Seeburg put out their famous Seeburg 1000 background music system, which started in 1959 and lasted until 1986. This system utilized special background recordings pressed onto nine-inch, 16 2/3 rpm vinyl records, each with a two-inch center spindle hole. These were designed to be played on a special record player that could hold 25-28 records and play both sides before moving on to the next record in the stack, rotating through them in a cycle. The idea was that one would have heard at least 1000 or so tunes by the time the whole stack was completed. Given that the average record side's playing time is about forty-five minutes long, so roughly ninety minutes per record, and with twenty-five (later 28) discs in a machine at a time, there was more than enough to go the entire day, and some without hearing any repeats if played continuously- but most businesses would have been not have run the machine when the store was closed... so the machines likely got a break for ~8 hours or so each night.
Thus, with a Seeburg 1000 system, even an employee of a given location where one of these was in use would have only had to hear the same track every few days- which is much nicer than what one gets working in businesses these days with their in-house company "radio" stream which often plays the same songs day after day, which gets old really fast, compounding the miseries of working modern retail type jobs- low pay, unrealistic expectations/quotas from out of touch upper management on what they expect understaffed skeleton crews composed largely of slackers should be able to do in one shift (mandatory overtime all the time), and increasingly hard to please customers who don't seem to understand how much one is under the gun to get one's assignments and that going the extra-mile only gets one in trouble when the quotas are not met. I worked at a big box retail and grocery store mega-corporation location some years ago, and it got to the point where I knew what time it was when certain songs came on in the loop that I had become all too familiar with.
The records in each machine were initially rotated in sets of seven records quarterly, with the frequency of replacement sets decreasing to bi-annual replacement sets. The number of active records per Seeburg 1000 unit was bumped up to twenty-eight in 1967.
A series of "libraries" offered the subscriber various "flavors" of music. The Industrial series, made for factories, was typically upbeat and rather varied. Its goal was to promote productivity and reduce boredom among workers in factories and other blue-collar workplaces that once dominated the employment pool for the American workforce.
The records in each machine were initially rotated in sets of seven records quarterly, with the frequency of replacement sets decreasing to bi-annual replacement sets. The number of active records per Seeburg 1000 unit was bumped up to twenty-eight in 1967.
A series of "libraries" offered the subscriber various "flavors" of music. The Industrial series, made for factories, was typically upbeat and rather varied. Its goal was to promote productivity and reduce boredom among workers in factories and other blue-collar workplaces that once dominated the employment pool for the American workforce.
Songs you may know-
A1- Wake The Town & Tell The People - Jack Hansen Orchestra
A2- I'll Get By
A3- The Gravy Waltz
A4- Snuggled On Your Shoulder- Made Famous By Bing Crosby
No comments:
Post a Comment