Philip Kives

K-tel

K-tel International was founded by Canadian entrepreneur Philip Kives, starting as a demonstration-based sales company before establishing the modern TV compilation album business that culminated in the UK with the massive 1972 release 20 Dynamic Hits.

Door-to-door salesman Kives honed his high-energy, fast-pitch live demonstration skills on the Atlantic City boardwalk in the 1950s. : In 1962, Kives shifted his live pitch to television in Winnipeg, Manitoba, creating a highly successful 5-minute commercial to sell Teflon-coated frying pans. This effectively marked the invention of the modern "infomercial".

Originally operating under names like Syndicate Products, Kives eventually rebranded the company as K-tel - short for "Kives Television". : Before entering the music industry, K-tel made millions selling consumer novelty gadgets through aggressive television marketing. Their biggest hit of the late 1960s was the Miracle Brush (a lint remover), which sold 28 million units. Other iconic products included the Feather Touch Knife and the Veg-O-Matic.

In 1966, Kives realized he could apply his television-advertising formula to the music business. At the time, major record labels rarely revisited released singles or combined multi-artist tracks onto a single LP. Kives secured Canadian distribution rights to 25 Country Hits (1966). He licensed the original master tracks from major record labels for just a few cents per song, offering the labels a new way to monetize their back catalogues. 25 Country Hits sold out its entire run rapidly. K-tel followed it up with 25 Polka Greats, which shockingly sold 1.5 million copies in the United States alone.

Formally incorporating as K-tel International in 1968, the company established the repeatable formula: "20 Original Hits! 20 Original Stars!" By cramming 20 to 25 hits onto a single, tightly-grooved, inexpensive vinyl record and promoting it with rapid-fire TV ads, they became the premier music curation service of their era.

Looking to expand, Kives brought his television sales formula to Britain in the early 1970s, initially testing the waters by successfully selling the Miracle Brush via local TV ads.

Conquering the UK

Getting so many tracks on an album

Budget-priced

The TV Compilation War

Conquering the UK

K-Tel International (UK) Limited was formally incorporated on April 20, 1971. Founder Philip Kives did not want to manage the UK branch from Canada, so he looked for someone who understood the K-tel ethos. In a classic example of Kives's informal corporate logic, he recruited an Australian radio and music executive named Don Reedman. Reedman’s twin brother, Peter Reedman, was successfully running Majestic Records - the Australian arm of K-tel's compilation business. Don Reedman was set up in a modest London office with the monumental task of convincing the strict British music industry to buy into K-tel's vision.

The hardest hurdle for Don Reedman was licensing the music tracks. In the early 1970s, the British music industry was heavily dominated by a cartel of major labels (like EMI, Decca, and Pye) that fiercely guarded their artists. They viewed multi-artist compilation albums as a cheap gimmick that would cannibalise individual album sales. Reedman broke this resistance by exploiting the financial self-interest of these labels. He offered them upfront cash advances and a small royalty fee per song track sold. Because K-tel targeted singles that had already peaked and finished their run on the charts, Reedman successfully framed the compilations as "found money" for the labels' back catalogues.

The aesthetic established during the UK launch was intentionally loud and unrefined to stand out in conservative British record shops. The artwork for the UK debut, 20 Dynamic Hits, featured "eye-stinging" cover art: cut-out black-and-white pictures of pop stars plastered over chaotic, multi-coloured circles. Critics noted it looked like it was put together by a child using a Letraset kit and felt-tip pens, but the visual loudness was entirely intentional. Coupled with the iconic rapid-fire voiceover of the TV advertisements screaming "20 Original Stars! 20 Original Hits!", it cut through the standard music advertising of the era.

Unlike traditional record labels that relied entirely on dedicated record shops, K-tel’s UK establishment relied on non-traditional retail. They guaranteed high-street newsagents, chemists, grocery stores, and wool shops that their massive TV advertising spend would drive foot traffic. Stores only had to provide a cardboard counter-display box near the cash registers. By the time 20 Dynamic Hits became the highest-selling album in the UK for 1972, K-tel had completely re-wired how music was marketed, packaged, and distributed across Britain—triggering a wave of imitators like Ronco and Arcade.

