Time Life Records Vinyl Record Albums

Time-Life Books, Inc. was founded in 1961 in Chicago, as a division of Time, Inc. Its headquarters was the Time-Life Building in Northwest Chicago. Time-Life Books was to be the book division for Time, Inc., who published both Time Magazine and Life Magazine. Books published by Time-Life tended toward the arts and other "highbrow" pursuits, aimed mostly at the parents in average families and sold through television, radio, and magazine advertisements. By 1966, Time-Life Books combined its book offerings with recorded music and released these mixed- media offerings through a new Division called Time-Life Records. Typically, these were offered as two-to-five record sets with a book (and typically, in full color) giving the history of the music or composer, all packaged as a sturdy box set. Taking a page from the successful record clubs of the times, Time-Life offered a series of these box sets to be sent to the subscriber periodically (typically, every six weeks or so). Like the Time-Life book subscriptions, these were sent "on approval," meaning the buyer could listen for a short time, and if they didn't like the particular volume, they could send it back, no questions asked. (In a way, it was a more innocent time before taping became widely popular and led to scams of various sorts, getting and taping records and sending them back. Needless to say, though, too many returns and Time-Life removed your name from the active list.)