This year marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Crossroads Soundtrack Series. The series debuted in 2000 as the Singing News Soundtrack Series; at the time of launch, forty soundtracks were issued on cassette—twenty classics and twenty radio hits. Later in 2000, on October 1, the series’ first Christmas tracks were issued.
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After the licensing agreement with Singing News expired, Crossroads decided to re-brand the soundtracks as the Crossroads Soundtrack Series.
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In September 2002, the original forty soundtracks were reissued on CD. At that point audio cassettes were phased out, and the series was a CD-only series from that point on. Several years ago, Crossroads added a digital mp3 download purchase option for sales made through http://crossroadsmusic.com/; this mp3 option has proved so popular with international customers and customers needing tracks on short notice that, earlier this year, Crossroads started issuing several of each month’s track releases as digital only.
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Though the technology formats have changed over the years, the quality has stayed the same. “When we decided to enter the performance track line business,” Crossroads executive Chris White stated, “the one requirement we put upon ourselves was to treat this line of product just like major artist recordings. We wanted the quality of the tracks to be the best in the business. Therefore, we have always used the same producers, musicians and engineers, that work on all of our major artists’ records. We constantly receive comments of appreciation from our consumers about the selection and quality of our tracks.”
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There are now 817 tracks in the series. Six tracks are released month, of which several are issued on CD to retail and several are only available digitally on Crossroads’ recently relaunched online store, http://crossroadsmusic.com/.