Don Reedman

Getting so many tracks on an album

To pack 20 to 22 tracks onto a single vinyl record—where standard albums of the era rarely exceeded 12 songs - K-tel had to ruthlessly manipulate both the physical properties of vinyl and the audio of the songs themselves. The process was a mix of aggressive editing, specialized mastering engineering, and compromises in sound quality.

K-tel engineers did not hesitate to physically alter the songs. Every second mattered, so they chopped tracks down to their bare essentials, often aiming for a strict time limit per song (frequently around two to two-and-a-half minutes).

Trimming the Intros and Outros: Extended musical introductions, drum solos, and long, slow instrumentals at the start of a song were completely cut.
The Early Fade-Out: Long, repetitive choruses at the end of a track were faded out dramatically early. In some extreme cases, songs were faded out right in the middle of a guitar solo or the final verse.
Verse/Chorus Removal: If a song was still too long, engineers would edit out entire second verses or middle-eight bridge sections, stitching the first chorus directly to the third verse.

On a standard vinyl record, the audio signal is carved into a physical groove. Louder music and heavy bass require wider, deeper grooves to keep the turntable needle from jumping. K-tel bypassed this by using a mastering technique called "groove cramming."

Micro-grooves: The lathe engineers cut the grooves incredibly close together. By making the walls between the grooves paper-thin, they could physically fit much more total groove length onto the 12-inch disc.
Dropping the Bass: Because heavy bass frequencies cause the widest physical groove modulations, engineers heavily filtered the lower frequencies out of the master tape. The bass was drastically rolled off, resulting in a thinner, "tinny" sound.
Lowering the Overall Volume: To prevent the tightly packed grooves from bleeding into each other (a phenomenon called "pre-echo" or cross-talk), the entire album was mastered at a much lower volume than a standard LP. Listeners had to turn their amplifier volume dials up much higher to get a normal listening level.

In the UK, Managing Director Don Reedman personally oversaw the track assembling and editing.

The Timing Matrix: Reedman would sit in the London office with a stopwatch and a giant grid sheet. He balanced the tracklist not just by musical flow, but by exact mathematical timings, aiming for roughly 25 to 30 minutes of audio per side (a standard LP side was usually 18 to 22 minutes).
The "K-tel Cut" Warners: Because K-tel didn't want consumers to feel cheated, the TV adverts and album covers frequently carried small-print disclaimers. Phrases like "To ensure the highest quality, some tracks have been edited" or "Edited versions" became a staple of the packaging.

While these techniques successfully allowed K-tel to offer unprecedented value for money, it came at a high cost to audiophiles. If a listener played a K-tel album on a high-end stereo system, the lack of bass, low volume, and rushed edits were glaringly obvious. However, because the target audience was teenagers playing the records on cheap, portable mono record players (like Dansettes), the lack of dynamic range went largely unnoticed by millions of satisfied buyers.

Ronco engineers were notorious for hacking songs down. While K-tel might subtly fade a track early, Ronco frequently sliced out entire second verses, chopped instrumental bridges completely in half, and engineered abrupt, jarring fade-outs right in the middle of vocal lines.

Arcade Records took a completely different angle. They wanted to appeal to slightly more discerning British music fans who were tired of K-tel's butchered tracks. Arcade’s primary marketing differentiator was that they tried to present unedited, full-length tracks whenever possible.

Budget-priced

K-tel was one of the major TV‑advertised budget‑compilation labels sold in Woolworths and identified as part of their “dominant share of the budget music market.” K-tel was particularly successful in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Note, however, that Music Week placed Believe In Music at #11, and 20 Flash Back Greats Of The Sixties at #29 in their Full Price (£1.89 upwards) chart in the May 26, 1973 issue. In the November 9, 1974 issue, Music Week explained that the Mid Price chart now covered albums priced between £1.26 and £1.99 plus compilation albums advertised on TV. K-tel had 20 Town & Country Greats at #6. By the May 25, 1974 issue, the Mid Price & TV Albums chart covered released priced between 94p and £1.87. Super Bad was #1, joined by Dynamite at #5 and Story Of Pop at #7.

By July 12, 1975, the magazine was listing the top albums from sales at 300 "conventional" outlets and at prices of £1.26 upwards and no separate Mid Price & TV Albums chart. There were no K-tel releases listed. The November 1, 1975 issue listed releases priced from £1.49. K-tel had Perry Como - 40 Greatest Hits at #15 and 40 Sing-A-Long Pub Songs at #52 in chart for week ending October 18, 1975.

