Prince - 79-86 FLAC download

From http://www.discogs.com/label/95546-BBC-Radioplay-Music The BBC issued hundreds (possibly thousands) of titles on Radioplay. They were all non-needle time and very useful, especially for local radio where programmes couldn't play much major label stuff at all. About 10 minutes an hour or something like that.In the beginning they were vinyl albums. Some had nice metallic sliver sleeves. The music from the late '60s through the '70s and '80s on Radioplay was mostly easy listening, middle of the road. Better stuff started filtering through as the '80s went along. For instance in 1991 they pressed up two Prince compilations which had decent full colour artwork (most Radioplay albums were obviously done on a budget and looked it). Radioplay albums almost always had universal sleeve designs... for instance the Motown series had weird generic '80s style abstract artwork - only distinguished by a black and white photo of the artist in the bottom left corner. These looked pretty cheap - but as they were never intended for public consumption it didn't really matter. Why the Prince cds were given special treatment I have no idea. I don't know if they still make Radioplay albums. I left the BBC in 1993. Our local station doesn't even have turntables in the studios - presumably they still have CD players in there or maybe it's gone all-digital by now. I do remember having to fill up my shows in the late '80s/early '90s with Radioplay albums... plus we had a shelf of non-needletime CDs, some on the various 'Arcade' labels. They were handy too. There was a big table of record labels you had to refer to... some were ok (mostly indie/small labels, not members of PPL) and some you had to watch out for (majors).... especially during the 3 days a month when we had to do 'full logging'.... listing every piece of music (even one second long) that was played over the period. A guy from the copyright holders used to sit in a hotel room with a radio, a clipboard and a stop-watch and timed all the music we played. Sometimes we used to get a bollocking if our logging was incorrect. I remember getting '60% errors' once which probably meant that Phil Collins got paid .02p less or something. What a waste of time the whole thing was.As for how many were pressed up - it's hard to say. The BBC keep tight-lipped about this sort of thing. They have about 40 local radio stations (less than that in the '60 - '80s period).... and the nationals of course (plus World Service and their own gram library) so it would not be hard to imagine that just a few hundred or 1000 maximum would be pressed (allowing for economies of scale I suppose). It's difficult to think why they would have needed more. Even with replacement copies being issued over the years - I don't think they would have needed more than a few hundred of each title.