Beautiful music initially offered soft and unobtrusive instrumental selections on a very structured schedule with limited advertising interruptions. It often functioned as a free background music service for stores, with commercial breaks consisting only of announcements aimed at shoppers already in the stores. This practice was known as "storecasting" and was very common on the
FM dial in the 1940s and 1950s. Many of these FM stations usually simulcast their
AM station and used a subcarrier (
SCA) to transmit a hitch-hiker signal to a store receiver by subscription. The signal was usually a slow-moving audio tape of "background music" or Muzak-type service, which was independent of the simulcast AM signal. Some FM stations made more income from these music subscriptions than from their main programming. WITH-FM, in
Baltimore, Maryland (1950s and 1960s), had to keep its FM carrier on the air until 2:00a.m. for restaurants that subscribed to the service, and thus could not sign off their main FM carrier until that time. The station ran a repeat of its previous day's evening concert on its main FM program line.
Growth as a radio format One of the first beautiful music radio stations in the US was KIXL in the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas, area. As early as 1947 it played orchestral music on AM radio (1040), and later on FM (104.5). KIXL changed to KEZL (as in "easy listening") in 1973, but ended with a change to adult contemporary in 1976. In 1959,
Gordon McLendon, who had interests in Top-40 radio in Dallas as well as other markets, decided to "counter-program" in San Francisco since several Top-40 stations were already there. McLendon established beautiful music AM station
KABL (a tribute to the San Francisco cable cars, named by McLendon's executive assistant Billie Page Odom) which was successful through the 1990s. It then experimented with combining elements of
Big Bands and soft rock until its demise in the early 21st century. It was reborn as an Internet radio station where it can be heard today. In the early 1960s, the
Federal Communications Commission adopted a standard for transmitting and receiving stereo signals on a single channel of the FM band. In addition to delivering stereo sound, FM broadcasting provided clearer sound quality and better resistance to interference than AM, thus being ideal for broadcasting the beautiful music format. In Baltimore, Maryland, programmer
Art Wander developed a beautiful music format for the 50,000-watt NBC affiliate
WBAL/1090. The station format launched in the fall of 1960 featured music sweeps of lush instrumentals with subtle comments from their staff announcers. The format changed to sports and talk when competing FM stations broadcast beautiful music and easy listening. In 1963,
Marlin Taylor created a custom-designed beautiful music format at
Philadelphia's
WDVR. Within four months, WDVR became the No. 1 rated FM station in the Philadelphia market. This was one of the first big successes in FM broadcasting, and was instrumental in establishing the viability of FM. WDVR was a resource for mature listeners who were driven from AM radio at the time when WFIL and WIBG (and others) switched to rock 'n' roll programming. WDVR's billboards made the adult audience aware of the new station.
Airtime resell practice. Libraries of music for radio stations Others, such as Jim Schulke, devised a method of buying air time on
FM stations in bulk and reselling the blocks to interested advertisers. Schulke formed
Stereo Radio Productions (SRP) to help his stations get better ratings and pull in more agency advertising dollars. His stations used six hundred
reels of stereo
reel-to-reel tape set on multiple machines so that 15-minute segments would play at a time, alternating from one player to another, allowing a varied programming format in which no half-hour was repeated within a two-week period. One of Schulke's stations using this "matched flow" concept was WDVR's chief competitor in the beautiful music format in Philadelphia,
WWSH-FM.
Peters Productions in San Diego, California was active throughout the late 1960s through the early 1980s. At one time
Peters Productions offered 7 different syndicated radio formats plus radio/television "station image" packages (custom jingle and integrated promotional graphics packages.) The most popular syndicated radio format was a beautiful music format on a library of 100 reel-to-reel tapes, with 6 new reels provided per month. It originated when founder Ed Peters was station manager of San Diego radio station
KFMB-FM. The format aired on over 120 stations during its peak, and was known originally as "Music Only for a Woman". Later the name was changed to "Music Just for the Two of Us".