From 1980, the chart now covered 450 outlets and records priced £2.25 upwards. K-tel had six releases in the chart for week ending January 12, 1980, including Elvis Presley - Love Songs at #12.

The TV Compilation War

The entry of Ronco, Arcade Records, and Telstar into the UK market triggered a fierce, decade-long "TV Compilation War" throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. These labels completely disrupted the traditional British music industry by turning record distribution into an aggressive, ad-driven retail battle. In the 1970s, the UK had only one commercial television network: ITV. Because ITV operated on a strict, region-by-region basis, ad space was severely limited.

K-tel, Ronco, and Arcade began aggressively outbidding each other for prime weekend slots. The labels weaponised their ad presentation. Rapid-fire voiceovers, flashing graphics, and scrolling tracklists bombarded viewers, intentionally creating a sense of manic urgency.

The labels relied on a system called "rack-jobbing", where they provided free cardboard counter-displays directly to shops that had never sold music before, such as Boots (chemists), Woolworths (variety stores), W H Smith (newsagents), local petrol stations and corner shops. Sales reps from K-tel, Ronco, and Arcade would actively track each other's deliveries. If an Arcade rep saw a K-tel display stand near a checkout, they would offer store managers higher profit margins or exclusive promotions to push the K-tel stand to the back of the shop and install an Arcade display instead.

To build a hit album, a label needed the absolute freshest chart-toppers. This sparked a frantic race to license tracks from the major record companies. The moment a song entered the UK Top 40, compilation scouts would rush to sign it. If K-tel locked down the exclusive compilation rights to a massive Slade or T Rex hit, Ronco or Arcade would be forced to scramble for lesser-known "one-hit wonders" to fill out their track lists. : The major labels quickly realised they were holding all the leverage. They began bidding up their licensing fees, playing K-tel and Ronco against one another to see who would pay the highest upfront cash advance for a single song.

The labels structured their release schedules to directly sabotage each other. If K-tel announced a massive autumn pop compilation, Ronco would deliberately schedule their own competing pop record for the exact same week, explicitly matching or slightly undercutting K-tel's retail price.

The ultimate battleground was the Official UK Album Chart. Because K-tel, Arcade, and Ronco albums were so cheap and aggressively marketed, they began completely colonising the top of the charts. In late 1972 and throughout 1973, these multi-artist TV compilations routinely locked traditional studio albums by artists like David Bowie, Elton John, and Roxy Music completely out of the Number 1 spot.

The major record labels grew furious that their premium, full-price artist LPs were being buried by cheap "mixtapes." Under intense pressure from the music industry elite, the BMRB (British Market Research Bureau) officially banned TV-advertised compilation albums from the main UK Album Chart in 1971/1972. They were forced onto a completely separate, heavily segregated "Compilations Chart" - a structural rule change triggered entirely by the sheer scale of the TV compilation war. This fierce rivalry burned intensely for a decade until 1983, when the major record labels decided to stop licensing their songs to third parties altogether. Instead, they pooled their resources to form a joint venture, creating the Now That's What I Call Music! franchise, which effectively consolidated the market and brought an end to the independent TV compilation boom.

K-tel in the news

If you watch Top of the Pops, find Mary Whitehouse's hysterical outburst at the Rolling Stones' disc little short of puerile and think that Donald Peers' come-back is way over-due, it is odds-on that you know something about records. That being so, you will no doubt be aware of the quiet revolution that is making its presence felt on the British record-buying public.

For those who don't watch Top Of The Pops, who like Mary Whitehouse and think Donald Peers does not need to make a come-back, let me reveal that the revolution is being led by an unknown company, K-Tel. And if that means nothing to you, read on.

K-Tel is a Canadian concern that is best described as a marketing organisation. Led by Philip Klves, K-Tel is the company whose record, "20 Dynamic Hits" is riding high in the top LP selling charts and some retailers put it at the top - above the Rolling Stones and Donald Peers. Among the many amazing facts about K-Tel and the "20 Dynamic Hits" album is the selling price of £1.99 and the total sales of well over 250,000 in just a few weeks.

