Entertainment For Lively Minds
What was the point of Dial-a-Disc?
Who remembers calling Dial-a-Disc?
For those whose memories don't go back that far, this was a GPO (pre-BT) service through which you called a number and listened to a chart hit. Usually you'd come in in the middle of the hit and either wait to hear it again or hear another one. They had about three or four on a rota, and that was kind of it.
This was the Seventies - I don't remember it being around in the Eighties - so you couldn't put it on speakerphone or anything, you had to hold the phone to your ear to hear a record. So why not just put the radio on? I think it's one of the oddest ideas of all time.
Ever use it? I'm sure we just called it because it was there, usually when mum and dad were out between prank phone calls to people telling them that their husband was having an affair with the woman who worked in Victoria Wine, or that their Chinese meal was ready, complete with comedy accent. Oh those salad days.
But I'm at a loss to think of a good reason to have Dial-a-Disc other than it being a revenue stream for the GPO. I'm sure it was prohibitively expensive. It's not like you could listen in quadrophonic stereosound or anything. At best it was tinny AND fuzzy. But listen we did.
What was the number? Three digits, surely? How long did it go for, when did it start and is it still going?
I need to know more.
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The 3 digits were 160
It's hard to believe
In the 70s it was still quite hard to hear current pop music. Radio 1 was the only channel to hear it. Commercial radio stations tended to play MOR and oldies.
16?
I'm pretty sure there was something along those lines in the mid-late 80s. I can remember calling up a number - I'm convinced it was 16 - on the bakelite phone and hearing something tinny at the other end. And then getting in trouble a few weeks later when it showed up on the bill.
And didn't some newspapers have a similar service when you could call up and listen to any of the top 40; some time during the 90s?
Music didn't used to be as unavoidable as it is now
In the 70's there were only a few "pop" radio stations (especially outside London), 3 TV channels, which hardly showed any pop music outside TOTP and OGWT anyway, no home video recording, and particularly pre-walkman, cassette players were the only really portable music carrier (I still remember when combined radio/cassette players seemed like some kind of witchcraft.)
In this environment, any kind of "music on demand" service must have had some attraction, limited as it was, and though I never used it myself, as you say, it can't have been much cheaper than buying the single...
I remember it being quite a novelty...
which my sister and I got very excited about. Once we'd had a go, however, the novelty very quickly wore off.
It was something
we'd have a sneaky listen to every now and then and hope Mum didn't notice.
Although the idea of listening to music down a telephone seems ludicrous, in those days when Radio 1 was 247 Medium Wave only, the reception in Chester where I lived was absolutely dreadful. Being able to hear a current hit uninterrupted by crackles and troubled by a fading signal was pure luxury.
I used it a lot
We didn't have a phone at home and the records were mainly dad's Josef Locke and John McCormack.
Me and my sister would go to the phone booth, dial the number and listen to the two or three seconds of 'free' music you could hear before you had to pay 2p. If it was a song we liked we would push the 2p piece in (and I mean push - it took quite some effort in those old booths!).
We did this most nights for at least a year. We loved it!
The same for me - 'earliest free streaming'
I used to take my first girlfriend(Tracey!) to the phonebox at the bottom of Hargrave Park in Archway north London. As you did I used to push that 2p in when i heard a good song. We also used to call the operator and say that my 10p had gone in but I hadn't been connected - this used to lead to what must of been the earliest version of a free streaming. I must have impressed her as we are still very good friends 40yrs later!
And also...
That fine US band They Might Be Giants had their own "Dial-A-Disc" line in the 80s. They recorded a new song every week and put it on there - decades before MySpace and downloading a sample from a band's website.
Fancy a listen to archived dial-a-disc?
+442392988085
Follow the prompts - just like 1974
memories...
We'd listen together as brothers to Metal Guru to " get used to it " before we bought it at WH Smith - an early way to try before you buy .
I do remember the phone directory advertising the service with a picture of a trimphone receiver resting on a table while people danced in the room . What a party !
And
it's not like you could put it on speakerphone either. What a party indeed.
I have very fond memories
of Dial a Disc, a friend turned me on to it, we used to listen to John Kongos and Thunderclap Newman, happy days.
WE USED TO
hang around the phone box at the bottom of our street every night.Someone would have the required 2p, but before dialling we would take bets on what that night's song would be. Those of us lucky enough to have a phone at home ( me), would have already dialled earlier, so knew the answer. It was, as Robert Shaw would have said in The Sting - past posting.