Stereotypical instrumental-vocal mixes, related to BM/EZ Many beautiful music programmers constructed their own style of sets, incorporating some vocal songs, usually one to each 15-minute set. Most stations adopted a 70–80% instrumental – 20–30% vocal mix, a few offered 90% instrumentals, and a handful were entirely instrumental. Initially, the vocalists consisted of artists such as
Frank Sinatra,
Nat King Cole,
Peggy Lee,
Tony Bennett,
Patti Page,
Johnny Mathis,
Perry Como,
Doris Day, and others. By the 1970s, softer songs by artists like
The Carpenters,
Anne Murray,
John Denver,
Barry Manilow,
Barbra Streisand,
Dionne Warwick,
Neil Diamond,
Elton John,
Nancy Wilson and others were added to the mix on many stations. Also, some of these stations played soft songs by artists like
Elvis Presley,
Beatles,
Billy Joel, and other rock-based artists. The main test for the vocals played was not the background of the artist but whether or not the song was soft. All vocals on such stations had to be soft. Therefore, songs like "
She's Out of My Life" by non-core artists like
Michael Jackson or "
Live to Tell" by
Madonna would be heard on some of these stations. On the other hand, even uptempo jazzier songs by standards artists, such as "
Detour" by Patti Page, would not be heard on beautiful music stations except during specialty shows. Also, during weekday morning drive times, most beautiful music stations increased the vocals to as much as 50 percent to accommodate a broader audience. While these stations were mostly playing instrumentals, some had a couple of specialty programs that were vocal-based such as a Big Band program on Saturday nights, a Frank Sinatra show sometime on the weekends, and maybe a program featuring Broadway showtunes. Generally, the recordings heard on beautiful music stations were newly orchestrated arrangements of the songs of the day. These were available from the major record labels and performed by such artists as
Andre Kostelanetz,
Percy Faith,
Mantovani, the
101 Strings,
Billy Vaughn,
The Living Strings,
Frank Chacksfield, among others. When the record companies cut back on releasing this material, syndicators of the format had custom recordings produced for them, performed by many different orchestras from around the world. These new custom recordings were usually instrumental versions of current or recent
rock and roll or pop hit songs, a move intended to give the stations more mass appeal without
selling out. Some stations would also occasionally play earlier
big band-era recordings from the 1940s and early 1950s. Many beautiful music stations would air a few
Christmas songs per hour beginning around
Thanksgiving each year, increasing their frequency as the month of December progressed. The stations' vocal content would typically increase to about 40 to 60 percent of the playlist during this period, as well. There would then be a special marathon of seasonal music on December 24 and 25. After the 25th, most continued to play wall-to-wall Christmas music until the first of the year. This concept was later borrowed (and expanded upon) by
Soft AC,
Oldies, and even some
country music and
Hot AC stations. Today, the average wall-to-wall Christmas format begins on Thanksgiving and ends at the end of the day around midnight on December 26. The predominantly instrumental-vocal mix is still in use today, mainly by
smooth jazz stations.
Declining years Peters was the first beautiful music syndicator to sell its library in the late 1980s to Broadcast Programming, Inc., which then bought several other syndicators. (BPI, later part of
Jones Radio Networks, is part of
Dial Global as of 2012.) Bonneville, which had acquired the SRP and Century catalogs in the 1980s, sold its beautiful music assets to Broadcast Programming in November 1993. Some beautiful music stations (especially on AM) successfully transitioned to
adult contemporary formats, often with call letter changes to shed the "
elevator music" identity. Many of these stations marketed themselves as playing many of the same songs from the original artists; adult contemporary had the benefit of having core acts that could much more easily be marketed and were more familiar to listeners, as opposed to the lesser-known and poorer-selling studio acts that made up the majority of the beautiful music format. Beautiful music stations declined in the late 1980s and early 1990s as
country music became popular and moved to the FM dial (formerly, country was relegated to AM). Many beautiful music stations, especially in rural areas, switched to country around that time. While the seasonal
Christmas music format helped salvage softer vocal selections from the era even as formats such as
adult standards withered, radio industry writer Sean Ross noted in 2005 that this did not apply to beautiful music instrumentals, which remained widely unpopular. Ross noted that beautiful music drew as much revulsion from listeners as
novelty songs and that the appetite for instrumental Christmas music, even among older listeners, was mostly restricted to newer instrumental cuts such as from
Mannheim Steamroller and
Trans-Siberian Orchestra. A slight uptick in beautiful Christmas music artists such as
Ray Conniff and
Percy Faith was noted in 2024, as much of their body of Christmas works were known hymns and radio listeners were becoming more eager for explicitly Christian content in their Christmas mixes.
