DJ USE ONLY Promotional label, not to be confused with Hot Tracks (3) (Sony Music France)
Hot Tracks is a DJ-only subscription/remix service originating in San Francisco, CA (USA) in 1982, later moving operations to Tulsa, OK (USA), and to Denver, CO (USA) after being acquired by Select Mix. Current operations are based in Las Vegas, NV (USA).
Releases are pressed in limited quantities and feature mixes of Top 40, Hi-NRG, House, Urban, Disco and Euro tracks. Issues were originally released on single 12" but soon appeared on double 12" and later triple 12" vinyl sets. The first "Best Of" CD's were released in 1988, and monthly CD's began in 1991 and replaced the vinyl sets completely in 2000.
Through the years Hot Tracks expanded their remix service into "Satellite Services" that provided remixes for specific dance styles with each style having their own series title: Hot Rocks: 80's Rock/New Wave, Love Tracks: Romantic Disco, Hot Classics: Retro/Disco, Street Tracks: Rap/Urban, NRG for the 90's (later NRG): Hi-NRG/Euro, The Edge: Retro Alternative/80's New Wave, and Roadkill (later XL): Techno/Underground/Alternative Dance.
Hot Tracks slowed production in 2005 and the company was bought by another remix service, Select Mix, in 2006. For the first few years, the company was titled "Select Mix - Hot Tracks" but later became just Select Mix. Over the years, Select Mix produced new Hot Tracks and Street Tracks titles, but has since retired both series. Most notably, Select Mix began producing new releases in The Edge series, which focusses mainly on '80s New Wave and Rock music. The entire company went digital in summer 2013, no longer releasing albums on physical media. New productions continue to this day.
DJs knew that Hot Tracks remixes were (generally) re-edits and re-arrangements of the 12 inch mix that was released by the record label...with parts extended to mix in and out, etc whereas Ultimix (and to a lesser degree Disconet) more often than not had the multitrack masters and accapellas and went into a studio and re-built the tracks from the ground up changing a lot of elements. Of course there are exceptions to this rule on all accounts but its pretty much what you would expect when you picked up a new issue. Doesnt make any remix service any better or worse really. Some Hot Tracks Megamixes of artists were legendary (eg The Madonna Megamix comes to mind). And one of the few to actually legitimately pay artist royalties too which is why they have lasted. Long Live Hot Tracks!
With the digital age now here to stay - it's a sad day - as Hot Tracks / Select Mix no longer press vinyl or cd format - it's all digital download now - so those days of waiting next to your letter box for your issue to arrive is no longer :(
I love hot tracks and am happy to have every issue, mind you when they did the change over, it just never had that feel to it anymore. Now in saying that I hope that putting these into their series will help you to find and in issue order when viewing. I have found a few doubles in lots of these but sometimes there are reason so i will do my best to have them grouped in a master release if they have not. but i do think that there are two many duplicates as per updj1. I will try my best to fix a few errors on the way, but please don't hesitate in discussing any of these changes I have made by adding the series or if you feel that a it should not be in a series please let me know and I will try to work something else.
Hot Tracks was innovative and is a vital part of dance music history. To critique the re-edits/remixes from the company's early years and judge the versions by today's standards is a mistake. Contributors were some of the best DJs in San Francisco in the early 80's. With a mission similar to the east coast Disconet label (a DJ service based in NYC that in the mid-70's, began creating exclusive versions of dance tracks restructured for easier programming by club DJs into their nightly sets), when a track lacked a good intro or break due to the structure of the original or commercial release, the goal of the Hot Tracks mix was to format it so it was accessible for beat-match mixing and in doing so, resulted in frequently promoting tracks that would have otherwise gone unheard. The producers of these tracks were splicing reel-to-reel tape and thus lacked the ability for precision editing. Though the outcome can be thought of as substandard, it can also be thought of as reflective of the time and of the styles used during the early days of re-editing. Services such as Ultimix, which arrived in 1985, set standards whereby 8 and 32 beat sets in the re-edits were consistent and thus influenced other remix services to raise their own standards as the years passed. Many services focused on a specific type of music but Hot Tracks spanned multiple genres. Hot Tracks is one of the few remix services that earned the respect of the major labels and continued well beyond the 80's producing quality promotional versions for programming by professional DJs. The only bad thing that could be said is that not just anyone could purchase a Hot Tracks remix at the time, but now here with Discogs, you can!
The Hot tracks series really gave unknown songs exposure and also unknown dj's a hand at re-editing these tracks.
This service did some amazing edits and remixes but also some shoddy stuff too.It is all a matter of opinion really. They certainly brought the dj remix service into major exposure.... some of the Hot Tracks mixes being put out by the record labels (on 12" singles)
They really did help start the trend for remixing a track and giving an existing song a new and extended lease of life on the dance floor.
It's great that back in early 1980s, there were guys working very hard to make remixes of old club tracks using just some scissors and some Scotch tape. But when the mix disappoints (and believe me, Hottracks does), time and time again, it is hard to have respect for the author. Hot Tracks are famous for bad and unconsistent editing, unexpected mixing, and even changes in quality during the mix. Many of their ideas are plain unoriginal. My advice to you is to avoid Hot Tracks, and get the original versions back instead. . mixes, i'd recommend Razormaid re-edits to you any day over these.
Blackout-
January 23, 2020