K-Tel's approach is unique. They went along to disc companies like CBS and EMI and persuaded them to put on one long-playing record 20 individual hits by the original artists. Now, there is little revolutionary in that idea. But there was plenty different in the fact that, having signed up the various artists like Argent and other well-known hitmakers, K-Tel then produced a punchy advert for the commercial television stations. The cost was a staggering £300,000 and while sceptics laughed at the idea of K-Tel even breaking even on the deal, farmer's son, Kieves brought home the bacon in stupendous style; outstripping by a mile previous sales of similar discs. K-Tel's marketing approach brought it into contact with an audience that rarely touches the normal more conventional sector of record buying public.

No doubt Kieves and his colleagues were swayed by the fact that in 1971 the record business had a tough time. Sales rose only £4,000.000 compared with a £17,000.000 12 months earlier. Therefore. it takes little marketing imagination realise that Kieves felt a new audience need to be attracted. And that is just what he did. His television advertisement was an overwhelming success and now talk in the record trade is that K-Tel's "20 Dynamic Hits" will sell 500,000 copies, a massive figure by any standards, let alone by regular hit standards. And, it would be Interesting to know what people like EMI and CBS feel about making more money from a bunch of records that even optimists would have said had long had their day. Of course these companies are receiving some sort of royalty from the album and I doubt whether they will show much reluctance to any new disc planned by the successful Mr. Kives.

K-Tel's next move is thought to be two albums, possibly "hits of the fifties" or a straight "rock 'n roll" long-player. But after their amazing success with "20 Dynamic Hits" it would be naïve to imagine that K-Tel will have the field to themselves in the future and the emergence of a competitor, possibly even one of the larger record producers, cannot be ruled out. Sceptics who scoffed at the initial thought of K-Tel's brain-child will probably be amongst the first to leap aboard the bandwagon.

K-Tel themselves are undeterred by it all. The "20 Dynamic Hits" album is not their only success. The company was responsible for the recent publicity surrounding the "brush-o-matic" clothes brush and recent estimates name the company as America's 21st largest advertiser with an annual budget of around £4,500,000. Profits are running at around the £10,000,000 mark, half of which comes from record promotion activities, and the company's shares are quoted on American stock markets.

The British record industry and perhaps even at some future date UK investors keenly await K-Tel's new venture. Might I suggest a Mary Whitehouse / Donald Peers partnership singing the Rolling Stones?

Michael Smith, Belfast News Letter, June 27, 1972

K-Tel International knows a winning pop album formula when it sees one. Earlier this year the firm, which is part of a group which usually sticks to marketing household goods, brought out the easy-priced 20 Dynamic Hits record. This broke new ground in the music industry in that it made available a recent collection of hits all by the original performers. It sold well and was followed up by 22 Dynamic Hits Volume II. Now two more albums have been put out specially for Christmas. Twenty All Time Greats Of The 50s is already in the charts and, 25 Rockin' And Rollin' Greats should join it before too long.

Peter Patson, Western Daily Press, December 7, 1972

IT is going to be a swinging Christmas for people who cherish the golden days of pop in the fifties and early sixties. For, in the record shop rush, those who prefer exciting individualism to the stereotyped quality of many of today's groups, have been well to the fore. And the result is that a couple of revival hour records are now up among the best-sellers. The discs, on the K-tel label, are called "20 All Time Greats of the 50's" and "25 Rockin' and Rollin' Greats".

In each of several record shops I contacted in Belfast - including Boots, Woolworth's and Smyth's - the answer to my query about sales was simple - "fantastic." Indeed, most of the shops had exhausted their stock and were anxiously awaiting re-orders to cope with the demand. John Cooke, district manager of Smyth's, which has ten shops throughout the province, was particularly delighted. For his group's sales run well into the thousands. Boots are kicking themselves with congratulations, as are Woolworth's.

A spokesman for Woolworth's told me: "The hits of the 50s disc conjures up a lot of nostalgia for many of today's younger mums and dads. The rock record has a similar impact with these people, and also with the kids who are just finding out about the great singers of the rock n' roll period. Either way, we are delighted. It all adds up to good business."

Just about the only LP to rival the K-tel pair is the Arcade label's "20 Fantastic Hits by the Original Artists." But this record has been on sale for a longer period and relies to a extent on the inclusion of Donny Osmond, an ingredient whose success attributed to weeny-bopper mania rather than anything meaningful.

But back to the K-tel records. At £1.99 each I can describe them only as superb bargains. Anyone who says they don't make records like that any more is sadly right.

Desmond Magee, Belfast Telegraph, December 22, 1972