyone else remembers its existence. But, for me, it's a nice bit of nostalgia Just to see it again.

 

Chart Machine

The indie store i worked in was a Chart Return shop.

This meant that we gave our sales data to whoever compiled the charts at the time. During my time it moved from The British Market Research Bureau, to Gallup to CIN to Millward Brown. Initially it was via Pen and paper, but then they introduced computers. Every record has a catalogue number and all you had to do was type this number into the machine and press enter. If you flick through your record collection you will notice that Catalogue numbers changed in the late 80s to accommodate this. There were less nonsensical numbers and letters like epc345278 and more short straight forward wordy ones like BONG3 or FIC 42. It made it easier for sales staff to remember and type them out. You will also notice that once these machines moved away from typed in data to barcode wands, the catalogue numbers on your records dropped letters all together and stuck to really long numbers instead.

But God forbid anyone should forget to type a sale in back then. Anything to make sure you did, anything to make it easy. One miss type would be classed as a missed sale for a record company and every entry was important. Which made any shop contibuting to the top 40 of interest to a record company.

Each night when you closed the shop you had to remember to turn the machine off. In retrospect i now know that by turning it off i was actually flicking it over to a fax like modem that would answer the phone and send the days data direct to Gallup. If you had forgotten to turn it off it couldn't communicate with their main computer and nothing was sent. Sometime during the night Gallup would call, collect the data and add it to that collected from all the other shops on the panel. The charts were actually compiled on a daily basis and they even released a mid week chart to the record companies so they could see how well (or bad) their singles and albums were doing so far that week.

It cost money to rent these little computers and in the end you also had to pay to have your own data sent back to you in chart form. But it was worth every penny. The deals and free stock you received from record companies, just because you were on the chart return panel, far outweighed anything they charged.

One rep once told me in the 80s that they could always tell who was on the chart panel without even going to the shop. All they had to do was ring them at night. If the machine answered the phone they knew they were worth a visit.

 

Roy Orbison In Death

Diary entry from Dec 6th or 7th ? 1988

Got a call from Telstar today. "did you know that Roy Orbison has died ?" no i didn't. "Well we were ringing round to see if anyone needs to stock up, we've got the Hits album on TV at the moment".

It sounds a bit sick and she was a bit embarrassed to be asking me but 'Yes we do want to stock up' and I'm glad she rang. In the next 24 hours Radio will be banging his hits out none stop and everyone will suddenly be claiming they were a lifelong fan.

By the end of the day we had sold out of every old dusty Tape, Records and ex chart Single we had in the shop. I even fished out an old budget LP from the dump bin. It's been there for months at 99p with no one showing any interest. I put a new plastic sleeve on it and stuck it back out at £2.99. It sold within the hour. I suspect this will be the album for Christmas. He popped off just in time for the Xmas Present Market. Who could have planned that one ?.

Double Pack Power of love

Diary Entry Late Nov early Dec 1985

***** from CBS came today and we had a bit of a row over the Jennifer Rush single.

The Bastards have Deleted the Power of Love, even though it's still selling. The reason for this became apparent when the new single arrived on the counter sporting a 'limited edition' that features a "free" copy of The Power of Love shrink wrapped with it. This means that anyone who wants the Power of love has to buy the new single. The sly buggers, it's a good idea though and it's working, people are obviously buying it 'cos it costs the same.

But we can be sly buggers as well. All we did was wait till he left the shop and opened up the packs to flog them separately.

He wasn't happy. Bang go the Dead or Alive Promos in future.

Life in a 1980s Record Shop

OMG ! The Absolute JOY!!!!!!!!! I found it!!!

Memories of my Record shop days. A snapshot of the life of Independent Record shop in the UK  from the 1970s through to 2000. Complete with DIARIES !. Old Invoices and all sorts of shite to back it all up, Prices and Discounts, Distribution info, all sorts of little gems that i thought ended up in the bin. I was nearly in tears when i found it. Couple this with my Record Collection and hey presto ! a box of memories.

I was an avid record collector as a kid, then i did a bit of DJing after school, got a job in a club for a couple of years before transfering to life behind the counter at my local record shop from then i moved onto being a manager and eventually opened my own couple of shops before it all went tits up in the late 90s and people started downloading stuff off the net. By early 2000 it was all over for me.  I didn't think i had kept a proper diary of this time. But i have (sort of) in parts.

Suddenly i know where this  blog is about to go. I had lost interest at one time. You can't post music any more, and if you write, what do you write about ?. I was thinking of writing about my past but could really remember stuff. Well now i have it. A transcript of a snapshot in time. Word for word from my own pen. (terrible spelling i note)

It's not exactly Samual Pepes, but it may interest someone. Some of it i may need to Edit for legal reasons and some names may have to be changed to protect the innocent, I may even add bits so that it all makes sense.  But other than that i'll keep in the references to Record Companies, Industry info Artists, the lot.

And so that it doesn't get boring i'll flit from any moment in theses diaries rather than stay with one year, or just go cronalogical with each post.

It may not mean anything to you  dear reader but it sure as hell does to me.

Sometimes i wrote a line, sometimes i wrote nothing, sometimes i've done a whole bloody page full of stuff. But like a tit i have't always  dated everything and i can't explain why things arn't on sepearate days per day. But i've managed to work out more or less when they were written. Here is a small insignificant entry from sometime in Mar or April 1986 to give you a taste of what rubbish lies within in these diaries. I wish i had written more like this.

Roger from ***** came today with his “portfolio of dreams”. This is what he calls his folder that contains all the singles he is promoting and selling this week. It's just a plastic folder with a copy of a single in each pocket really. “you might want to listen to that one” he says “people seem to be interested in that one, but don't bother sticking that one on unless you wanna clear the shop, it's absolute bollocks”

Most of what he's selling or giving away is shit but there are the odd items we need and sell a lot of. Sinitta (So Macho) and Gary Numan are today’s must haves. Sinitta is still free so we'll have any that's going. But we only want Gary Numan Picture discs, even though he does look like Hitler without a moustache on the front cover. No one is interested in the ordinary black vinyl version, But Roger reminds me that there is a flexi disc free with it so i order some. Everyone really just want the so-called 'limited edition' picture disc. In years to come I suspect the ordinary black plastic single will be rarer than a picture disc because no one buys that fucking

 thing. There again i can't imagine anyone actually plays them. They sound like shit and never sit flat on the turntable, i've had three brought back this week because they are warped. What the hell do the expect?.

 Some Numan fans are like Toyah fans. They turn up at 9.01am on Monday morning (the day of release) and buy every different format of the same song. Sometimes walking out with 3 or 4 copies of the same bloody thing. God knows what they do with them. They surely can't be listeniing to 'em. But buying more than one copy sends the single rocketing up the charts week one. After that it’s all over. No one else buys it and on week two you may as well put everything left over in the 20p dump bin. No self-respecting Toyah or Numan fan buys a single on week two. And as far as I can see no one other than the fans buy their music at all.

Rodger isn’t a pushy rep. I look forward to him coming around. He’s a good laugh. He just dumps his folder on the counter and asks me to “peruse” through the shite and tell me what I want. At the end of the folder, after the albums and cassettes, there are also carpets and curtain fabrics. They are nothing to do with the promotions company he is working for. He’s just added them himself for a little bit of extra cash. Roger is good for cash ;-)

“At Christmas I do Calendars as well” he said “so remember that".

If his boss only knew.