Compilation Fixation

1972 was the year when television-advertised budget albums began in the UK. Canadian infomercial company K-Tel, which was found by Philip Kieves in 1962, moved into the music business when it marketed its first compilation album, 25 Great Country Artists Singing Their Original Hits, which had been released on the Artistic label in 1964. K-tel took a thousand copies and sold them in Canada without permission. After paying off the record label, they began putting together their own albums for marketing on TV and radio. The success led to the company wishing to branch out.

In Australia, the Majestic record label was making budget compilation labels and they even released their own version of the Artistic record, called 25 Great American Country & Folk Artists Singing Their Original Hits. K-tel went to Australia and bought Majestic. In the early 1970s, they hired Don Reedman, whose twin brother Peter worked for Majestic, and took him to the UK to set up K-tel International (UK) Ltd. The business began releasing compilation albums that combined material from a number of popular artists onto a single theme album using the tag line "20 Original Hits! 20 Original Stars!"  They negotiated directly with artists and labels for the rights to reproduce their original recordings, in the process also securing a long-term asset through adding those recordings to their catalogue.

The first album Reedman compiled was 20 Dynamic Hits, released in 1972. It hit the UK Albums Chart on June 10, 1972 at #4. The following week it went to #1 where it stayed for eight weeks.

Arcade Records was founded in 1972 by Laurence Myers, a British music industry professional who had been working in music management and production for various top British artists such as The Animals, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones. In the early 1970s, he realised that many music consumers were home taping their favourite songs in order to create a mixtape of current top hits or the best songs by one artist. Myers copied this trend by releasing multi-artist and one-artist compilation albums, and found himself in direct competition with K-tel and other compilation labels.

The first release was 20 Fantastic Hits By The Original Artists, which charted on July 29, 1972 and spent a total of six weeks at #1. The album led to two sequels.

In the 1980s, the original company was sold to Dutch entrepreneur Herman Heinsbroek, who expanded it into a worldwide multi-media company. Myers moved into film production, including Kenny Everett's Bloodbath At The House Of Death (1984) and Judy (2019). In 2001, the label was sold to Roadrunner Records, a Dutch-American record label focused on heavy metal and hard rock music now part of Warner Music Group.

Arcade currently serves as a digital platform which compiles playlists for Spotify based on Arcade's catalogues.