Compilation album

Information about Compilation album

A compilation album is an album (music or spoken-word) featuring tracks from one or multiple recording artists, often culled from a variety of sources (such as studio albums, live albums, singles, demos and outtakes.) The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, source or subject matter. When the tracks are all essentially by the same recording artist, a compilation album is often referred to as a retrospective album. Compilation album may employ tradition product bundling strategies.

Common types

Some common types of compilation are
  • Single-artist "greatest hits", "best of", or "singles collection" LPs, gathering together an artist's best-known songs. If the artist or group is still recording, it is common practice to include one or more previously unreleased tracks as an incentive for fans of the artist to buy the album, even if they already have the other material on the compilation. See Greatest hits article for more details.
  • Other single-artist compilations, such as rarities or B-side collections, albums compiled from radio sessions, or collections that combine multiple releases, such as LPs and EPs together on one or more compact discs. These are generally aimed at existing fans of the artist and have little mainstream appeal.
  • Box sets, elaborate multi-disc collections often covering the entire breadth of an artist's career or the full sweep of an entire record label or genre.
  • Various artist themed compilations, e.g. love songs, Christmas songs, songs featuring a particular instrument (such as saxophone or piano), and countless other variations.
  • Various artist genre compilations, e.g. jazz, synthpop, rock, etc. These may be from the same time period (Year, decade or era, for example), or may incorporate a common theme. An example is a soundtrack.
  • Various artist hit compilations. This has been a very successful part of the album market since the early 1970s. Recent hit singles are gathered together in one place. In the 1970s, these were often single vinyl LPs with ten tracks on each side, and correspondingly low sound quality. In the 1980s, a double album with 7 or 8 tracks on each side became the norm. Now that CDs are the dominant format, these compilations are usually released on one, two, or three CDs with a running time of over 70 minutes each.
  • Promotional compilations or Samplers. These are creative, successful forms of promotion for artists and/or record labels to promote their music. Generally, these types of releases are free or cost very little for the consumer or end listener.
  • Private label promotional compilations. Promotional compilation CDs can be private labeled for products, retail outlets, or commercial organizations or non-profit organizations. Artists and labels like to co-brand themselves with well-known brands for marketing purposes, and transversely well-known brands like to co-brand themselves with artists.
  • Business-to-business promotional compilations. Other types of promotional compilations are used within the music industry in a business-to-business capacity to promote artists to media concerns (radio stations, music supervisors for TV, film or video games for synchronization).
  • Riddim albums. In Jamaican Dancehall and Reggae music, various artists record over the same pre-produced instrumental rhythm (which is usually given a particular name), and the material is released as a compilation album. For example, the Diwali riddim, produced by Steve "Lenky" Marsden.

Budget cover albums

A budget cover album is an album of cheap, often poorly made covers of popular songs. The budget albums had their heyday in the 1970s. One of the most famous cover labels was Embassy, operated by Woolworths. To distinguish between the original artists and the covers, the albums often featured small print next to the name of the original artists eg. as made famous by. Some cover album series are still going, eg. Kidz Bop, but many are now so-called "novelty records".

A famous series of cover albums in the UK was the Top of the Pops series, which were released between 1968 and 1985. The pin-up girl covers of these albums now have a cult following of their own.

Famous compilation series

Famous compilation series (Australia)

  • Triple J's Hottest 100 - a selection from the overall poll
  • So Fresh - Top 20 tracks, quarterly, with additional 20 tracks each Summer, comprising the best selling tracks of the year
  • 100% Hits - Top 40 tracks
  • Pepsi More Music - Top 40 tracks
  • Ministry Of Sound Annuals - dance music (yearly)

See also

album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. The most common way is through commercial distribution, although smaller artists will often distribute directly to the public by selling their albums at live concerts or on
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Spoken word is a form of literary art or artistic performance in which lyrics, poetry, or stories are spoken rather than sung. Spoken-word is often done with a musical background, but emphasis is kept on the speaker.
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musician is a person who plays or composes music. Musicians can be classified by their role in creating or performing music:
  • A musician or instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.

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A studio album is a collection of studio-recorded tracks by a recording artist.

It usually does not contain live recordings or remixes, and if it does, those tracks do not make up a majority of the album and are often called "bonus tracks".
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A live album – commonly contrasted with a studio album – is a recording consisting of material (usually music) recorded during stage performances. Live albums may be recorded at a single concert, or combine recordings made at multiple concerts.
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In music, a single is a short recording of one or more separate tracks. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats.
  • Vinyl singles consist of one or more tracks on a traditional gramophone record.

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Demos may refer to:
  • Demos, a rhetorical term for the population of an ancient Greek state
  • Deme or Demos, a subdivision of Attica, Greece
  • a municipality in modern Greece; an administrative area covering a city or several villages together

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An outtake is a portion of a work (usually a film or music recording) that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version.
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Product bundling is a marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as one combined product. This strategy is very common in the software business (for example: bundle a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a database into a single office suite), and in the fast
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greatest hits album (sometimes referred to as a "best of" album) is a compilation album of successful, previously released songs by a particular music artist or band.
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greatest hits album (sometimes referred to as a "best of" album) is a compilation album of successful, previously released songs by a particular music artist or band.
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Rarity can refer to:
  • something that is rare or scarce
People, including:
  • John Rarity, English physicist

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A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 7 inch vinyl records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song (the one that
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Radio is the wireless transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space.
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album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. The most common way is through commercial distribution, although smaller artists will often distribute directly to the public by selling their albums at live concerts or on
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Extended play (EP) is the name typically given to vinyl records or CDs which contain more music than a single, but are too short to qualify as albums. Usually, an EP has around 10–25 minutes of music, a single has up to 10 minutes and an album has 25–80 minutes.
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Compact Disc

The closely spaced tracks on the readable surface of a Compact Disc cause light to diffract into a full visible colour spectrum
Media type: Optical disc
Encoding: Various
Capacity: Typically up to 700 MB
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This article is about the cultural and social sciences term mainstream. For the Hugo-nominated fanzine, see Mainstream (fanzine). For the record label, see Mainstream Records.

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A box set (sometimes referred to as a boxed set) is a compilation of various musical recordings, films, television programs, or other collection of related things that are contained in a box.
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Christianity

Foundations
Jesus Christ
Church Theology
New Covenant Supersessionism
Dispensationalism
Apostles Kingdom Gospel
History of Christianity Timeline
Bible
Old Testament New Testament
Books Canon Apocrypha
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The saxophone (colloquially referred to as sax) is a conical-bored instrument of the woodwind family.

It is usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece like the clarinet.
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piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound allowing the string to continue vibrating at its resonance frequency.
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Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.

Overview

Jazz has been called "America's only original art form.
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Synthpop is a subgenre of New Wave in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It is most closely associated with the era between the late 1970s and early to middle 1980s, although it has continued to exist and develop ever since.
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Rock music is a form of popular music with a prominent vocal melody accompanied by guitar, drums, and bass. Many styles of rock music also use keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or synthesizers.
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A year (from Old English gēr) is the time between two recurrences of an event related to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. By extension, this can be applied to any planet: for example, a "Martian year" is the time in which Mars completes its own orbit.
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For other senses of this word, see decade (disambiguation).
A decade is a set or a group of ten, commonly a period of 10 years in contemporary English, or a period of 10 days in the French revolutionary calendar.
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soundtrack is the physical area of the film which records the synchronized sound. For the early history of the sound track, see the article sound film.

Origin of the term

In movie industry terminology, a sound track (two words) or just track
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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

1940s 1950s 1960s - 1970s - 1980s 1990s 2000s
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

- -
- The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called
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