List of instrumental artists associated with "beautiful music" radio format era Some instrumental artists associated with beautiful music have included: •
101 Strings Orchestra •
12 Girls Band •
André Kostelanetz •
Arthur Fiedler •
Arthur Greenslade •
Arthur Lyman •
Bert Kaempfert •
Billy Vaughn and his Orchestra •
Bob James •
Bradley Joseph •
Burt Bacharach •
Caravelli •
Carl Doy •
Charles Williams •
Cyril Ornadel •
David Rose •
Enoch Light •
Eric Coates •
Ernest Tomlinson •
Felix Slatkin •
Ferrante & Teicher •
Floyd Cramer •
Francis Lai •
Franck Pourcel •
Frank Chacksfield •
Frank Cordell •
Frank De Vol •
Frank Perkins •
Geoff Love •
George Melachrino •
George Shearing Quintette •
Geraldo (and his New Concert Orchestra) •
Henry Mancini •
Hollyridge Strings •
Hugo Winterhalter •
Jackie Gleason •
James Galway •
James Last •
Joe Harnell •
John Barry •
John Williams •
Johnny Douglas •
Johnny Pearson •
Lawrence Welk •
Leroy Anderson •
Les Baxter •
Lex de Azevedo •
Liberace •
Living Strings •
The Longines Symphonette •
Mantovani •
Morton Gould •
Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra •
Nick Ingman •
Norrie Paramor •
Paul Mauriat •
Paul Weston •
Percy Faith •
Peter Nero •
Ray Martin •
Richard Clayderman •
Richard Hayman •
Robert Farnon •
Robert Maxwell •
Roger Williams •
Ron Goodwin •
Ronald Binge •
Ronnie Aldrich •
Sidney Torch •
Stanley Black •
Syd Dale •
Tony Mottola •
Victor Young •
Wes Montgomery List of vocal artists associated with "beautiful music" radio format era Among the vocal artists featured on beautiful music stations may include many of the same ones featured on the
adult standards format and others: •
ABBA (softer selections) •
Andy Williams •
Anita Kerr Singers •
Anne Murray •
B.J. Thomas •
Barbra Streisand •
Barry Manilow •
Bing Crosby •
Captain & Tennille •
Carly Simon •
Connie Francis •
Dan Fogelberg •
Dean Martin •
Diana Krall •
Doris Day •
Elvis Presley (softer selections) •
Engelbert Humperdinck •
Frank Sinatra •
Harry Connick, Jr. •
Helen Reddy •
Jack Jones •
Jo Stafford •
John Denver •
John Gary •
Johnny Mann Singers •
Johnny Mathis •
Linda Ronstadt •
Matt Monro •
Melissa Manchester •
Michael Bublé •
Nana Mouskouri •
Nancy Wilson •
Nat King Cole •
Neil Diamond •
Norah Jones •
Olivia Newton-John •
Patti Page •
Perry Como •
Petula Clark •
Ray Charles Singers •
Ray Conniff Singers •
Ronnie Dove •
Rosemary Clooney •
Sérgio Mendes •
Snatam Kaur •
Steve Lawrence •
The Association •
The Beatles (softer selections) •
The Carpenters •
The Lettermen •
Vic Damone ==Today==