There was a time, youngsters, when unless you had friends with deep pockets or access to some really good radio stations, a lot of great music went unheard. There was no Interweb where you could instantly track down practically every song ever recorded --- and I'll thank you to GET OFF MY LAWN!!
Sorry, where was I? In the very late '60s through some of the '80s, Warner Brothers/Reprise Records released nearly a dozen of so single and double LP sets with selected tracks from their new releases, only available by mail for -- get this -- $2 for each 2 LP set! These records were such a varied cornucopia, where you'd have bubbling-under emerging artists like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull or Seals and Crofts rub elbows with more obscure (at the time) artists like Little Feat, Tim Buckley and Van Dyke Parks. And they were good songs, not junk, because of course the whole idea of a loss leader is to get you spend money further down the road on more albums. My favorite juxtaposition was probably one from 1977 or so that had new material from Seals & Crofts, and on the flip side, something named the Sex Pistols. What a hoot!
I naturally spent lots of money tracking down the albums featured, and I don't think I was ever disappointed, but oddly enough, I'd still listen to the the loss leaders because they were sequenced very well and really held up as a listening experience. Liner notes by Barry (Dr. Demento) Hansen were also a big plus.
Other labels followed suit, but with varied results, and usually with cheaper packaging and single LPS only. I remember samplers from A&M (very good), a jazz sampler from CBS (all over the map), and later when I discovered import albums, good stuff from Island, Antilles and Virgin.
These days, British pop magazines like Mojo, Q and Uncut all come with sampler CDs (though Mojo seems to focus on the same back catalog over and over), and of course, better blogs than mine let you hear new music samples all the time. But there was something about taking a chance with your two bucks and getting a package in the mail 6 weeks later. It was like the record company was your pal, and they thought you had taste so they wanted to share their treasures with you. Marketing has come light years from that primitive model, but there's still money to be made by making that emotional connection, and the best companies (and stores) still do that.
